Tonight on MSNBC’s Hardball, John Podesta, CEO and President of the Center for American Progress and former Clinton chief of staff, debated Ed Rollins, former Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Chief of Staff for Political and Governmental Affairs (a position not all too different from that of Karl Rove’s). Podesta made an excellent point:

PODESTA: This morning, again, in the New York Times, we learned that Karl Rove in the summer of 2003 was editing George Tenet’s statement about the faulty intelligence and the faulty statement that the President made in his State of the Union address to kind of rush us into the war in Iraq. Now Ed served as the political director of the White House. I’m fairly confident that he never edited any statements by Bill Casey at the CIA.

ROLLINS: None whatsoever.

Recall that in 2003 Rove was not yet deputy chief of staff nor was he formally in charge of coordinating with the National Security Council as he is now. He was the senior political director at the White House. Why was he editing intelligence documents?

This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that Senate Democrats were planning “to grill Bush confidant Karen Hughes” about her involvement in the ever widening leak-case. But, Senate Democrats must have gotten lost on the way to the hearing. Not one showed up. Instead, according to the Associated Press:

“A scaled-back Senate Foreign Relations Committee showered praise Friday on Karen Hughes and put the former political adviser to President Bush on a fast track to confirmation as the State Department’s top public relations official.”

The absence of the Democrats is even more glaring considering just today the New York Times reported that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald called Karen Hughes before the grand jury to testify as to her involvement in the leak-case. Of course, this begs the obvious question: Karen Hughes, did you have a role in leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent?

Instead of any substantive questions, the Democrats simply didn’t show up. But we did get this statement from ranking minority member Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE):

“Mr. Chairman, I regret that previous commitments prevent me from attending the confirmation hearing this morning.

I am particularly interested in and supportive of the nomination of Karen Hughes to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. What this job requires, among other things, is continuity. The last two undersecretaries have stayed six and 18 months, respectively.

I met with the nominee yesterday and understand that, barring unforeseen circumstances, she is willing to stay through the president’s term.

I believe that she is highly qualified because of her professional background, and, importantly, enjoys the full confidence of the president and the secretary of state.

She will bring new energy and creativity to our public diplomacy efforts. I commend the president for choosing her and persuading her to return to Washington, and I look forward to working with her for the next three years on this important foreign policy priority.”

If the Democrats hadn’t failed to show up, here are some other questions they could have asked of Ms. Hughes:

What was the role of the White House Iraq Group, on which you served, in manipulating intelligence to sell the Iraq war?

Were you involved in declassifying memos to smear Richard Clarke?

Were you involved in the administration’s past efforts to hire fake news reporters to sell Administration policies?

Did you have any involvement in communications dirty tricks by the Bush administration? For example, giving Jeff Gannon Guckert White House press credentials?

Did you resist the administration’s efforts to politicize the September 11th attacks for political gain?

Did you intentionally falsify President Bush’s Guard record?

And here are the reasons why those questions need to be answered: Read more

“According to [Karl Rove's lawyer Robert] Luskin, the prosecutor said he believes Rove was candid and forthcoming about his contact with reporters. ‘I’ve been assured by the prosecutor they have no reason to doubt the honesty of anything he’s said,’ Luskin said.”
– Washington Post, 7/3/05

VERSUS

“Two top White House aides have given accounts to the special prosecutor about how reporters told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said. …

“These discrepancies may be important because one issue Fitzgerald is investigating is whether Libby, Rove, or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation.”
– Bloomberg News, 7/22/05

More new content to check out at Supreme Court Extra.

Eduardo Penalver tackles the strategic implications of Roberts’ nomination. Risa Goluboff delves into Justice O’Connor’s statement on her likely replacement. And Tim Wu argues that the “most astonishing thing about Roberts is not his Harvard-heavy resume, his judicial record, nor even his John Edwards-hairdo. It’s how little he has said about anything.” Enjoy.

One of the major sticking points in the energy bill is the ongoing controversy over the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), a powerful pollutant that has seeped into the nation’s water supply. The corporations which manufacture MTBE refuse to clean the water their product has dirtied — forcing states to sue them to take responsibility — and now conservatives in Congress are trying to insert liability lawsuit waivers that would protect the polluters.

But a bipartisan coalition of over twenty senators are trying to make the Environmental Protection Agency come clean about its own behind the scenes dirty work. It seems that “key elements” of an internal agency document conclude that MTBE is “a likely carcinogen.” The letter makes clear that “if ingestion of MTBE is determined to cause adverse human health effects, such as cancer, it is imperative that [lawmakers] have that information.”

It doesn’t look like the EPA is going to budge. A spokeswoman has already stated, “The scientific process should not be compromised for political expediency.” And now, though EPA officials do not dispute the characterization of MTBE as a likely carcinogen, they are suddenly backing off of the document: “EPA spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said the draft paper reflects ‘incomplete information’ developed early in the MTBE review process and has yet to undergo internal or external peer reviews.”

The EPA has already gotten caught fixing facts to serve the interests of the power plant industry. Are they trying to pay the oil industry the same favor?

Another White House official possibly facing perjury charges?

Last Monday, Bloomberg News reported that former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer had seen the classified memo thought to be the original source of Valerie Plame’s identity. “On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.”

But today’s New York Times reports (all the way down in paragraph 20) that “Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor’s admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.” As the Times reminds us, Ari’s “telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson’s article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson’s identity.”

Coming soon: Fleischer’s lawyer explains how one can peruse a document without actually seeing it.

Yesterday, on CNN’s Inside Politics, right-wing political operative Rich Galen tried to rebut the idea that Karl Rove and others were leaking classified information. In this exchange with host Candy Crowley, Galen attempts to play down a Washington Post story identifying the “secret” State Department memo aboard Air Force One which administration officials may have used to out a covert CIA agent.

CROWLEY: Today there is a new development. The “Washington Post” reports on a classified State Department memo marked “S” for top secret in which Plame’s married name appears. If anyone in the White House saw that and still leaked her identity, that person could be in a world of trouble.

GALEN: I’m not sure it was top secret. It said secret.

CROWLEY: Yeah, right. It didn’t say “TS,” it said “S,” secret.

That talking point had a shelf-life of less than 24 hours. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the memo was indeed “top secret.”

A key department memo discussing Joseph Wilson’s Niger trip was classified “Top Secret,” and the passage about his wife’s CIA role was specially marked “S/NF” — not to be shared with any foreign intelligence agencies.

UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video of the Galen segment.