Surprise! All Roads Lead To Rove (Updated)
First there was this...:
A database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power [shows that], of the 375 cases... identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny....and now there's this, from Sid Blumenthal:
From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran ... the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an investigation that led to Rove's client's win.Blumenthal goes on to detail how many of the Gonzalez Eight resisted pressure to harass Democrats -- and then were kicked out of their jobs.
It's been said that the right-wing spin cycle processes scandals like this one in the following way:
- Ignore it.
- Belittle it.
- Blame the media.
- Blame Clinton.
- Yawn.
So, yeah, I'm going to be a broken record and say what I've been saying: Future generations will look back at us and wonder what the hell we were thinking. "Why didn't they just throw these crooks in jail?"
UPDATE: The Senate Judiciary Committee agrees to subpoena key DOJ officials. But not Rove. Not yet.