Each day the complexity of the CIA leak scandal grows. Recent developments concerning TIME reporter Viveca Novak are particularly difficult to decode.

The center of the storm still appears to be Karl Rove and his failure to tell Fitzgerald about his conversations with TIME reporter Matt Cooper during his initial testimony. But these two graphs, buried at the end of today’s Washington Post, seem to be a plausible explanation of what’s going on:

Randall Eliason, the former chief of public integrity prosecution at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, and another former prosecutor, David Schertler, speculated that Fitzgerald would not have considered charging Rove unless he had significant evidence from other witnesses that Rove mentioned the Cooper conversation to them. Now the prosecutor must check out the Novak conversation and weigh it against his other evidence.

“If you’re going to bring charges against the White House deputy chief of staff, you want to be absolutely convinced it was an intentional lie,” Schertler said. “I think Fitzgerald is looking at this so at the end of the day he can say, ‘I explored everything.’”

More analysis on recent developments from Firedoglake here and here.

Also, a video refresher on why all of this is so important here.

Rally claiming opponents of right-wing judges are “against people of faith” returns just in time for the Alito hearings. (Relive the memories of the first Justice Sunday.)

This morning’s Washington Post previews the right-wing’s new counterattack against Alito opponents:

Several conservative groups, meanwhile, plan a major push beginning Monday to portray Alito’s opponents as anti-God. Talking points for the effort, which will involve ads and grass-roots organizations, were laid out in a strategy memo by Grassfire.org…

Here’s an excerpt from the memo:

First, let’s call out the groups that are attacking Judge Alito from behind their “independentcourt.org” moniker. Who do we find when we lift the veil? The ACLU, People for the American Way, NOW, NARAL, AFL-CIO, Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn.org, Americans United, NAACP, NARAL (see link at end for the full list). And what theme unites these groups? An agenda to purge any and all references to religion from our public lives.

But there a few members of the coalition that Grassfire doesn’t mention:

– The Interfaith Alliance (“A national grassroots organization of 150,000+ individuals of faith and goodwill drawn from more than 75 different religious traditions.)

– Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (“Representing Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Unitarian, and Jewish national organizations.”)

– National Council of Jewish Women

– Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

The memo says that these groups, and all of the others in the coalition, oppose Alito because they are “radical secularists.” These kind of dishonest tactics suggests that Alito’s backers are worried.