"Is Karl Rove in trouble?" Is the pope Jewish?

"It's not a crime in Washington to lie."

-- David Corn, talking to Chris Matthews on Hardball

about Karl Rove's possible legal peril

by Ken

I have a lot of respect for David Corn, but really, what was he thinking when he slapped the head "Is Karl Rove in trouble?" on a Politics Daily post Friday. Well, I think we know what he had in mind. He got invited, along with his pal Mike Isikoff, to be a talking head on the teevee, and what they wanted him to talk about was this question, "Is Karl Rove in legal trouble?," following his two days of super-secret, "did it really happen" closed-door House Judiciary Committee testimony last week. And he knows perfectly well that the only way of sustaining possible reader interest is repeating the question with a straight face, allowing for the possibility that there might be a positive answer.

Is Karl Rove in Trouble?

by David Corn

Karl Rove is back in the news for Bush era shenanigans. This week, he finished giving testimony to the House judiciary committee regarding his role in the firings of nine US attorneys. (He had fought for two years not to cooperate with the committee.) As The Washington Post noted, new evidence indicates he was more involved in this episode than he had previously acknowledged.

But is Rove in legal jeopardy? That's the question that Chris Matthews put to me and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff (with whom I co-authored Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War) on Hardball. Here's what we said:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So is Karl Rove in legal trouble?

Oh, be serious. You know the answer as well as I do. Does anyone really believe that our Karl might have said anything that either (a) is true, or (b) might in any way incriminate himself? We all know that the guy probably didn't spend as much as a day in the White House without committing some crime. And I don't mean small stuff like perjuring himself.

As the Hubris Boys point out in the Hardball clip, after nearly getting caught contradicting himself under oath in the matter of the Valerie Plame leak, he learned his lesson, and for two years he went to whatever lengths were necessary to avoid saying anything under oath about either of the subjects of greatest interest now: his role in the political purge of U.S. attorneys, and his role in railroading Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. The math here is simple: nothing said under oath, nothing to be caught contradicting.

With regard to the U.S. attorney firings, there is a statement put out by the Dept. of Justice that it wasn't aware of a role by Mr. Rove, and by now there's plenty of testimony to contradict that, but that statement came from the DoJ, not from him.

No, when I talk about Karl's career as a criminal in the White House, I mean big stuff, real crimes aimed at dismantling the federal criminal justice system and turning the entire federal government into a political enforcement unit. But because the Bush regime has so far maintained solidarity, there's nothing in the way of legally admissible advice to present to a grand jury, let alone a regular one.

Not only do we not have to worry about Karl incriminating himself, I don't think there's any danger of our ever learning what he actually did say when he finally "testified." Because I'm assuming that his "testimony" was given under the usual rules for Bush regime felons:

* Your guest (not to be referred to as a "witness") won't take no stinkin' oath. If we say it, that makes it reality. If you don't like it, [expletive deleted] you!

* Your guest don't allow no stinkin' record -- no tape, no stenography, no transcript, no record of any kind, except for details and characterizations that he may choose to release afterward.

* Your guest will be addressed as "sahib."

* Your guest may not be spoken to in an unfriendly tone of voice.

* Unfriendly questions are discouraged. You can ask 'em, but you don't expect him to answer 'em, do you? Are you new here?

* Your guest expects that decent snacks will be provided.

* Your guest says, "What a bunch of saps," and is prepared to consider an apology, if it's issued with sufficient contrition.

* Kissing your guest's butt would be taken as a commendable sign of contrition, but isn't mandatory.

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