[NYTr] Sp Rove Finally Resigns, and Thus Begins Act III

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Apparently, according to the talking heads, Rove's resignation means he
will be an easier target for Congressional subpoenas since his having
to testify will not interfere with "government business."  There's much
speculation and much ink being spilled already about his testimony (See
second item below;  "Will he? Won't he?")  Whether he does or not,
he'll lie just the same, and either way the mini-drama he will provide
a ready distraction from the ongoing war crimes, and other crimes, of
the Bush regime. And Congress can sit around and act like it's doing
something, for those citizens and especially reporters still willing to
be fooled. Sounds from this as if they've started off with a great deal
of Sarah Heartburn "emotion" already. -NY Transfer]


The New York Times - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/washington/14rove.html

Rove Will Resign as Bush Adviser at End of Month

By JIM RUTENBERG and STEVEN LEE MYERS

CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 13 — With his voice breaking at times, and with
President Bush at his side on the South Lawn of the White House, Karl
Rove said Monday that he would resign as a deputy White House chief of
staff at the end of the month. The decision ends Mr. Rove’s role as the
president’s longest-serving and closest aide, and the one who most
personified the bare-knuckle brand of politics Mr. Bush favors.

Mr. Rove was one of the last remaining senior members of the team that
followed Mr. Bush from Texas to the White House in 2001. But
increasingly he had to work with newcomers brought into the White House
by the chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, to help navigate a new era in
which the White House has often had to seek accommodation with its
political opponents — and Republican Congressional allies — where it
once was able to run past them.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush have a complicated relationship dating back to
before Mr. Bush was governor, but it is nothing if not close. And the
emotion was clear on Mr. Rove’s face, and in his voice, as he and Mr.
Bush faced reporters.

Mr. Rove cited a desire to “start thinking about the next chapter in
our family’s life.” He said after six and a half intensive years of
White House service, he owed it to his wife, Darby, and his
college-student son, Andrew, to return to civilian life. Mr. Bush
patted him gently on the back and they embraced before walking to the
presidential helicopter together, heading back to the state where their
political odyssey began.

Mr. Rove said he first discussed his departure with the president last
summer. Instead, he stayed on through the midterm elections last fall,
which put Democrats in control of Congress and tempered Mr. Rove’s
reputation as a political genius who had ushered in an enduring
Republican majority.

He said his hand was finally forced when Mr. Bolten recently told
senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day he would expect them to
stay through the remaining 17 months of Mr. Bush’s term.

While “it always seemed there was a better time to leave out there in
the future,” Mr. Rove said, “now is the time.”

Since the midterm elections, Mr. Bush’s political problems have mounted
in Iraq, his pursuit of a new immigration policy has failed in Congress
and the White House has had to defend its actions in the dismissals of
United States attorneys from an assertive Congress that has come under
Democratic management despite Mr. Rove’s vigorous efforts to keep that
from happening.

The anger at Mr. Rove was palpable in the words of former opponents
like Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who said Mr. Rove
had “proved the politics of division may win some elections but cannot
govern America.”

But even as he delivered for conservatives a Republican White House for
eight years, and a Supreme Court tilting significantly rightward, Mr.
Rove had also by the end of his tenure drawn scorn from some of his own
onetime supporters.

Mr. Rove’s ambitious plan to overhaul Social Security when Mr. Bush had
a head of steam out of the 2004 election went nowhere. The expensive
Medicare prescription drug plan that they championed, and which won
Congressional support, angered fiscal conservatives. And their push for
an immigration overhaul alienated large parts of Mr. Bush’s Republican
base, including the conservative talk-show hosts and commentators who
were so crucial to promoting Mr. Bush and his agenda in the past.

After Mr. Rove’s disclosure in The Wall Street Journal on Monday that
he was resigning, Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger, noted that
he had said not one word about the failed effort to name Harriet E.
Miers, the former White House counsel, to the Supreme Court “or the
undeniable stumbles in post-Iraq invasion policies. And not a word
about the spectacular disaster of the illegal alien shamnesty, which
will be the everlasting stain Rove leaves behind.”

But Mr. Rove was defiant on Monday. Sitting with reporters aboard Air
Force One on the way here, he warned his party against alienating
Latinos, whom he sees as crucial to the party’s growth.

“You cannot ignore the aspirations of the fastest-growing minority in
America,” he said. He said he believed the party was still on track to
build a lasting majority.

He said in The Wall Street Journal that Republicans would hold the
White House because Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who he
said is the likely Democratic nominee, is “fatally flawed.”

It is that sort of buoyant talk — at a time of bipartisan consensus
that Republicans face an extraordinarily tough presidential election
year — for which Mr. Rove has become known, especially within the
confines of the buffeted White House. It was reminiscent of Mr. Rove’s
predictions, repeated by Mr. Bush, that Republicans would hold Congress
last fall, leading to a question posed to him by a reporter aboard Air
Force One, “How did you get the math wrong in ’06?” (Mr. Rove replied,
“They were very close elections.”)

Current and former officials say Mr. Rove speaks just as optimistically
inside the White House, reinforcing the president’s similarly positive
view, which outsiders have found hard to fathom.

But Mr. Rove is also said to remain a frequent voice for a hard line
against the Democrats. And when Democrats took over Congress and there
was wide talk of accommodation, associates of Mr. Rove said he was an
advocate of continuing to make early moves to signal to Mr. Bush’s
loyal coalition that he would not buckle.

The strategy was typified by the White House move to use last spring’s
Congressional recess to make three appointments that Senate Democrats
had vowed to block.

As a force of personality in his own right, Mr. Rove was said for a
time by former officials to have fairly free rein without a powerful
foil, especially after Karen P. Hughes, President Bush’s long-serving
aide, left the White House in 2002.

But Republicans close to the White House had said that in the last two
years Dan Bartlett, the White House counselor who succeeded Ms. Hughes
and had worked for Mr. Bush in Texas, had grown in stature and
frequently served as a counterweight to Mr. Rove. (Mr. Bartlett
resigned last month and has been succeeded by Ed Gillespie, the
Republican National Committee chairman during the 2004 campaign but a
relative outsider in the Bush world.)

When Mr. Bolten became chief of staff, he decided that Mr. Rove should
focus on helping to secure Republican victories last fall. Mr. Bolten
quickly stripped away daily policy duties that current and former
officials say mired Mr. Rove — who tends to involve himself in the
smallest of details sometimes to distraction — in the weeds of policy
making.

In an interview, Mr. Bolten dismissed descriptions of Mr. Rove as a
force requiring a counterweight as inaccurate and over-simplified. “I
never view myself as a check on Karl or anybody else,” Mr. Bolten said.
Repeating a common refrain that Mr. Rove gets too much credit and too
much blame for White House moves, he added, “Those are all the
president’s policies — it’s not like Karl Rove stepped in and got the
president to do what he wanted to do.”

Mr. Bolten did not provide a time frame for when he told senior staff
members that he expected them to stay if they worked through Labor Day,
adding, “I don’t even recall saying it to Karl, that’s just something
he understood.”

Some longtime friends said they saw no reason for Mr. Rove to stick
around much longer anyway. Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans
for Tax Reform and a key ally of Mr. Rove, predicted that much of the
president’s work domestically would involve veto threats against
Congress over spending. “You don’t need a genius general to man a
defensive strategy that is that clear-cut,” Mr. Norquist said.

[Jim Rutenberg reported from Crawford, Tex., and Steven Lee Myers from
Washington.]

                                ***

The New York Times - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/washington/14legal.html

Rove, Still Under Subpoena, Remains Unlikely to Testify

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 — Karl Rove will depart the White House still under
subpoena to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but his
resignation will almost certainly not make his appearance more likely.

Mr. Rove had been summoned to appear before the Senate panel on Aug. 2
to testify about last year’s dismissals of federal prosecutors and
efforts by the Justice Department to favor Bush loyalists for
nonpartisan legal jobs.

Two junior former White House officials, Sara M. Taylor, a former
political director, and J. Scott Jennings, a former deputy political
director, have testified before the Senate panel. But the White House
refused to make Mr. Rove available, just as it has refused to allow
testimony by others, including Harriet E. Miers, the former White House
counsel, who was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee but did
not appear before it.

In these cases, Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, has invoked
executive privilege, citing the need for confidentiality in White House
deliberations.

A White House spokesman said Monday that the privilege claim would not
be affected by Mr. Rove’s resignation. The spokesman, Tony Fratto,
said, “The privilege assertions remain intact.”

Legal experts said that while the executive privilege is a murky legal
area, Mr. Rove had a valid claim that it remained in effect after he
left the White House.

“It would be amazing if the White House considered executive privilege
to be waived by his departure,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor
at the University of Chicago.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the
Senate committee, suggested Monday that Mr. Rove was resigning under
Congressional pressure.

“The list of senior White House and Justice Department officials who
have resigned during the course of these Congressional investigations
continues to grow,” Mr. Leahy said, “and today, Mr. Rove added his name
to that list.”

Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, said the investigations had raised many
unanswered questions.

“We will continue to seek answers to these questions and expect full
cooperation of Mr. Rove and other officials regardless of whether they
are employed by the White House,” Mr. Conyers said.

The White House has said Mr. Rove did not instigate the dismissals of
the United States attorneys and had little role in the matter. But
evidence of his involvement has surfaced in e-mail and other
communications released by the Justice Department.

At one point, department officials said in e-mail messages that Mr.
Rove wanted to oust a sitting prosecutor in Arkansas to make room for
J. Timothy Griffin, a former Rove aide. Mr. Rove was also among those
at the White House who pushed for more vigorous enforcement of voter
fraud cases.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company