Karl Rove is going to jail...if he's lucky

[ptmusic]

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A little quote from one of my favorite Liberal Elite Socialist Worker Legal Professor Media Complex basher....
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RUSH: Let me say one thing about this Karl Rove business. Let me tell you how I know. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rove is not the leaker. If Karl Rove were the leaker to Matthew Cooper of TIME Magazine, do you think they'd have kept that news private during the 2004 presidential campaign? This leak occurred in 2003. If Karl Rove engaged in criminal activity, do you not think that the media -- who claimed to know it all now -- would have not released that information during the campaign, given it to John Kerry or something and made it a huge campaign issue that the president's chief political advisor is a criminal?

We have all kinds of stuff leaked all over newspapers, folks. The war plan for Iraq was leaked for the New York Times and the Washington Post. We had all kinds of things leaked during the first term of the Bush administration. All kinds of secrets were let go that were intended to harm Bush. We had forged documents from CBS that were intended to affect the outcome of the election. Do you think if they really had proof that it was Rove that was the leaker of Valerie Plame's name, that the press would have kept that secret during the 2004 campaign? I don't. Why keep that secret? Why go to the trouble of making up and forging documents when you've got the one story here that could really rally people, maybe? Maybe it can't. I don't know how many people really care about this, that Valerie Plame's name was leaked, and I don't know how many people actually consider it a crime, but that was just my first reaction.


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Looks like Cooper is about to disappoint everybody with the truth....Apparently, the real leaker didn't like Karl getting all the credit and has given Cooper permission to reveal their identity.

Love,
X

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It's so funny when Rush and Sean make statements like "I know 100% FOR SURE...." They both made MANY such statements with regards to WMD's. I clearly remember one such statement (paraphrasing, but very close): "I have it on the highest authority that it is a 100% lock that we will have some of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in our possession by this time next week." (Sean Hannity, on his radio show, one week before nothing was found).

Rush stating that he knows something "beyond a shadow of a doubt" means absolutely nothing. Pundits are prone to exaggerate how sure they are.

-ptmusic

[benfranklin]

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Then we will no the truth.

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Lot of this going on, on both sides. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[[censored]]

I know it won't mean anything to some of you but on Special Report with Brit Hume the entire panel thought there was virtually no chance that Rove would implicated in any criminal way.

[The once and future king]

You and I dont see the world through the same coloured spectacles.

However this made me laugh alot.

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The Liberal Elite Social Worker Legal Professor Media Complex

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[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[ptmusic]

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I know it won't mean anything to some of you but on Special Report with Brit Hume the entire panel thought there was virtually no chance that Rove would implicated in any criminal way.

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I love the way you phrased that! Also of note: they say he has no chance he would be "implicated", as opposed to saying there was no chance he was "guilty" of leaking the identity.

Anyway, you are right, what they say on the subject means very little to me.

-ptmusic

[kurto]

I think there's 2 questions.... did he do it and will he be held responsible. One may have no bearing on the other.

[whiskeytown]

Rush was once 100 percent sure drug abusers should be incarcated for long stretches -

didn't realize a guy that fat could backflip so easily when it got to his turn....LOL

RB

[BCPVP]

FWIW, here's a blurb from Powerline regarding why Rove is probably not guilty of anything. It's part of a larger article, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to read the whole thing for context; but here's the relevant part:

************************************************** **********

Schmidt:

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials
provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover
CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an
investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To
charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure
of a covert officer was intentional.

Here is how Marshall thinks he has dispensed with that point:

Again, a conversation with a lawyer may have been more helpful than
one with a staffer.

There's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent'
exception to the law in question. While Plame's alleged role may
have some political traction, it's legally irrelevant. Government
officials are not allowed to disclose the identity of covert
intelligence agents, whether they feel like they have a good reason
or not.

Really? The relevant law is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which identifies three levels of violation for disclosing the identity of a covert agent:

(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had
access to classified information that identifies covert agent

(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of
covert agents as result of having access to classified
information

Note that parts (a) and (b) require that the leaker must have had access to classified information and must have *learned of the identity of the agent*, Ms. Plame, from that information; having learnt her identity at a D.C. cocktail party isn't good enough for prosecution.

The person that Marshall suspects is the leaker, or at least the person he accuses of violating the law after Novak's column was published, is Karl Rove... who almost certainly does not have access to any classified information that explicitly or implicitly identifies Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent; his official title of Director, Office of Political Affairs certainly does not give him carte blanche to rummaged around in the CIA's personnel files. So let's look at the third and final part of this law:

(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of
activities intended to identify and expose covert agents

The scope of part (c) is made more explicit in the description of the crime (this entire code section is remarkably easy to follow, even for a layman):

Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to
identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that
such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence
activities of the United States, discloses any information that
identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not
authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the
information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the
United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such
individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United
States, shall be fined not more than $15,000 or imprisoned not more
than three years, or both.

Note the words that Marshall managed to miss... that this disclosure must be part of "a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents." Yet it Schmidt was right, this information was not leaked (by whoever leaked it) as part of any such pattern; it was leaked as a one-shot to show that Wilson was not the disinterested contract analyst he claimed to be but was acting in tandem with his CIA wife to commit politics in the name of national security.

And that most certainly would be a defense to this charge... contrary to Marshall's snide and contemptuous dismissal.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/007149.php#007149

[ptmusic]

I just had a fun laugh browsing through that blog. I can't take anything seriously since I saw their list of articles:

Racial Profiling

The Democrats' Cheating Heart

Silence of the Liberals

Gangs of Minneapolis

Income Inequality

Welfare Reform

Income Taxes

Clinton

The Cross-Examination of Hermann Goering

Lincoln

Arafat 1

Arafat 2

Kathy's Clowns

Affirmative Action

Bush Doctrine

Yale vs. JAG

Patriot Act Games

Third-Party Politics

Fritz '56: Campaign Finance Reform

Walter Mondale Loses It

Apocalypse Kerry


-ptmusic

[Cyrus]

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A little quote from my favorite Raving Right-Wing Loonie and Total Ignoramus Rush Limbaugh.


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FYP

Notice I did not mention his brain damage from the drugs.