Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader continues to be amazed at how hard the whole Rove story is being played by both sides. The Dems will not rest until Rove is hanged. And now the President has officially lowered the ethics bar to the “you had to do something illegal” level to be fired.

Of course, this issue would be a non-issue (almost) if Rove were to step aside on his own.

Perhaps there is another aspect of this. While the Rove story burns bright, other stories are on the back burner. Like potential supreme court justices, social security, the war. All that stuff. Is is possible (though improbable) that the Administration is working behind the scenes while the l’affaire Rove keeps attention focued elsewhere?

Anyway… For more thoughtful consideration and punditry on the Rove situation, so and read Skippy’s latest. It seems your Maximum Leader isn’t the only one who makes Skippy feel sexy any more…

There is only one item which your Maximum Leader would like to interject into Skippy’s point. It appears that there is a list kept by the CIA called the “NOC” list. It was mentioned by Eleanor Cliff and someone else (Mort Kondrake?) on some of the Sunday talk shows. To hear it spoken about, this “NOC” list is a master list of undercover CIA agents protected under the 1982 Intellegence Agents Protection Act that is at the heart of the legal case against Rove. To hear these pundits talk about it, Valerie Plame was not on the “NOC” list. Where this is made unclear is that the CIA referred this leak on the Justice because there is some internal CIA discussion about how certain subject matter experts (SME) may need to be covered under the law without being on the “NOC” list. Your Maximum Leader will try and find some transcripts and update this post accordingly.

Carry on.