The Waterkooler

The Story: Smoke and Mirrors. The Game: Get Karl Rove

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way.

That is part of the commentary we hear from the Left Wing, (a.k.a. Jackass) Party these days... Thank you Frank Rich. Now, it is no secret that the Jackasses like to victimize criminals and n'er do wells and that is exactly how Mr. Rich and the Left want you to view the insidiously deceitful Joseph Wilson - as a victim. Moreover, they want you to believe that this "plot" was "hatched" from the oval office. [read more]


When I read recently that the Leftcoaster had posted a lament about the London bombings giving Fox News more fodder to scare America with War on Terror hyperbole, "distracting from real issues like global warming," chills ran up and down my spine. This is how this country will come to ruin, I thought. But then I read something slightly more soothing. Thank you, Frontiers of Freedom...

Fox news, conservative radio and now the internet have come under attack for simply being an alternative to what is referred to as ‘mainstream news media.’ Fox news and Claudia Rosette were responsible for breaking the most important news story of the year. Mainstream Media has treated the oil-for-food program like the plague, corruption between Saddam, Chirac, Schroeder, Putin the U.N. and others has not been as important to the mainstream media as ‘who leaked the name of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative’ and that’s only important because they see visions of bringing down Karl Rove/Bush Administration (never mind the fact that its only a crime if she were a covert operative at the time and many people have said, she was not)

P.S. Thanks also for the tip that Matt Cooper’s (the journalist who received Rove’s so-called ‘leak’) wife is Mandy Grunwald; media consultant and campaign advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Read about it here and here and here.


BY Joel Mowbray: While the Washington press corps has been buzzing about the
Rove-Wilson-Plame kerfuffle (as have I), there's been a different scandal
involving mishandling of classified info that few in the media have even
noted. Last week, I broke the story of how the federal prison system has
119 inmates with "specific ties" to international Islamic terrorist
organizations and almost all have outside comminication privileges, yet the
Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has no full-time Arabic translators. The
translators they do use--17 BOP employees who have full-time work unrelated
to translating--undergo no fluency tests or any special background
screening. This means that the translators handling the communications of
terrorists--potentially the most sensitive information imaginable--have no
security clearances whatsoever.


ACLU Sues FBI

"The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism and yet the government has collected almost 1,200 pages on our activities," Romero said. "Why is the ACLU now the subject of scrutiny from the FBI?"

Sexy Sandra Bulluck ties the knot, marrying bad boy Jesse James of Monster Garage fame. We're still waiting for someone to post the over/under on their breakup.


Speaking of gambling on celebrities, BetWWTS has already posted odds for the Emmy Awards. The news release can be found here.


Should Sex Offenders be jailed for reading Maxim?