Turdblossom.

“Thanks for everything,” Domenici chief of staff Steve Bell wrote Rove and two other White House officials, including Rove’s political deputy, Scott Jennings, in a Jan. 8, 2007 e-mail that forwarded the name of a candidate to replace Iglesias.

Buried in Justice Department documents released two weeks ago, the Bell e-mail was not initially noticed by congressional investigators because it was sent to Rove’s political e-mail account—not his more clearly recognizable White House e-mail address….

Asked about the e-mail today, and why Bell was thanking Rove, Domenici’s press secretary, Chris Gallegos said: “We’re not going to have anything to say about that e-mail.” He added that Bell “did not want to discuss a private communication.” White House press spokesman Tony Fratto said the e-mail was "interpreted" by the three White House officials who recevied it as a thank you for considering the names of Domenici's candidates for replacing Iglesias—not for their help in removing Iglesias. Did Rove in fact intervene to have Iglesias removed? Fratto replied: "We're not commenting on that" because of general White House policy not to talk about "internal White House communications."

Yep, it's okay to talk about some things, just not others that might be…shall we say…inconvenient, according to White House policy. Nice that the Rove's White House political shop had a back door e-mail service to use for cryptic political e-mails that they can't talk about because they were…wait, how is it that White House policy applies to non-official e-mails, again?

Making sense of this entire, nasty, intertwined mess is tough, and it gets more hideous every day.  Thankfully, there's a great interview with Paul Kiel to tide everyone over until the next docudump. (H/T to RBG for the link.)

As Digby wrote yesterday, the swiftboating of Iglesias has already started.  Lovely folks, aren't they?  JGabriel had a spot on comment about this nasty bit of work yesterday evening:

From the Igelsias smear campaign (h/t digby):

New Mexicans For Honest Courts:

While he looked the other way on fraud, Iglesias did … find time to take dozens of taxpayer funded junkets around the world.

Dozens of taxpayer funded junkets around the world. Among sane people, that’s actually known as: serving your country as a member of the National Guard.

These people are disgusting.

What they fear the most, they destroy from the shadows, behind someone else's money.  (H/T TPM.)  Except this time…they left a slimy paper trial, with much, much more to be discovered.  Hang onto your hats kids…Mr. Sampson has a date with destiny at 10 am ET.  One wonders what he will say, now that he knows the Justice Department has labeled him "Designated Scapegoat #1."  My advice, Mr. Sampson, tell the truth — you do not want to go the way of I. Lewis Libby, now do you?

(And yes, I know that was cruel and unusual YouTube.  So here is the link to the original Nirvana.  And, just for kicks, Crooks and Liars has a video of Rove performing a rap song.  Talk about cruel and unusual…as twolf1 said this morning when telling me about this, "It is difficult to watch.  You have been warned.")

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