Hollywood Girls Gone Wild
BARNES, FRED
Hollywood Girls Gone Wild In which Laurie David and Sheryl Crow harangue Karl Rove. by Fred Barnes The showdown at the White House Correspondents' dinner was more emotional and lasted longer than...
...The briefings, a longstanding practice, were delivered by Rove aides...
...Yet these investigations have uncovered one dry hole after another...
...Rove said he already does...
...Rove responded that Marburger has a long and distinguished academic record...
...Two other probes reflect the obsession with Rove...
...It started when Laurie David introduced herself to Karl Rove...
...Yes, we do, Rove said, mentioning the president's science adviser, Dr...
...If Rove had instead used government email for political messages, Democrats would be after him for that...
...Without a trace of reserve, George Bush and Karl Rove set out to recreate that earlier era of one-party rule...
...The Democratic strategy now is to criminalize that success by treating normal political conduct by the Bush administration, spearheaded by Rove, as a series of criminal acts...
...China indeed signed, but didn't agree to curb greenhouse gases...
...The White House has refused to send Rove to testify under oath and on the record (with a transcript resulting), suspecting Democrats would set a trap to catch him in some discrepancy with other testimony and generate a criminal case...
...Rove cited the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which projects a modest rise in sea level of 7 to 23 inches over the next century...
...he asked...
...attorneys, they salivated...
...Their hopes initially rested with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald...
...asked Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin...
...Rove is more than a symbol...
...David said Bush must lead on global warming and America must emulate China—China!—by signing the Kyoto Protocol...
...So that leaves Rove at the top of the Democratic hit list...
...What else was Karl Rove doing when it came to other activities, departments of the government...
...That's when the debate got more heated and more physical...
...They created a majority center-right coalition (overturned by the 2006 election), just as Hanna put together a Republican coalition of the well-heeled and the working class, and just as FDR created a dominant Democratic majority made up of Northern liberals and Southern segregationists...
...The point of recounting this stunt by two of Hollywood's most prominent limousine liberals—who have accused Rove of rudeness—is to put him in the proper political context...
...In truth, there's a simple answer, one well-known to Emanuel...
...Both are based on the assumption that normal politics as practiced by Rove and Republicans is criminal...
...One investigation is looking at political briefings for political appointees—not career civil servants—at federal departments...
...He is the architect of Bush's election triumphs and an influential player in pushing the president's agenda...
...The best Democrats can hope for is to insult and assault him at a Washington dinner...
...Now's the time for action...
...Crow was more insistent, poking Rove in the chest and pinching his arm...
...We've had the hottest summer and winter ever, she said, plus extreme weather events...
...by Fred Barnes The showdown at the White House Correspondents' dinner was more emotional and lasted longer than was first reported...
...Now they've turned to congressional fishing expeditions...
...Even in Watergate, no single aide in the Nixon White House was pursued as relentlessly as Rove has been...
...And unless beating Democrats by ordinary political means becomes a crime, Rove will remain at large and at work...
...This is no accident," Emanuel claimed...
...In a speech last week, House Democratic Caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel declared that corruption in the Bush White House is worse than that of the Nixon administration in Watergate...
...All the scientific questions have been answered, she insisted...
...He represents Republican success...
...John Marburger...
...That's what Democrats, now in control of Congress and armed with subpoena power, are desperately looking for...
...ing Marburger's research...
...attorneys, but on everything...
...You don't have anybody who understands the seriousness of the issue talking to the president, David said...
...Without introducing herself, she demanded that Rove tell her how many corporations were financFred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...There's a name for this kind of activity: politics...
...That's worthless, David responded...
...The president needs to talk to real global warming experts...
...But with enemies like Kucinich, Cheney doesn't need friends...
...Without Rove to gang up on, Democrats have tried a backdoor approach by subpoenaing a Rove aide, Sara Taylor...
...A few Democrats have talked of impeaching President Bush, but that idea is a nonstarter...
...In many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal," he said...
...Sheryl Crow, the singer, suddenly appeared...
...She didn't...
...When Rove's name turned up peripherally in the controversy over eight fired U.S...
...And at that point, Rove turned and sat back down at his table, where he was a guest of the New York Times...
...In 2000, Rove "often drew an analogy between that election and the election of 1896, in which adviser Mark Hanna joined forces with many of the plutocrats of that Gilded Age and ushered in a 35-year era of Republican dominance," Emanuel said...
...President Bush has done nothing on global warming, she said...
...And the chief designer, in Eman-uel's scheme of things, is Rove...
...He knew who she was—Hollywood's leading Bush-hater and a producer of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's film on global warming...
...When the Democratic presidential candidates were polled at a debate in South Carolina last week, they pointedly failed to agree with Kucinich...
...She said Rove worked for her...
...Democrats said he must testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and not just on the case of the U.S...
...Rove answered that Bush has funded more research on the subject than any president...
...Representative Dennis Kucinich has called for impeaching Vice President Cheney...
...So what are Rove's crimes...
...The interests of the Republican party have been elevated over the national interest...
...David told Rove he was wrong...
...The other concerns separate Republican National Committee email accounts used by Rove and others...
...Rove said he worked for the American people...
...When he cleared Rove of wrongdoing in the CIA leak case, their disappointment was palpable...
...The RNC email accounts were set up for political business, which is not supposed to be carried out on government email accounts...
...About these, Emanuel said, "I have a simple question and it remains unanswered: Why...
...Crow said she and David were the American people...
...Would you like me to give you a list...
...David quickly launched into a harangue...
...Of course they did...
...He is the chief target of Democrats, liberals, and the left, and they burn with a desire to see him discredited, fired, and jailed...
...If all else fails, and it has so far, they'll settle for tainting him as impolite...
...It's all by design...
Vol. 12 • May 2007 • No. 32
