Rove "Scoop" Remains Exclusive

The columnist found himself on the defensive last month after suggesting on ABC's "This Week" that a nuclear option against Iran should remain "on the table."

Klein later wrote that he'd made a mistake and was forced to admit it by "all the left-wing screeching" from "frothing bloggers." While bloggers can be "a valuable corrective," he wrote, at other times "your vitriol just seems uninformed, malicious and disproportionate."

He had already drawn the ire of the liberal blogosphere by writing that former House speaker Newt Gingrich has plenty of great ideas. A onetime liberal who concedes in his book that he once might have been "in the tank" for Bill Clinton, Klein says he is now a moderate -- but not, he insisted in the interview, "some sort of creepy, covert conservative."

Reporter's Money Trail

USA Today is standing by its report that BellSouth and Verizon were among the telecommunications giants cooperating with the Bush administration's tracking of millions of phone calls, despite denials from the companies. Now the reporter who broke the story, Leslie Cauley, has come under criticism from conservative activists who accuse her of political bias. They point to records showing that in 2003, Cauley gave the maximum $2,000 contribution to Dick Gephardt's Democratic presidential campaign.

USA Today policy says that staffers "should not openly support political campaigns." But at the time, spokesman Steve Anderson says, Cauley "was between jobs and was writing a book."

Well, the administration is out of the closet now when it comes to going after the press:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security," says the Wall Street Journal.

"The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly."

Looks like this congressman needs a really good defense lawyer:

"Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday," The Washington Post reports.

"A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said."

And speaking of money and videotape, Ron Burkle, the L.A. billionaire who secretly taped Page Six scribe Jared Paul Stern asking him for money, may be no stranger to such tactics: