Okay, if you are getting overly excited about Fitzmas, read this latest from the Washington Post with caution. It is delicious reading about the stressed out White House staff freaking out about their leader, Karl Rove:
With special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald driving his CIA leak investigation toward an apparent conclusion, the White House now confronts the looming prospect that no one in the building is eager to address: a Bush presidency without Karl Rove. In a capital consumed by scandal speculation, most White House senior officials are no more privy than outsiders to the prosecutor's intentions. But the surreal silence in the Roosevelt Room each morning belies the nervous discussions racing elsewhere around the West Wing.See, the White House staffers are tense because they know what their colleagues did. They know how those guys operate. This was standard operating procedure for the Rove/Bush team. They just thought they would never get caught. But, now, they're all trying to figure out what went wrong:
At the heart of all those discussions is Rove. With the deceptive title of deputy chief of staff, Rove runs much of the White House, including its guiding political strategy and many of its central policy initiatives. "Karl is the central nervous system right now, and that's obviously a big thing -- not only politically, but now he's in that big policy job," a former White House official said.Tough crowd. See, in a real administration that cared about national security, anyone who committed treason, like Rove, would have been shot.
At the White House and among its close allies, discussion about Rove's fate is verboten -- in part out of fear and in part out of ignorance about what his legal vulnerability actually is. "No one in the White House wants to talk about an indictment," another former official said. "No one wants to believe anything's going to happen." Nor do people easily discuss other staff changes. "Anyone who talks about that kind of stuff should be shot," said a third Republican with close ties to the White House.
Anyway, the whole article is worth a read. Just take deep breaths. It's just an appetizer.
