rovesputin

(image by darkblack) 

From Wiki:

The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it invented by the very men who killed him, so that it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. However, it is generally agreed that on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the tsarina made him too dangerous to the empire, a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov, and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the few Romanov family members to escape the annihilation of the family) apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a large amount of cyanide. According to the legend, Rasputin was not affected, although there was enough poison to kill ten men. Maria Rasputin's account says that if her father ate poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. She expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.

Determined to finish the job — and now we are fully in the realm of narrative legend — Yusupov worried that Rasputin would live until morning, so that the conspirators wouldn't have time to conceal his body. He ran upstairs to consult with the others, then came back down and shot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell. The company then left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one. While at the palace he went to check on the body, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Felix by the throat, strangling him. Rasputin ominously whispered "you bad boy" in Yusupov's ear, and then threw him across the room and escaped. As he made his bid for freedom, the rest of the conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, he fell. As they neared his body, they found he remarkably was still struggling and trying to get up so they clubbed him into submission; then, after wrapping his body in a sheet, they threw him into the icy Neva River. Three days later the body of Rasputin — poisoned, shot four times, and badly beaten — was recovered from the river and autopsied. The cause of death was drowning. His arms were apparently found in an upright position, as if he had tried to claw his way out from under the ice. In the autopsy, it was found that he was poisoned, and that the poison alone should have killed him.

From McClatchey:

WASHINGTON – Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

I had a long conversation with a fellow blogger today about whether or not we will ever see justice served up, hot or cold, to any of the thugs in the BushCo junta.  My friend is one of those people who can be crushingly cynical, but who also has an irritating habit of being right.  She says no, that executive priilege will protect them to the limits of their terms in office and beyond.

I sure hope she's wrong, because if anyone deserves to go down hard and serve a little time in the pokey, it's Unca Karl.  Whither subpoenas?  Whither prosecution?  I read exchanges like the one above about David Iglesias and even things like this:

President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush had dinner last night at the home of Karl and Darby Rove in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington.

When a pool reporter following the president's intown travel stationed outside dispatched an email to Rove inside, asking if the architect of the president's campaigns could spare a doggy bag for the press van, sure enough — out came an emissary bearing a gift of sausage and quail wings.

The press had already called in a pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza from Domino's, but the host's contribution to the press van feast was the most excitement seen outside this residence in a while.

That little bit of high-handedness was the night before the Libby verdict was read, leading Christy to speculate that Rove was making oblique reference to the office of the Vice President, a suspicion that would seem to be borne out here:

An 'Out of Control' Veep's Office

Conservatives are clamoring for a Libby pardon. But don't count on Bush to go along—at least not yet.

Ooooh!  I wonder who wrote this!  

By Michael Isikoff and Richard Wolffe
Newsweek

Oh.
 
Well.  This should be interesting.
 The prospect of Libby's serving time is fueling an intense debate in Washington: should President Bush pardon him? Conservatives immediately began agitating for clemency, arguing that Fitzgerald, unable to convict anyone for leaking, had made Libby a scapegoat. Vice President Dick Cheney may also weigh in. Former and current colleagues, who asked not to be named
Karl?  Is that you?  It smells like Vienna sausages and Astro-Glide in here, so it must be you. 
talking about private conversations, say Cheney has been shaken by the prosecution of his former chief of staff. Out of obligation and duty, Cheney is almost certain to press Bush to pardon his close friend and protégé.
Yes, yes, go on. 
That reluctance to bend the rules may stem from a feeling inside the White House that Libby, though loyal and well liked, went too far. Even if Bush is "sad" about Libby's conviction, Libby did lie to the FBI and made the administration look bad. "What you saw was a vice president's office that was out of control," says a former White House staffer who asked not to be named talking about internal discussions. According to trial testimony, White House aides Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer both disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife to reporters. But the way the White House sees it, Rove and Fleischer "went up to the line," the staffer says, "but they didn't cross it. The vice president's office crossed it." Now Bush has to decide how long he'll make Libby wait on the other side.
Thank you, Mr. Wolffe, another fantastic job.  Who do you suppose that "former WH staffer" is?  And at whose behest are they acting?
 
So, "Let them eat quail!", eh, Karl?  It's no skin off your back!   But I have to wonder if you're going to be able to skate on this round of prosecutor firings.  Will this be the stake through your black evil heart?  Will your years as Bush's Bush come to an end?  Will the weight of all the lives that you have ruined finally be enough to plunge you through the ice and into the black river beneath?
 
How will history see Karl Rove?  At what point has one political operative had so much sway over the lives of so many Americans?  And when in our history has the office of the President ever been used in such a callow, vendetta-driven way?
 
So, we've established that the NeoCons are standing athwart the flow of history with their fingers in their ears, going, "LA LA LA LA LA!!  I  can't HEAR you!  LA LA LA…!!"  As instructive as that metaphor may be, it doesn't even begin to address the bitchiness and vindictiveness of the Bush administration, which I believe is one of the main reasons the press has been so utterly compliant to them for so long.  And that tire-slashing, kneecap-smashing, wake up to a horse's head, you'll-never-work-in-this-town-again kind of ruthlessness is all Rove.  Posionous little toad.
 
Who on our side is going to have the stomach to take him down?  Who's going to wrap Rovesputin in a rug and throw him into the frozen Potomac?  (I mean that politically, of course.)  
 
When will the day come when we can ask about him, "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?"
 
And be answered, "He's gone."
 
And I suspect on that day, we'll all say something close to "Halleluia". 
 
In the meantime, I hope to get one of these pillows with which to comfort myself. 
 
 the perfect pillow

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