Rove held responsible? I'm not holding my breath.

So - I work for the Feds and I work on a base. I remember a situation where it was discovered that a woman committed a serious ethics violation - possibly criminal. BEFORE it was even proven, security was called to her office while they told her to pack her things. They escorted her from the base...permanently.

Now let's discuss Karl Rove...

We can all read the news so I'm not going to rehash the entire thing, other than to mention that his participation in the Valarie Plame affair is no longer in question:

According to a July 2003 e-mail that surfaced over the weekend, Rove told Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper that the woman "apparently works" for the CIA, Newsweek magazine reported. It added that the woman had authorized a trip to Africa by her husband, U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, to check out allegations that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons.

At the time of Rove's conversation with Cooper, Wilson had accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Cooper's e-mail is in the hands of federal prosecutors who are hunting down the leakers inside the Bush administration who revealed Plame's name to the news media.

News outlets are scrambling to get on-line polling data such as MSNBC and USA Today. Even though the polling numbers are non-scientific, they are still running over 80% for Rove to resign or be fired. I must believe that official, more scientific polling will at least show a majority wanting Rove to go.

But somehow, I just don't have any faith that something truly punitive will happen to Mr. Rove.

Already, there are signs that the Administration is frantically trying to dig a way out of the hole that they have dug for themselves when they promised in 2003 that if anyone in the White House was found to be involved, they would be dealt with. In today's press conference (the first time I ever felt a little sorry for Scott McClellan) McClellan seemed to focus a lot on the word "criminal" - as though if Rove is never convicted of a crime, they can claim that they need not act because he did not break a law.

I think that the majority of this country's citizens have the attention span of a 5-year-old with ADHD when it comes to infractions by the present administration. Karl Rove's elite spin/bait and switch abilities have worked quite well on the general public to date and I'm sure he's still in charge of his own spin. Even if something is actually done to the man, who doesn't believe that Rove won't STILL be calling the shots whether he's in or out of the White House?

Yeah...call me cynical, but I think that this administration has the ability to quite literally get away with murder even if they are found with a smoking gun.


(P.S. If you want some cool items with the "Mission Accomplished" logo on it, click on the Americablog link on the right)