Don't know if you guys have been following the Judith Miller case, but it's getting a lot more interesting. It turns out that Karl Rove may have been either the original leak or one of the original leaks of Ms. Plame's CIA identity. That on its own is a federal crime, but we have to ask if Rove was acting on his own or whether the smear campaign against Plame and her husband were orchestrated by Rove's boss, our old friend Bushie. Is it time to start asking "what did the president know and when did he know it" yet?
Interestingly, Bush originally said that anyone in his administration who was found to have leaked information about Plame would be fired. Now that it looks like Karl Rove did it (Bush's chief political fixer), Bush has modified that policy to say that anyone who "broke the law" would be fired.
I just heard about a poll that put Bush's popularity at 42 percent, and the popularity of Congress at 33 percent. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, also just jumped ship and said he was going to oppose Bush on the stem cell bill. When your friends start putting political distance between you in order to save their own asses, you know you're in deep trouble. Bush is starting to look more and more like he's struggling every day.
I also heard that Roberts, his pick for the Supreme Court, may have been chosen not because of conservative ideology but because of a career of demonstrated support for the executive branch in American constitutional law. The theory being here, that Bush knows his lawyers are likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court at some point in the next three years (when his allies finally turn on him), and he's putting a friend on the court so he'll have all the help he can get. He may need it.
A year till the midterm elections... I'm beginning to really look forward to this.
More background on the Plame Affair (Ooh, I like the sound of that..."The Plame Affair") on Wikipedia.
Thanks for the perspective, Marton, and good luck in Iran!