That Thread on Your Sweater? Let Me Give it a Yank, Mr. Rove...

Oh my...let the great unraveling begin. Speculation on blogs like this one for months, more than a year actually, has been that he who outed CIA Operative Valerie Plame was none other than the rather insane-looking brain-behind-the-cowboy, Karl Rove. As you've heard by now, it's moved from speculation to fact that Rove communicated with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper, specifically mentioning "Joseph Wilson's wife" in that interchange.

This revelation came about through an investigation authored by Clinton attack dog and Newsweek magazine investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. By Clinton attack dog, I'm meaning that Isikoff went for the Clinton throat with several Drudge-styled revelations back in the early days of the Lewinsky scandal. If you haven't arrived at this conclusion thus far, let me help you out: this guy hardly lives to serve Democrats. He was one of their worst nightmares.

But back to our sordid tale...the suspicious amongst might be easily convinced that that gun over there is still smoking. I mean, is it happenstance that Rove was pointing reporters to Wilson's wife, and then shortly thereafter rightwingnut columnist Robert Novak spilled the beans about Valerie Plame?

When the Plame story came out, anyone with even half an objective bone in their bodies was saying uncomfortably... "Uh...is that right? Is that a decent thing to do? Is that...legal??" We don't know the answer to the last question yet, but the definite answer to the first two isn't no. It's hell no!

So the stage is set for today's press conference with Scott McLellan (derogatorily called "Puffy McMoonface by the less polite of us on the left end). Strangely, the press began behaving like a press ought to. When McClellan tried to dodge a good question, they called him on it. Finally David Gregory asked McClellan if he wasn't even going to stand behind the words he'd uttered at the same podium a year and a half ago. An electric moment, no doubt.

Suddenly McClellen has begun sounding as though he's going to break into a "depends on what the meaning of is is..." speech. Oh, it was rich.

Payback's a...what's the word I'm lookin' for? I think you know!

Actually though, this isn't payback. This is a press not taking a shit answer and moving on to the next question. The questions were valid and McClellan's avoidance of them didn't come across as having the investigation's well being as his first priority. He was doing everything he could to not say the right thing. And he was well aware that this could be a press moment that lives on and on, as one of his few notable points in front of the camera. He didn't want what fell out of his mouth to be the wrong thing.

Someone forgot to tell him that closing the barn door after the horse bolted doesn't do a lot of good. And that thread that someone started pulling on Mr. Rove's sweater? It won't be pushed back into it.