Paranoia and Occam's Razor

Maria's response to yesterday's paranoia attack is a much more measured and reasonable answer to my concerns than the creation of a vast plot to distract the public from other more important issues. [See Rule #5.]

I learned at a young age, however, that you never watch the magician's right hand; the right hand is the distraction, while the left hand is slipping out handkerchiefs, half-dollars, and rabbits.

But perhaps I give Mr. Rove too much credit.

A couple things still bug me:

(1) I'll admit that Rove's a smart guy, if a bit ethically challenged. Still, you would have thought that it would have crossed his mind once, if not three times, that directing reporters to a CIA operative (covert or not) would be shady. [See Rule #2] That seems to be a dumb move on his part.

(2) Let's suppose, however, that Rove's lawyers are telling the truth and that Rove didn't know that Plaime was covert (and therefore did not break the law) or that Rove, technically, never outed her by name. Rove is still being dumb for not covering his butt by letting the investigation into Cooper and Miller slowly fade away. Perhaps this was a calculated risk: no reporter, in Rove's mind, would ever cave to pressure to divulge a source and therefore he's safe. Still, several quick words to the President (specifically, "Geez George, this investigation is really making us look like schmucks; why don't we back off and try this a different way"*) would have, if nothing else, slowed the investigation down to a crawl. Instead, Rove allows this problem to fester away slowly.

If Rove isn't doing something sneaky (well, sneakiER) here, then he's being sloppy and stupid.

Both are good reasons to fire the Turd Blossom.

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*This raises an interesting point: Clearly, Rove could have skewed the investigation without telling the President that he was involved, clearing Dubya of all culpability, but he apparently didn't. I'm no longer privy to Bush/Rove discussions, so I can only speculate what went on between them. Did the President actually know Rove was involved? If he did, that seems like obstruction of justice to me; if he didn't, Karl's been making him look bad behind his back. So what DID the President know and when did he know it?