Paging Karl Rove: U.S. District Judge Sides With Congress

Word has just come down the wire that a U.S. District Judge, John Bates, has sided with with Congress in its effort to get Bush administration aides to appear before congressional committees.

Just yesterday, Karl Rove, who has thus far avoided testifying by all manner of clever schemes, from citing the White House's desire to stand up for the executive branch to being conveniently out of the country, dismissed the Judiciary Committee's contempt recommendation as "ludicrous." Today, he continues his inexorable slide toward actually having to show up on Congress' doorstep.

Couple things to consider here. First, in the immediate moments after the news report went out on the web, initial reactions on the blogs, particularly among the more cynical liberals out there in the blogosphere, was to wonder when the judge who ruled on this would be smeared, tarnished, destroyed, sent to Gitmo, etc. But that will be very difficult for the Bush administration to do, as John Bates was appointed to his office by, yes, the Bush administration. In fact, Bates is the very same judge who tossed out Valerie Plame's lawsuit against Dick Cheney -- hardly a liberal partisan, then.

The second thing to remember in this time of Rovian woe: There's going to be a lot of talk about "Bush's Brain" in the coming days, a lot of talk about the man's brilliant political mind. I'd like everyone to remember the current position of the Republican Party (read: slightly more popular than cancer.), and recall that Rove's tactics of firing up the right-wing base while ignoring moderates has played a large part in the GOP's current sad state. Remember that, if you remember nothing else about the man: Karl Rove is, in the long-run, a colossal failure. His bad run in politics could only end this way.