Kevin Aylward astutely points out that Schumer can’t have it both ways. There is lots of buzz regarding the NY Daily News story indicating that Bush knew about Rove’s role in the Plame affair (after the fact) and did not fire Rove.

Schumer writes, “In light of these reports, I urge you to make public the details of Mr. Rove’s involvement, your understanding of that involvement, and an explanation as to why Mr. Rove was neither dismissed nor his security clearance revoked when you learned of his participation in the Plame affair.”

What’s so shockingly hypocritical about Schumer statement is that he has yet to address the exact same questions about his involvement in the case of two of his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee staffers who admitted to illegally obtaining the credit report of Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele in July 2005.

Many other bloggers are in attack mode.

Egalia asks:

In other words, Bush is a co-conspirator and a liar. No wonder the pResident didn’t want to testify under oath.

…

Can presidents be indicted?

Scott McClellan yesterday said that he “would challenge the overall accuracy of” the article.

Stygius has a quick of quotes timeline and then summarizes:

From this it follows from his September 30, 2003 press conference that he was most likely lying, and in June 2004 was most definitely lying; furthermore that President Bush possibly misled Justice Department investigators, and all simply because they didn’t think they would get caught.

These are the two main quotes that appear to lead to Stygius and others screaming “he lied!”:

The Cunning Realist points to this article, which leads with:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.

and

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson

Given what we apparently now know about Russert’s likely conversation with Rove, I fail to see how this is a “Bush Lied” moment. Maybe I’m missing something, but I think this is a witch hunt leading to nowhere, particularly since Plame’s status as a CIA employee was apparently common knowledge at the time.

I wonder what surprises there will be in the impending indictments, though Drew McKissick points out that the law is a bit ambiguous (or at least the application of the law in this case) and doubts indictments will come down at all. Mark Noonan wonders if all the press is because the Iraq elections went off so well:

Given that the Iraqi elections appear to have gone off splendidly, we can expect our MSM to seek anything else to talk about. It seems as though the Independent Counsel investigating the Plame non-scandal is about complete his business, so the media is already breathless with speculation about just how many senior Bush Administration officials will be indicted.

Mostly, it is a big yawner because there is zero actual indication that anyone in the Bush Administration broke even so much as the spirit of a law, let alone its letter. Be that as it may, it will be much in the news and our leftwing friends will be harping on it quite a lot.

And after all that, go read this start to finish summary of the Plame affair from The Weekly Standard.