The White House may not be talking but Karl Rove’s attorney gave an interview today to Byron York at the National Review Online. Luskin says Time Magazine reporter “burned” his client after he revealed to Cooper the identity of a secret CIA agent.

So how did Cooper burn Karl Rove? Rove feels betrayed by Cooper because the reporter had the temerity to write the story differently from the way Rove told it to him. In other words, Rove expected Cooper to be his stenographer, and because Cooper did his job and tracked down the true facts, Rove felt “burned.”

Luskin compared the contents of a July 11, 2003, internal Time e-mail written by Cooper with the wording of a story Cooper co-wrote a few days later. “By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,” Luskin said of Cooper. “If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.”

First the e-mail. According to a report in Newsweek, Cooper’s e-mail to Time Washington bureau chief Michael Duffy said, “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation…” Cooper said that Rove had warned him away from getting “too far out on Wilson,” and then passed on Rove’s statement that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor CIA Director George Tenet had picked Wilson for the trip; “it was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip.” Finally — all of this is according to the Newsweek report — Cooper’s e-mail said that “not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly that there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger…”

So having heard this, Cooper was supposed to simply write up what Karl said, send it to his editor and call it a day. That’s probably what Judy Miller would have done.

[…]

It has been a long strange trip for Donna Frye, the Democrat who could become San Diego’s next mayor in a special election on July 26.

She is a former surf shop owner who became a political activist when her husband, surfing legend Skip Frye, and his friends mysteriously started becoming ill. They quickly began to suspect that the illnesses were caused by pollution dumped into the ocean by businesses onshore.

When she ran for city council, political experts wrote her off as a “surfer chick” – but she won.

Last year, she ran for mayor as a write-in candidate, launching her campaign less than five weeks before election day, and nearly beat Mayor Dick Murphy, a Republican. Now Murphy has resigned because of a scandal and Frye is running for his seat and, as the only Democrat in the race, appears to have the best shot at winning:

[…]

“There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”

— President George W. Bush, Sept. 30, 2003

“If anyone in this administration was involved in [leaking the CIA operative’s identity], they would no longer be in this administration… The president knows [Karl Rove] wasn’t involved… It’s simply not true.”

— President Bush’s spokesman Scott McClellan, Sept. 30, 2003

“The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration. I trust they will follow through on this pledge. If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security.”

— Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., July 11, 2005

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton gave a wide-ranging speech in Colorado on July 10, 2005, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival.

She said we should stay in Iraq until the Iraqis can run their own government, that America needs to get serious about weaning itself from dependence on oil by looking into alternative energy technologies, and that we are living in an age of discovery, citing the coming wave of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence,

None of that made headlines, however. Her speech made “news” because of this quote:

“I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Newman is in charge in Washington,” she joked, getting a warm laugh as she described President Bush’s attitude toward the tough issues of the day as, “What, me worry?”

What followed was a critique of the Bush presidency that was thoughtful, well-reasoned and, of course, true:

[…]

In a General Accounting Office report just released, the GAO found that the Department of Homeland Defense had not implemented a security program to protect its information systems and the sensitive information it gathers.

Indeed, from the litany of undones and incompletes the report lists, it would seem that one of the most important bulwarks in our country’s vaunted war on terrorism is subject to hacking from virtually any kid with an IBM and a grudge:

DHS has not fully implemented a comprehensive, departmentwide information security program to protect the information and information systems that support its operations and assets. It has developed and documented departmental policies and procedures that could provide a framework for implementing such a program; however, certain departmental components have not yet fully implemented key information security practices and controls. For example, risk assessments—needed to determine what controls are necessary and what level of resources should be expended on them—were incomplete. Elements required for information system security plans—which would provide a full understanding of existing and planned information security requirements—were missing. Testing and evaluation of security controls—which are needed to determine the effectiveness of information security policies and procedures—were incomplete or not performed. Elements required for remedial action plans— which would identify the resources needed to correct or mitigate known information security weaknesses—were missing, as were elements required for continuity of operations plans to restore critical systems in case of unexpected events.

Let’s see, that includes the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Technology, or US-VISIT, which is supposed to identify and stop terrorists at our borders; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE; the Transportation Security Administration — you know, the guys with the wands at the airport; and Emergency Preparedness and Response.

Sounds like the department should be renamed Homeland INSECURITY.
[…]