WHAT THE BUSH FAMILY WROUGHT UPON AMERICA
The following is only a partial list of Karl Rove's dirty tricks under the sponsorship of the Bush's:

1970 - In the autumn election season Rove turned up at the Chicago campaign headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer in Illinois. No one paid the newcomer much attention when he arrived, or when he left soon afterwards. Nor did anyone in the office make the connection between the mystery volunteer and 1,000 invitations on campaign stationery that began circulating in Chicago's red-light district and soup kitchens, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" for all-comers at Dixon's headquarters.

1971 - Drops out, University of Utah.

1973 - Hits the road for the GOP to train grassroots troops in the art of dirty tricks.

1977 - Rove was sent to Texas, in theory to run a political action committee, but according to one Texan political consultant who knew him at the time, "It was really to baby-sit Bush back when Bush was drinking".

1980 - First person hired by the George HW Bush presidential campaign.

1981 - Starts political consulting firm Karl Rove & Co.

1986 - The Texas governor's race was a  contest between Rove's Republican client, Bill Clements, and the Democratic incumbent, Mark White. It was neck and neck, when Rove announced he had found an electronic listening device in his office, and cried foul. The furore swung the election to Clements and to this day Texan Democrats are convinced Rove concocted the whole episode.

1991 - Testifying under oath before the Texas Senate for an appointment to the Texas State University Board of Regents, Karl Rove prefigures Bill Clinton:
SEN GLASGOW: How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg Rampton?
ROVE: Ah, senator, it depends -- would you define "know" for me?

1993 - John Ashcroft campaign pays Karl Rove & Co. over $300,000 to help with his senate race. New York Times.

1994 - Democrat, Anne Richards, occupied the Texas governor's mansion but Rove was promoting another Republican candidate, George W Bush. Governor Richards' advisers laughed openly at the challenge, but they were in for a shock. "We did not believe that Bush would be as disciplined as he was. He was extremely disciplined," recalls George Shipley, who was then Richards' campaign adviser. "Karl gave him 10 index cards and said, 'This is what you are going to say. Don't confuse yourself with the issues.' It's the model for the presidency."

In its last days, the 1994 campaign also turned nasty. Texan voters began receiving calls from "pollsters" asking questions such as: "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if you knew her staff is dominated by lesbians?" In the business, it is called "push-polling" and Shipley has no doubt who was behind it."Rove has used this kind of dirty tricks in every campaign he's ever run."

1996 - Rove's dirty tricks in Alabama bear fruit. According to The Atlantic Monthly, Rove allegedly arranges for the printing of anonymous fliers viciously attacking Harold See, his own candidate for a state Supreme Court seat. The ploy makes See's opponent look bad, and See wins the race.

1999 - The George W Bush campaign effort pays Karl Rove & Co. $2.5M for July through December. According to Rove, "About 30 percent of that is postage."

1999 - Sells Karl Rove & Co..

2000 - Signs a campaign disclosure form, but neglects to mention he is still President of Karl Rove & Co.

2000 - George W Bush and his wife Laura are photographed with Karl Rove, during a campaign stop at the Florida Strawberry Festival.

Now Rove is masterminding the Bush administration's press strategy, but it's far more than a press strategy. It's the central strategy for how the public understands what George W. Bush is doing to and for America. In an important sense, it is the Bush presidency. Rove's methodology largely explains why Bush's popularity remains strong despite the unremittingly awful economy (mounting job losses, weak profits and a three-year stock-market slide) and despite the shambles of the administration's foreign policy (Osama bin Laden still at large, al-Qaeda as dangerous as ever, North Korea more menacing than ever, Israelis and Palestinians as far away from the bargaining table as ever, anti-Americanism rising across the globe and a pending war in Iraq lacking clear justification).

A midterm USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll had Bush's job approval rating falling to 58 percent, dropping below 60 percent for the first time since the September 11 attacks. Under these circumstances, any other president would be in danger of losing his job. But Rove has convinced the press, and therefore the American public, that this presidency is nearly invincible. He has done it with an ingenious blend of chicanery and obfuscation, aided by the Democrats' utter incapability of devising a coherent message in response.

Use whatever excuse is available at the time to justify the administration's long-term ideological agenda.
Rove is adept at framing Bush's goals as responses to immediate problems, and orchestrating Republican and right-wing policy experts to give the policies enough patina of credibility to satisfy the media. A lousy economy? We need to eliminate taxes on dividends. Never mind that this supposed remedy has nothing to do with stimulating the economy; it's a "jobs and growth plan for the long term," whatever that means. The continuing threat of terrorism? We need to invade Iraq. Forget that Saddam Hussein has for years been at odds with al-Qaeda or that North Korea is a more potent and dangerous supplier of nuclear components; we must eliminate Hussein's capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction before he uses them.  (continued 3rd column)

Keep everything under wraps.
The only other administration in living memory as secretive as this one was -- no surprise -- Richard Nixon's. Whether it's Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, John Ashcroft's gag orders, the White House's anti-abortion strategy, its plan for gutting environmental protections and regulations, or its assault on civil liberties under the guise of homeland security, the public knows almost nothing about what's actually occurring. Leaks are rare. Information is parceled out carefully. Reporters who tell the story the way Rove would like it told (Bob Woodward) get special access. All others are kept in the dark.

Cut embarrassing players loose and pretend they're exceptions.
Trent Lott was dead meat in the White House as soon as the press figured out that he meant what he said. Rove carefully let it be known that the administration supported Bill Frist for Senate majority leader. Rove also kept the attention focused on Lott and off the administration (Ashcroft's racist history as Missouri's attorney general, the administration's pending position on the Supreme Court case about affirmative action at the University of Michigan, Judge Charles Pickering's noisome record on civil rights and so on). Likewise, after Harvey Pitt dug himself into a hole at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Rove abruptly cut off his lifeline and pretended the White House had wanted vigorous regulation all along.

Karl Rove is calling the shots. Richard Nixon would be proud. The rest of us should be appalled. - 02/03/2003,  ROBERT B. REICH

KARL ROVE IS BAD COMPANY
He is a very dangerous dirty trickster who works in the White House, who by virtue of his proximity to George Bush, believes he is insulated from prosecution no matter how heinous, treasonous, or treacherous the crime! What is in the public domain about Rove's misconduct and high crimes while working in the White House is the tip of the ice berg. Rove, along with Bush, has systematically undermined our nations laws, sacrificed the lives of American soldiers, and created a propaganda machine intent on brainwashing Americans into believing that every crime committed by the Bush administration is not a crime, but a necessity.  What we are seeing is very new and very dangerous. No administration has attempted to manipulate the facts and information and to manipulate the news media to distort the facts as what we are seeing in this administration.  - JUDITH HANEY

WHITE HOUSE CONSPIRACY & COVERUP IN PLAME CASE
According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed George Bush and Dick Cheney, and called Karl Rove to testify before the grand jury.
"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

THE BIG CON
The ridiculous suggestion by reporters, and the news outfits that pay them, that they are protected from strict compliance with state and federal court orders is reckless, arrogant, and blatantly dishonest. Reporters who obstruct justice should go to jail. Our nation's system of due process takes precedence over reporters desire to protect a dirty trickster like Karl Rove. 
The e-mails surrendered this week to a special prosecutor by Time Inc., show that one of reporter Matt Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove. - JUDITH HANEY

KARL ROVE  
Lawrence O'Donnell on Rove

BACKGROUND
On July 14, 2003, the name of Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was exposed by columnist Robert Novak as a CIA covert operative, writing:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

According to the September 27, 2003 edition of JustOneMinute (JOM), on July 16, 2003, David Corn "started this scandal" when he published the piece, A White House Smear in The Nation, wherein:

"This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent."

Corn "had predicted that the investigation would die in the CIA - George J. Tenet would stay loyal to George W. Bush and quash this." JOM adds: "Evidently not. One guess - Mr. Tenet, pondering Bush's declining poll numbers and faced with in-house annoyance, decided to do the right thing. One presumes that, with Congress back in town, Mr. Tenet checked with his supporters on both sides of the aisle before proceeding."

Both Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall have made recent comments on the matter, according to JOM.

On July 1, 2005, MSNBC Senior Political Analyst, Lawrence O'Donnell claimed that the leak came from Karl Rove.

WHITE HOUSE TREACHERY &  TREASON

George Bush calls Karl Rove "a close friend and confidant, and a man with good judgment." And Bush doesn't seem to mind that in 2003, in an act of political retribution and reckless indifference to protecting American lives and U.S. national security, Rove leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to a series of reporters. In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Robert Novak outed Plame in July, Rove called MSNBC's Chris Matthews and told him that Plame was "fair game" because her husband spoke out against the Bush administration's war in Iraq. A coward to the end, Rove is denying any involvement in the treacherous crime of high treason. - JUDITH HANEY