Reaction to the blogs: The Plame Game continues

A round-up of what some of my favourite blogs are saying:

War and Piece (see here): Laura Rozen has the latest on Plamegate/Rovegate, with some good links to the Post and the Globe. It seems that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is looking into more than just the outing of a CIA agent, as he's turned to the possible (although quite likely) manipulation of pre-war intelligence by the Bush Administration. It's about time. At Hullabaloo (see here), Digby addresses the same story, but he's not getting his hopes up. At Talking Points Memo (see here), Josh Marshall sums it up nicely: "And all of this, of course, [is] meant to cover up the big lie -- the administration's knowing use of bogus WMD reports to convince the country to go to war."

Political Animal (see here): Kevin Drum addresses the Republican/conservative response to Plamegate/Rovegate: "Until Patrick Fitzgerald finishes his investigation, we won't know everything that really happened here. In fact, we still might not know even then. But we've learned one thing already: when presented with even a hint of evidence that someone on their team has treated national security with cavalier disdain, conservative concern with national security gets thrown overboard without a second thought. Dealing with Plamegate as a factual matter — did someone in the White House expose Valerie Plame's identity to reporters? — is no longer acceptable, because, after all, when facts are involved, there's a chance they can turn against you. Instead, for most conservatives, Plamegate has now turned into the public relations task of convincing the public that even if Rove did out Plame, outing a covert CIA agent is a perfectly acceptable thing for a White House aide to do. Welcome to the modern Republican Party." Truly disgusting. (And for those of you who think I'm being excessively partisan, let me just say that I'd be similarly disgusted if Democrats/liberals were doing this.)

The Carpetbagger Report (see here, here, and here): Steve Benen is all over Plamegate/Rovegate with three recent posts -- 1) The national media are finally paying attention, but there haven't been many critical editorials in the mainstream newspapers; 2) Wilson was right; and 3) After the Roberts nomination diversion, the White House press corps is asking questions again. Good news, sort of.

The Blue State (see here): Todd Haskins reports on a CNN/USA Today poll that has Rove with a "favorable" rating of just 25%. Of course, 25% also say they've "never heard of" him.