Bush Blocking Fitzgerald Cooperation

"Speaking on PBS's ' Charlie Rose' talk show last week, Rove said Congress pushed to have the vote before the election. . . .

"Rove repeated his assertion in an interview yesterday, pointing to comments made by Democrats in 2002 that they wanted a vote. 'For Democrats to suggest they didn't want to vote on it before the election is disingenuous,' he said. The vote schedule, he said, was set by lawmakers. 'We don't control that.'

"News accounts and transcripts at the time show Bush arguing against delay. Asked on Sept. 13, 2002, about Democrats who did not want to vote until after the U.N. Security Council acted, Bush said, 'If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people -- say, "Vote for me, and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act." ' . . .

"Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary at the time, said Daschle had pressed Bush over the summer to bring the matter to Congress but for consultation, not necessarily a vote. Bush decided to seek a vote authorizing force, Fleischer said. 'It was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress,' he said. 'I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong.'"

Confronted on Fox News Sunday by fellow guest Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Rove amazingly stuck to his story. ThinkProgress has the video. Zachary Goldfarb writes in today's Washington Post that Rove said Fleischer was "not aware of and was not privileged" to all the information he needed to make the most accurate assessment.

Dick Polman blogs for the Philadelphia Inquirer that, "befitting his status as the Ministry of Truth's spinner emeritus, [Rove] persists in trying to flush history down the memory hole. In true Orwellian fashion, he has sought in recent days to rewrite the factual reality of autumn 2002, when (as those of us with cognitive empirical skills will certainly recall) the Bush team was on the march to war in Iraq and goading the Democratic Senate to get with the program as congressional elections loomed. . . .

"Actually, it's worse than that. Whereas on PBS he claimed that the Bush team hadn't tried to politicize national security in the '02 elections, he seems to have forgotten his own declaration -- in a winter '02 speech - that the Bush team would surely politicize national security in the '02 elections. Referring to the war on terror, he said on Jan. 18, 2002: 'We can also go to the country on this issue because (voters) trust the Republican party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America.'"

Sean Carman blogs for 236.com about "other things Karl Rove just remembered" including: "Watergate was invented by the liberal media as retaliation for the great success of Nixon's law and order presidency."

Memo to Obama

Rove himself, in a Financial Times op-ed, finds a new way of attacking Hillary Clinton: Ostensibly giving Barack Obama advice on how to attack Hillary Clinton.

Obama, Rove writes, should "focus on the fact that many Democrats have real doubts about Hillary. They worry she cannot win, will be a drag on the ticket and that if she got to the White House it would be a disaster."

Abramoff Watch

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "The Bush administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"The administration agreed last year to produce all responsive records about the visits 'without redactions or claims of exemption,' according to a court order.