Time magazine reporter, Matt Cooper on “Meet the Press,” July 17, 2004 Now Time magazine’s Matt Cooper is outing Karl Rove as his source on the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. In an article in the most recent issue of Time, “What I Told The Grand Jury,” Matt Cooper reports the following: “So did Rove leak Plame’s name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘WMD’? Yes”…

Partisan hacks on the left would love to see Karl Rove, the “architect” of President Bush’s 2004 electoral triumph, take the fall for outing Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative. The investigation into who leaked what and when to which reporter has already landed The New York Time‘s Judith Miller in jail for not giving up her source. Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper also would have been jailed had not Karl Rove given him permission to name him as his source. Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff reports today on the e-mails that reveal the conversations that took place between Rove and Cooper. Isikoff’s conclusion is this: “Nothing in the Cooper e-mail…

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at his swearing-in ceremony at the Justice Department in February. -Doug Mills/The New York Times The New York Times and the Washington Post report this morning that conservatives are rallying against the possible appointment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. This is good news, and no doubt the president will get the message.

Retiring Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor If you thought the 2004 presidential campaign was a difficult, bitter, acrimonious, blood-earnest fight to finish, you have not seen anything yet. The Bush-Kerry battle royal was a battle royal because of their sharp ideological differences with respect to the culture war. In this war, the most prized territory to occupy is the Supreme Court, and now that territory is up for grabs. Now that Sandra Day O’Connor has announced her resignation, we are about to witness a fight that will make the 2004 presidential campaign look like ring-around-the-rosy. As Tom Goldstein said today after O’Connor’s announcement, “Now the gloves are entirely off.…

Peggy Noonan offers a biting critique of the hubris of Washington politicians in her weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. The title pretty much says it all: “Conceit of Government: Why are our politicians so full of themselves?” One of the great things about this essay is that she is an equal opportunity criticizer—that is, she directs her censure at both sides of the aisle. What she writes is harsh, but I think it is sorely needed. There seem to be less and less statesmen in Washington and more and more men who like to state their own virtue.