Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was made happy this morning. It has turned into a positively shitty week for him, so it was with great anticipation and relish that he went on the internet to surf some of his favorite blogs.

And while surfing he discovered that he made Skippy feel pretty. You know, your Maximum Leader is all about making minions feel pretty. Provided they swear fealty and unquestioning loyalty to him… But that is another matter.

(NB to Skippy: Thanks much for that link you sent me.)

Anyho…

This whole Rove/Wilson/Plame thing just keeps going doesn’t it? Now it seems that the source behind the source was Robert Novak. Plus Joe Wilson has said that his wife wasn’t a clandestine agent when she was “outed” by Novak.

So lets get this straight. Novak does investigating on his own. During the investigating, Novak discovers that Joe Wilson is a lying bastard who’s wife was a CIA person who may have pulled strings to get him sent to Africa to follow-up on the Yellowcake Uranium intel from the Brits. Novak tells Rove this tidbit. Rove passes this on to Cooper. And somehow Miller remains in jail for talkin about something to someone.

So from a legal perspective, it still seems as though Rove has nothing to fear. But the calculations are different from the political perspective.

Like Skippy your Maximum Leader still feels that Rove must go. As your Maximum Leader has said before, this is a matter of the Administration setting a high standard for behaviour. Now they have to follow through on it. Your Maximum Leader agrees with Skippy that political advisors (Rove in this case) who become political issues need to go. They can’t help you when they are the news.

Now once again, your Maximum Leader doesn’t think Rove did anything illegal. And frankly the more we are learning about this whole mess the less sure he is that Rove did anything that was even wrong. But the President said what the President said. He doesn’t need the political mess this whole matter is causing. Neither does your Maximum Leader think that he (Bush) really wants to start being viewed as a Clinton-esque parser of his own words.

That pretty much leaves one option. Ask (tell?) Rove to leave. Who knows? In a year or two he might come back. Or he might just link up with some Republican Presidential aspirant and decide to work his way back to the White House for another four years.

Carry on.