Absolutely no shame, no remorse, no public pangs of conscience…and none expected: Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, spoke last week at Loyola Marymount University as part of a campuswide 1st Amendment Week. In his remarks, he reiterated his belief that government leaks can cause serious harm, and that newspapers should respect government secrecy….

There’s a detail in the WaPo story on Charles Duelfer’s new book that suggests, at a time when DOD was pushing Ahmed Chalabi to run Iraq, they were targeting Iraqi leaders for harrassment and arrest.

I tire of this one. But since Tucker Carlson fails to disclose – again – this salient little tidbit regarding his self-interested family business in Scooter Libby? Here goes: …unfortunately for Tucker, the secret got published on the Scooter Libby Defense Slush Fund website…and blabbed all over Washington…and Arianna found out about it. “But with all he’s had to say about the case, there is one thing that Tucker Carlson has failed to mention: That his father, Richard Carlson, is on the advisory committee of the Libby Legal Defense Trust, the GOP-heavy-hitter-laden group that has so far raised $2 million. Indeed, Richard Carlson was the Early Money Is Like Yeast of Libby defense fund-raisers, having couriered a check to Libby’s home the morning he was indicted….”

Just when you think you cannot feel more sick to your stomach:…Ron: Now this is from the Vice President’s Office is how you remembered it–not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, ‘we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not–in my memory–never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now–he may have hinted–just by the way he said it, it would have–cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president….

That the Appeals Court threw out the Wilsons’ suit is not surprising. That the logic in Sentelle’s opinion is so crappy and ignorant is. It basically argues that because Valerie Wilson has no recourse to the Privacy Act wrt Cheney and Libby and Rove, those thugs can violate Joe Wilson’s First and Fifth Amendment rights too!

The news that the CIA may have forged a letter alleging ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq reminds me that OVP–particularly Scooter Libby–was the one behind many of the Iraq-Al Qaeda claims.

When evidence from the Scooter Libby trial showed that Dick Cheney had probably ordered Scooter Libby to leak Valerie Plame’s identity, Cheney built a firewall that legally excused the leak–but still insulated George Bush from involvement in knowingly outing a CIA spy. Cheney claimed, on at least two occasions, that he himself had the authority to declassify classified information, presumably up to and including Valerie Plame’s identity.

Somewhere, Joe Wilson is laughing.

I’m receiving word that Bush just invoked executive privilege over Cheney’s interview with Fitzgerald during the CIA leak case.

There are still a number of unexplained aspects of Novak’s column. But the Attorney General seems determined to make sure we never explain them, since he’s refusing to turn over the Bush and Cheney interview reports.