ROVE EXPECTS TO BE INDICTED BUT WILL HE GO TO PRISON? WILL HE BE COVERED BY RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY TOO?

Yesterday I introduced a post about Brent Bozell with an old school story of mine involving a lecture I booked at my school that featured Julian Bond and Strom Thurmond. I supposed I teased that it is a wonderful story and that I'd save it for a later day. Events a few days ago at the University of Iowa in Iowa City reminded me that may I should share the story (from around 40 years ago).

I booked Julian Bond, who was only allowed to take his seat in the Georgia legislature after the Supreme Court intervened, and my faculty advisor forced Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond on me to "balance" the program. A week before the event I called Thurmond's office and explained that we're a state university and the budget is tight and that I couldn't pay him the $5,000 I had offered and could he do it for $2,500. They said OK. I then called Bond and explained there was a change in plans and we would have to give him $7,500 instead of the agreed upon $5,000.

The day of the event I picked Julian Bond up at the airport in a fancy rented car and took him to the most exclusive restaurant in Suffolk County. We had an amazing dinner and when we were leaving we were approached in the parking lot by two waiters who said that although almost all the waiters were African Americans this was the first time (1965 I think) an African American had ever eaten there. They both had tears in their eyes.

Earlier I had asked my hospitality committee chairman to walk over to the Long Island Railroad Station and meet Thurmond. I gave him $10 and asked him to take the Senator to a beer and pizza joint down the road from the campus for dinner. I knew Stephen would be very polite and charming to him-- it's in his nature. He was the most flamboyantly gay person I knew at the time.

Julian Bond spoke and the audience gave him a standing ovation. Then Senator Thurmond took the stage and the entire audience-- as one and with no prompting-- got up and walked out of the gym. Ms. Couey, my faculty advisor and Stephen, forever the most courteous guy I had ever run across, stayed to hear Thurmond. No one ever told me what he talked about.

Iowa City students were not happy this week when Karl Rove was invited to their campus-- and paid $40,000-- to speak.

Over 200 people joined in a pre-speech protest inside the South Room of the IMU. One activist dressed in a Rove mask and held a giant $40,000 check asking students to sign it so he could get paid. Other peacemakers dropped colorful banners off a parking garage across the street, some put on a hilarious anti-Rove puppet show, the Radical Cheerleaders performed for the people standing in line for the lecture, the School of Flyentology spun political dance records, and others chanted rhymes like:

We don't want Rove in our community

off the pig

Karl Rove stole our democracy

off the pig

he helped Bush take the presidency

off the pig.

But the real action happened after Rove's speech (he ducked every question thrown at him or retreated to ideological arguments that obfuscated the truth), when the reconnassiance wing of the UI Antiwar Committee received secret intel that the Lecture Committee was treating Rove to dinner and drinks at the bourgeois 126 restaurant.

Student surrounded the place, picketed it and challenged Rove with the use of a bullhorn. The police watched from a distance and didn't interfere with the protest. Eventually Rove slinked off into the night.

Think Progress covered the lecture itself, during which Rove said-- perhaps in jest, perhaps not-- that he fully expects to be indicted by the end of the year. Maybe that's a Republican plan so that Bush can pardon him before the new Administration takes over and tries to hold some of these criminals accountable.

During the lecture, Rove lashed out at hostile questioners, telling one man his comment showed “a simple, stupid mind” and chastised what he said were “stupid statements” from the audience. Rove also said that former Amb. Joseph Wilson “lied” about his 2002 trip to Niger and accused an audience member of “perpetuating libel” on the U.S. military for asking about the real number of deaths in the Iraq war.

...Responding to a question about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing, Rove, seemingly joking, added: "I haven’t been indicted yet, but I fully expect to be by the end of the year."

The University paid Rove $40,000 for the speech and had to agree to limit “recording equipment and flash photography” to “the first five minutes of the lecture.” At the end of the talk, an audience member shouted at Rove: “Can we have our $40,000 back?” Rove replied: “No, you can’t.”

Perhaps Rove needs to keep the $40,000 in expectation of substantial legal fees.