With the recent release of a myriad of e-mails, documents and breathy reportage and leakage, it’s no wonder that Rove and Gold Bars Luskin tried to get themselves out in front of the wave by giving multiple "exclusives."

Oxymorons notwithstanding, when you have bad PR coming your way, it’s always better to stand in front of it shouting "look, over there!"

It’s like the dogs in Up.  Except Rove and Luskin have better Beltway material to offer up than a squirrel sighting, I’m certain.

Any day now, I expect to see anonymous exclusives about the Cheneyites or some other poor, expendable sap or deserving payback offendee cropping up in a news exclusive near me.

Honestly, it’s been their M.O. for ages, so it’s not exactly a shocker when it happens, now is it?

Deflect, deny, desensitize. Rinse, lather, repeat.

What’s funny is the breathless tone of Isikoff’s latest in Newsweek.

In perhaps the most significant passage in the new material, former White House counsel Harriet Miers—questioned by the judiciary committee for the first time in June—described getting a phone call from a "very upset" Rove telling her that Iglesias was "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it."

Who here didn’t know about the ruckus caused by NM GOP politicos and Rove having their fingers in this particular political pie? Don’t be shy, raise your hand. *crickets*

The more intriguing question for me is: will Harriet, also being in this up to her overly-eyelinered eyeballs, spill on the Turdblossom to save her own scrawny hind end? Or, more importantly, to deflect any tarnish from Dubya’s hiney?

Will Rove get a polite little card with to the effect of "roses are red, violets are hokey, get some more lawyers or head to the pokey," in Harriet’s swirly handwriting?

A girl can dream.

You decide:  horror movie poster or dog whistle call to action from Randall Terry to every nutball with access to God only knows what.

Just take a look at the poster to the left of Terry’s "Anti-Sotomayor Tour" and tell me there isn’t an irresponsible undercurrent of violent thought running through it.

I want to amplify what Kyle at Right Wing Watch said about this:  the right has gotten no traction on Sotomayor thus far.  Which means what to them?  Paltry fundraising numbers.

As Kyle points out, that doesn’t stop Randall Terry. No siree. For he of the "promote myself at any cost" mentality goes all out with this:

Randall Terry, for one, isn’t going to let this slow him down and so he is taking his "Defeat Sotomayor" effort on the road for a twelve city tour which is scheduled to culminate in Washington DC just as the hearings are getting under way (the photo below comes from this accompanying flyer [PDF and graphic content] proclaiming "To refuse to filibuster is to bow in abject obedience to the Angel of Death"). . .

I bring this to the public’s attention not to give Terry more publicity but because, frankly, I think the US Marshall’s Service ought to have a long talk with him.

As a sitting federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor is entitled to protection from the US Marshalls, who take threats to judge security very, very seriously.

Especially since threats against judges have been mushrooming exponentially since the right wing decided to make judges targets of ire in so much of their public political discourse. And worse.

That this has been a long-term strategy for PR points with the rabid GOP base has not gone unnoticed. But it makes for a helluva lot of work for US Marshalls who are charged with protecting federal judges across the country. In fact, they just opened a new facility in Virginia to track threats nationwide it’s gotten so pronounced.

And for local sheriffs departments and state troopers who have to protect state judges from rampant lunacy and threats? Those folks are already overworked and underbudgeted as it is.

And yet, here comes Randall Terry tromping around and stirring up the multitudes of his unstable flock with a call from the Angel of Death.  Tell me that doesn’t say "big threat" in neon letters to you after the murder of Dr. Tiller.

I’m sure folks here remember Judge Reggie Walton from the Libby case. He had this to say in a recent interview about threats and the source thereof:

But Walton has his own theory on why the volume of threats has increased. "I think the unfortunate reality is our society has become so partisan … that when you have hot-button issues, people take it to the extreme."

He places some of the blame on talk show hosts. "The type of vicious attacks sometimes that you see coming from certain players in the media, I think contributes to the problem." (more…)

Cheney by Justin Bilicki, used with express permission.

So much for that message discipline and failure to leak tour, Karl. Dickie Boy is peeved: 

In the waning days of the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a last-ditch campaign to persuade his boss to pardon Lewis (Scooter) Libby – and was furious when President George W. Bush wouldn’t budge.

It is ON, beyotches.

Since this is Tom DeFrank, who is one of the most carefully sourced journalists working the Beltway, I find this wholly amusing:

After repeatedly telling Cheney his mind was made up, Bush became so exasperated with Cheney’s persistence he told aides he didn’t want to discuss the matter any further.

The unsuccessful full-court press left Cheney bitter. "He’s furious with Bush," a Cheney source told The News. "He’s really angry about it and decided he’s going to say what he believes."

He did just that the day after becoming a private citizen. In an interview with The Weekly Standard, Cheney heaped praise on Libby and denounced his conviction. "He was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, and I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon," Cheney said. "Obviously, I disagree with President Bush’s decision."

Doesn’t that little upstart realize he’s messing with Dick F-ing Cheney? Apparently Bush started thinking he WAS the president. The nerve.

The vehemence of Cheney’s last-minute onslaught has struck some Bush loyalists as excessive. "At some point you have to accept the decision of the guy who appointed you," one of them said after learning the details. "I think Cheney was over the top." 

A Cheney ally disagreed. "He had every right to push it as hard as he wanted," he argued. "Cheney places great store in loyalty and thinks Scooter got a raw deal."

And if Scooter begins to think he got a raw deal?

(more…)

Absolutely no shame, no remorse, no public pangs of conscience…and none expected: Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, spoke last week at Loyola Marymount University as part of a campuswide 1st Amendment Week. In his remarks, he reiterated his belief that government leaks can cause serious harm, and that newspapers should respect government secrecy….