Dastardly Almost Crime Almost Committed

MUSIC +++ FILM +++ SPORT +++ PHOTO +++ LINK +++ POORLY REASONED POLITICAL OPINION AND STUPID JOKE

POL
So, maybe you noticed me trying to keep away from the Karl Rove story. My hatred for the piece itself, actually, is similar to my distaste for the steroids bit. It's what's known as the 600 lb. gorilla phenomenon. What huge thing are we not talking about?

Barry Bonds: pretty certainly "did it;" public condemnation took a full year or two to fully solidify; "did it" subject to precise definitions of "did" and "it." Rove: same deal.

The latest Bush manuever -- a tapdancing number like Christopher Walken's in that Moby video -- is a prime example of something nobody likes: semantics.

Bush, of course, has only himself to blame, or at least the same mysterious "other people" (nameless, faceless, but usually including Rove himself) that we knew we were really voting for when we voted for Bush in the first place. (I remember living in a divided household, two and two, during the 2000 debates. Bush's supporters generally recognized their candidate was a moron, but explained other people would actually be running the show. I wish I could be back in time, asking them to provide specific names and motives.)

After all, proving that Rove did what he did will be hard enough. (Corrallary: Conte pleads to four months in Club Fed, pocketing millions; Jason Giambi's hitting .524 with six jacks in his last seven games.) Proving Rove acted criminally will be next to impossible. To do that, someone has to PROVE Rove INTENTIONALLY revealed Valerie Plame's ACTUAL name (did you notice the shameless bastards test-driving the "all I said was 'it was Joe Wilson's wife' defense?") while he KNEW she was undercover, with INTENT to expose her. (Viable alternative you heard here first: I've read my share of comic books, and Lewis Libby (Cheney's Chief of Staff) sounds an awful lot like a "fall guy" name to me.)

So now, after a week or two of backpeddling worse than Alex Sanchez on a gapper, someone in the big, white mansion figured it'd be a lot easier to just change stories again. After all, it was Bush's historic mouth, not the law, that made mere "involvement" in the matter the litmus test -- and if you've ever seen old Alfred E. debate, you know how he HATES litmus tests. Whatever they are.

The Roveans figure, if it's so tough to prove the crime, let's just make crime the new standard. That's not, after all, a textbook 100% reversal. More of a 68% reversal, which plenty of people -- say, anyone between Walnut Creek, California and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- lack the faculties to fully grasp.

As usual, there's an upside and a downside. (You see, there's two sides to every Schwarz.) Upside: you get an inordinately strong headline like the one on CNN.com: "Bush vows to fire anyone who committed crime in CIA leak." Now that's proactive crimestopping! Rather than: "Bush finally speaks: sky purple, not orange." The only downside: you still have to fire criminals.

Thanks to Robert Novak -- whose story outed Plame in the first place -- and his uncanny sense for when to enter the grand jury room with a couple dozen extra Snickers bars, Time Magazine's Matt Cooper is now the guy with his face in the papers and his butt on the line. So, due to a sense of duty not seen since the last staging of Pinafore, I've emailed Matt with a little insider knowledge.

Yes: I have knowledge of a crime being committed by a White House staffer. The details:

Collusion with corporate CEOs to defraud average Americans of hundreds of millions of dollars. Voter intimidation; racial profiling; election fraud. Holding dozens of guys with names like Akbar al In Nocent and Mexi No Badi for years; no lawyers, no visitors, no charges. (Periodic yard and torture-room privileges.) Oh: and I almost forgot, murdering tens of thousands of people an in illegal war.

That should just about do it for everyone in Washington short of the Lincoln Memorial. I can't think of any problem foisting the whole bunch, except that the Expos will have to relocate again.

Gotta go check email -- maybe Cooper wants to pay me.

This is all very exciting.

MR

QWTOFDY
"I love treason but hate a traitor."
-Julius Caesar