Another Thunderbolt from Wilkerson

"The intensity of disapproval is the strongest to date, with 42 percent now saying they 'strongly disapprove' of how Bush is handling his job -- twice as many as the 20 percent who said they 'strongly approve.'"

Blogger Jonathan Schwarz charts Gallup poll results for Bush and Nixon and asks: "Who Will Win the Title of Least-Loved President?"

Rove Watch

David Johnston and Richard W. Stevenson write in the New York Times: "The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has narrowed his investigation of Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, to whether he tried to conceal from the grand jury a conversation with a Time magazine reporter in the week before an intelligence officer's identity was made public more than two years ago, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

"The special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has centered on what are believed to be his final inquiries in the matter as to whether Mr. Rove was fully forthcoming about the belated discovery of an internal e-mail message that confirmed his conversation with the Time reporter, Matthew Cooper, to whom Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer.

"Mr. Fitzgerald no longer seems to be actively examining some of the more incendiary questions involving Mr. Rove. At one point, he explored whether Mr. Rove misrepresented his role in the leak case to President Bush - an issue that led to discussions between Mr. Fitzgerald and James E. Sharp, a lawyer for Mr. Bush, an associate of Mr. Rove said."

Does that mean Bush was, in essence, re-interviewed? I sure would like to know more about that.

Johnston and Stevenson also report that their sources insist that "there had been no discussion about Mr. Rove stepping down if he is not indicted. They said that any serious consideration of how Mr. Rove should address his role in the case had been put off until after Mr. Fitzgerald completes his inquiry into Mr. Rove.

"They were responding to an article on Thursday in The Washington Post , which reported that top White House aides were discussing Mr. Rove's future and that some of them doubted that Mr. Bush could put the leak case behind him as long as Mr. Rove remained in the administration."

Mark Silva writes in the Chicago Tribune: "Friends of Rove and the White House, too, are busy squelching rumors that the administration is debating internally whether Rove can remain effective regardless of what comes of the inquiry.

" 'This is palace intrigue,' said one senior Republican official.

" 'There are always people in the palace who think it's in their self-interest to damage the king's closest adviser,' he said. 'There are people in the White House who think they'd be better off without Karl, but these are people who don't have the talent and ability to do the job.' "

Conservative commentator John Podhoretz , writing on National Review's blog, sees press secretary Scott McClellan's fingerprints all over The Post story: "This is the first time ever that a sympathetic word has been published about Scott McClellan, which is tipoff #1 that the story derives from him or his friends. Tipoff #2 is the idea that what's affecting the White House is less the whole leak affair than its effect on Scott McClellan. Yes, I'm sure people are wandering the halls of the Old Executive Office Building, murmuring to each other, 'I just can't get any work done because of what's happened to Scott!' "