to include drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge in a massive budget proposal, “assuring that drilling opponents won’t be able to use the filibuster to thwart oil development there.”

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked this morning about the New York Daily News story suggesting Bush admonished Rove two years ago for leaking Plame’s identity.

A reporter who attended the White House gaggle this morning reported that McClellan offered a shifty response:

In response to a question about a story in the “New York Daily News” which reported that the president was angry with Karl Rove in 2003 over his role in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name as a CIA operative, McClellan would only say that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation. McClellan went on to say that he challenges the overall accuracy of the story. When pressed on giving an answer to why he challenges the accuracy of the story, McClellan answered again that he would not comment on an ongoing investigation.

If the conversation between Rove and Bush never happened, why can’t McClellan just say so?

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo has the transcript.

Although special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has yet to lay out the facts in the CIA leak probe, the right-wing has already begun engaging in a spin campaign to deflect blame away from the White House.

Think Progress has put together a fact sheet debunking the right-wing myths about the leak investigation. It contains everything you need to fight back against the right’s misinformation campaign.

Here’s what The Note has to say about it:

As part of its broader mission of holding the “brain-dead media” accountable, the American Progress Action Fund, the C4 arm of the Center for American Progress, is launching a Web site today designed to prebut what the group considers “right-wing myths” about the Fitzgerald investigation. LINK

The folks who created it want you to think of it as a handy-dandy guide for the Gang of 500.

When conservative “yappers” say things like “leaking classified information is no big deal” because that kind of thing happens all the time in Washington, the Web site directs readers to text “” and video “” of Bush 41 saying on April 26, 1999 that exposing an undercover CIA agent is “the most insidious of crimes.”

Or, if someone tries to paint Fitzgerald as a “runaway prosecutor,” the folks at the C4 arm of John Podesta’s shop want you to remember that Bush 43 said Fitzgerald was conducting a “very dignified investigation” as recently as October 11, 2005.

Check it out for yourself.

“An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair,” according to the New York Daily News.