Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, for the very first time ever, is now regretting that he hasn’t moved faster on that blog redesign. (BTW, it is underway now… And moving…) He would love to see the nasty-gram comments his recent Rove post would be getting…

It seems that to be a right-leaning (okay, who is your Maximum Leader kidding - right-wing) blogger and be calling for Rove to resign/be fired is enough to get a serious news network to mention you on the air. No really! It happened to Dr. Rusty… Really… See his link: Hell Freezes Over: Jawas on CNN

Not only that… The lovely Annika linked to your Maximum Leader as well. And she is getting some nasty nasty comments as a result of her stance.

And the always thoughtful Buckethead at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy weighs in too. Buckethead’s take is that Rove was speaking on deep background and didn’t intentionally do anything to reveal Plame’s name.

And to add to all this, loyal reader Powermfn writes:

How soft you are on the Karl Rove thing! Having worked in govmint I know how these things go. Loose lips sink ships. I would bet you a dozen donut holes that Rove is now cursing the moment he even brought up what he thought was an indirect reference to Plame during the meeting with the reporter. It is no big leap to take what he said and find the name Valerie Plame. As for being blameless because he did not know she was a CIA operative, why did he make such an indirect reference in the first place? Plame was at that time a consultant with a CIA cover company. Yes, that makes her “under cover”. Did she have the authority that Rove attributed to her, of setting up and authorizing her husband’s trip abroad? No. That authority is up a bit in the flow chartfrom her level.

Legal? Political? Try breach of trust, not only with the Prez who swore that no one in his WH was behind this, and then breaching trust with the American people. As far as many of us are concerned, Rove can fade back into the sagebrush where doubtless he just might find work for his “skills” with the contemporary version of Quantrell’s raiders cuz nobody with an illusion of integrity will have anything to do with him.

And, no, it is not the fault of the press! When is the WH going to wake up and realize that this sort of tack is totally discredited!

Well with all this going on your Maximum Leader supposes that he should speak some more to this point. (And perhaps get lucky and have Juliet Huddy or Kiran Chetry on Fox News mention this site on the news!)

Your Maximum Leader has, in keeping with the spirit of the new stories out there, focused his comments on Rove’s role in whole deal. To restate, your Maximum Leader is quite confident that Rove did not break the law. Plame was a consultant for the CIA. Nothing he has read has done anything to convince him that even with a stunningly broad reading of the law could you classify Plame as the type of agent for whom the law was written. From a legal perspective, your Maximum Leader is confident that Rove has little or nothing to fear.

Now some of your Maximum Leader’s liberal, or “independently minded” (*cough*squishy*cough*), friends say, “Well what about the Independent Prosecutor? Why would he be working on the case still if there was no case?” Good question there. Allow your Maximum Leader to state clearly and specifically his views on Independent Prosecutors. The Independent Prosecutor laws are a travesty in our Republic and bring shame on our mealy-mouthed yellow-bellied political class. Any politician who advocates the renewal or extension of Independent Prosecutor Statutes should be treated with scorn.

Independent Prosecutors are unaccountable legal thugs sanctioned by our government because the government is too cowardly to investigate contraversial issues. Independent Prosecutors have unlimited spending authority and no accountability to anyone. Independent Prosecutors have no time frame in which to conduct their investigations - and no limits to what they can investigate. They are at least as bad as the Star Chamber of old. Your Maximum Leader didn’t approve of Ken Starr. Your Maximum Leader didn’t approve of Lawrence Walsh. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t approve of the office at all.

In the Plame matter, the Independent Prosecutor investigates because he can. He will continue to investigate until he thinks it is time to wrap up. It can take another 5 years for all we know. It could take 10 years. You have no way of knowing. Will he find a crime? You know, he just might. Will he find a crime related to the “leaking” of Valerie Plame’s name? Your Maximum Leader doubts it. But if Patrick Fitzgerald looks for long enough someone will be charged with something.

Now back to the issue at hand. The one issue with which your Maximum Leader can not agree with many of his right-wing bretheren is that because Rove didn’t do anything illegal he didn’t do anything wrong. This is actually the crux of the matter. Your Maximum Leader feels that the White House made this whole situation possible by (wisely and rightly) saying that they were going to hold themselves to a higher standard. That standard should be (and is in your Maximum Leader’s mind) more than “we’ll punish people who break the law.” Your Maximum Leader didn’t support the President because he thought that, in the ethics department, the Bush people would emulate the Clinton Administration. What Rove did, even if it was just in deep background for a reporter, is highly questionable because of the national security argument surrounding the individuals involved. Because it is highly questionable behaviour, Rove should resign on his own. Should he not resign, he should be dismissed.

Now you might be saying “What about presumption of inocence?” or “How can you let the Democrats (or the Media) define the ethical standard for the President?” First off, your Maximum Leader is presuming Rove to be innocent of a crime. But we have evidence that shows that Rove did something more than we orginally were led to believe. The issue of Rove resigning or being fired is not a legal matter but a political matter. This has already dragged out for two years. It will drag out further the longer that Rove remains. If the President is serious about waging a war on terrorists, and getting social security reform, and nominating one (maybe two) Justices to the Supreme Court, and reforming Homeland Security you have to be somewhat free from distractions. Rove will be a distraction for as long as he remains in his job. As for the “letting the Dems define the standard,” the President defined the standard. One can’t really blame the Dems and media for trying to hold him to it. Your Maximum Leader will freely grant that the Dems and the Media would like to raise the ethical standard for the Administration to include jaywalking and failing to pick up your dog’s poop offences severe enough to merit removal - but in matters of national security the President already defined the standard.

Now, your Maximum Leader hasn’t touched on all the impropriety and conflict-of-interests on the Wilson/Plame side of this. There is more than enough scorn to heap on them. That Plame would send her husband on a mission to Niger doesn’t seem to strike anyone as odd. That Wilson would then return and start to claim that Dick Cheney pushed his mission - when that is not the case - is deeply troubling. That Wilson, and to some extent Plame herself, have demonstrated such a deeply partisan slant in this matter should have lots of people up in arms. Frankly your Maximum Leader would bask in the delightful irony of it all if Patrick Fitzgerald wound up prosecuting Plame or Wilson for violating some obsure federal nepotism law.

Your Maximum Leader actually agrees with everyone who says that this whole bit isn’t really all that serious. He agrees that Rove wasn’t intentionally doing anything wrong. And furthermore he agrees that the motives of his accusers are suspect. But he disagrees on the point that what Rove did can’t be construed to break the standard for behaviour set by the White House for themselves.

And furthermore, if Rove were to leave the White House (which he should) he would just get a head start on being the scourge of Democrats running for President in 08. Contrary to what Powermfn says, Rove would not fade into obscurity. He would be a super hot commodity among the ranks of GOP Presidential aspirants. And that side effect of all this isn’t being considered at all by the Dems who are too focused on the here and now to look beyond their noses at the longer road.

Carry on.