cheney gate

* tradesports.com is running a book on karl rove resigning, with jul30, aug30 and sep30 endates. sweet.

* jesus general has the new rovegate talking points (link)
* wrt rovegate, we keep hearing about the memo on AF1 on the africa trip, and who say it, and who read it and all that. lots of the commentary seems to say 'ari was seen reading it' and the like. what does it actually mean to say that someone was seen reading a memo? did it have a bright red cover or some such?

* mcgovern: "Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writings provide contemporaneous insight into the major flap that hit the White House two years ago, when it was discovered that the "intelligence" was based on a forgery. It was clear at that time that the first item on the White House list of talking points was: "It wasn't Dick."
On July 14, 2003, the day of Robert Novak's opening salvo against the Wilsons, VIPS wrote a Memorandum for the President:... We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation." (link)

* taibbi: "The crime that ought to be considered this week is not that Rove may have whispered something or other to a few reporters. The crime is that hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists and politicians in this country have over the years cheerily honored this vile, scum-sucking pig of a human being by calling him names like "genius" and "boy wonder" and "wizard"—as though the business of Rove's life was somehow cute, quirky and lovably mischievous.
The truly monstrous thing about this Rove story is that it was not until Rove became a potential criminal defendant that all of those cutesy Will Rogers descriptions of him vanished from print." (link)