Morning roundup... Rove and PATRIOT

Please don't confuse, good reader... I don't mean to infer that the second noun after the ellipsis is actually an adjective modifying the first noun after the ellipsis... quite the contrary...

At any rate, on the Rove front, dKos has some really juicy shit that was actually posted last evening, after I'd left the world of the intarwebs connection:

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News supposedly has the bombshell of bombshells:

"Bloomberg News has slotted a story alleging that senior Bush advisor Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff 'Scooter' Libby provided false testimony to the special prosecutor to a Washington-based grand jury, RAW STORY has learned.

The story is expected to hit after midnight, when Bloomberg typically moves stories.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago special prosecutor appointed to investigate the outing of former covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed."

What will the children think? It's not the blowjob endangering national security by outing an undercover CIA agent, but the lies about it!

Actually, it is the national security thing. The lies are just the icinig on the cake.

Yikes. Atrios at Eschaton goes on to mention that the nature of the false testimony has been revealed:

"July 22 (Bloomberg) — Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to persons familiar with the case.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn’t tell Libby of Plame’s identity."

I'm no Russert fan, but quite frankly, I can't believe Word One that comes out of anyone involved in this administration's gaping, filthy maw... and certainly not Ol' Cooter Scooter.

This just keeps getting better and better, don't it? Don't get me wrong... I'd much rather the identity of a covert CIA agent was never leaked to the press, she was never outed, and our operations in regards to Iraq's WMD capability (or lack thereof) were never compromised... but since all that happened... the more proof that lines up in neat little arrows pointing at BushCo... the better. Period.

Finally, for something completely different... and more serious, to boot, we turn to Billmon:

The Sociatas blog (Thom Haslam, editor) remind us that while Left Blogostan is spitting out reams of electronic type about the two "R"s (Rove and Roberts) the letter P, for PATRIOT Act, also deserves some urgent attention:

"Congress will vote to renew and possibly expand PATRIOT today, tomorrow or early next week. This will all be over long before Roberts has a hearing, before Fitzgerald finishes his investigation.

If Congress renews or expands Section 215, as they seem intent on doing, you can kiss the 4th Amendment good-bye . . . What two World Wars and a Civil War could not accomplish, al-Qaeda and the cowardly leadership of George Bush will. (emphasis added)"

This is probably a good time to remind people what Section 215 gives the government the power to do:

Ugh... just look over his list and remind yourself how evil PATRIOT really is. Billmon also links to ACLU pages that can help you contact your reps. Now. Go.