Walking and Chewing Gum

MorOn.org is trying to keep the Karl Rove story front and center in the news, most likely after realizing they haven't got a prayer of defeating the John Roberts nomination.

Here's the latest email (my comments follow at the end of the post):

Dear MoveOn member,

Like a roller coaster, the news out of Washington this week has been an up and down ride. On Monday, the entire country was focused on Karl Rove's leak of the identity of an undercover CIA operative to the media. Then President Bush announced his nominee for the Supreme Court on primetime TV—nearly pushing the Rove story out of the news. The timing was intentional, a top Republican told Reuters: "It helps take Rove off the front pages for a week.”1 Monday, there were 1,043 news stories mentioning "Karl Rove" on top TV stations—yesterday there were 128.2

But last night, Bloomberg broke a major new part of the story: Rove’s explanation to the grand jury of how he learned Valerie Plame’s identity differs sharply from the explanations journalists gave.3 That could mean Rove lied to the grand jury—a felony. We need to make sure the media get back on the case. One easy way to do that is on the Letters-to-the-Editor page of newspapers. We've set up an online tool that makes submitting a letter easy. You write your letter, choose where you want it to go, and click to send. Will you write a letter to the editor? Click below to get started.

An effective letter-to-the-editor is short, just a couple of paragraphs. The goal is to show your local media, your neighbors, and even our elected leaders that people are upset about the Rove leak scandal.

Your letter will be very timely. Now, there are new revelations about a memo that made it clear to White House officials that CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity was a secret. The memo is evidence that there are probably multiple people involved in this CIA leak scandal.4

The Rove leak is scandalous because everybody agrees White House officials shouldn't blow the cover of our undercover CIA agents. An ABC News poll shows that a solid majority of Americans—some 75 percent—support firing Rove for what he did. This is true even among 71 percent of Republicans.5 But, so far, Republicans in Washington are ignoring the facts. It is important that the media hears that people are angry about the Rove leak so they keep reporting on developments in the case.

The outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame is more outrageous because Karl Rove and the other White House leakers clearly had a political, not a patriotic, agenda. Ambassador Joe Wilson was refuting the bogus claims by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Revealing the undercover identity of Wilson’s CIA agent wife was an attempt to discredit Ambassador Wilson and silence critics of the Iraq war. The lies that Wilson exposed were central to the rationale for war the Bush administration sold the American people.

Your letter can send a signal to the media that people don't want officials in important government positions who put their political agenda ahead of their patriotism. We can insist on media coverage of the White House leak. Please write a letter today.

There is also good news from Congress—the Democrats are standing up and working hard to make sure there is accountability. Today, Senate and House Democrats will hold their own hearings on the national security implications of the leak. They’ll hear from former CIA agents including a former classmate of Valerie Plame. The hearings will be chaired by Senator Byron Dorgan and Congressman Henry Waxman.

Together, we pushed stories like the Downing Street Memos into the news. Let's jumpstart the Karl Rove story.

Thanks for all you do.

–Tom, Carrie, Wes, James and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, July 22nd, 2005

P.S. Our TV ad exposes the White House cover-up of Karl Rove's CIA leak. We beat our goal of $100,000—will you help us meet our new goal of $150,000 and keep the ads on another week?


For starters, I always appreciate footnotes, but I am not sure they really expect you to read the sources. Here's my issues with the footnotes:

Footnote 1: "The timing was intentional, a top Republican told Reuters: "It helps take Rove off the front pages for a week.”1 " The story from which this footnote comes is here and here's the actual paragraph:

"A Republican strategist with close to the White House described Clement as the leading candidate. "She's pretty untouchable," he said. "Plus, it helps take Rove off the front pages for a week."

So the comment comes from a Republican strategist close to the White House who thought Clement was going to be the nominee? Good source.

Footnote 2: Number of stories about Rove over time based on Analysis by MoveOn.org Political Action staff of monitoring from www.tveyes.com. Yeah, I bet the criteria for measuring stories was pretty fair, so fair they didn't describe the method.

Footnote 3: No idea about this one as the link to the story isn't working anymore

Footnote 4: This reference is from this story and indicates that the memo was marked secret. Obviously, we won't get to see the memo so we'll have to take the paper's word on it - it's the WashPo, so measure their word accordingly.

Footnote 5: Ah, the good ol' poll results. These are the best. In MorOn.org's email, they say, "An ABC News poll shows that a solid majority of Americans—some 75 percent—support firing Rove for what he did. This is true even among 71 percent of Republicans." This implies that he should be fired today, according to 75% of the respondents. So far, it hasn't been proven that Rove did anything wrong, but this is not the point. The poll results are here and the question they use the results from is:

"It's been reported that one of George W. Bush's closest advisers, Karl Rove, spoke briefly with a reporter about this CIA agent. If investigators find that Rove leaked classified information, do you think he should or should not lose his job in the Bush Administration?"

That question is different from the way MorOn.org framed the results. It says "if" investigators determine Rove leaked. Again, no investigators have concluded this.

Of course, this is what I expect from Tom, Carrie, Wes, James and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team. I just want everyone to keep it in mind when they read the MorOn.org form letters to the editor in next week's paper.