The intrepid reporter Murray Waas has an exclusive: Bob Novak has cooperated with Valerie Plame investigators and they may not believe him:

Also of interest to investigators have been a series of telephone contacts between Novak and Rove, and other White House officials, in the days just after press reports first disclosed the existence of a federal criminal investigation as to who leaked Plame's identity. Investigators have been concerned that Novak and his sources might have conceived or co-ordinated a cover story to disguise the nature of their conversations. That concern was a reason-- although only one of many-- that led prosecutors to press for the testimony of Cooper and Miller, sources said.

Lending credence to those suspicions was that a U.S. government official questioned by investigators said Novak specifically asked him whether Plame had some covert status with the CIA. The official told investigators that Novak appeared uncertain whether she was undercover or not. That account, on one hand, might lend credence to the claims by Rove and other Bush administration officials that they did not know Plame was a covert CIA officer. Conversely, however, the fact that Novak asked the question in the first place appeared to indicate that he might have indeed been told Plame was a covert operative, and was seeking confirmation of that fact.

Byron York at NRO interviewed Robert Luskin, lawyer for Karl Rove today. He says Matthew Cooper "burned" Rove.

"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."

Here's more:

According to Luskin, Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling. According to Luskin, the fact that Rove did not call Cooper; that the original purpose of the call, as Cooper told Rove, was welfare reform; that only after Cooper brought the WMD issue up did Rove discuss Wilson — all are "indications that this was not a calculated effort by the White House to get this story out."

Fox News' Rita Cosby has jumped ship, to MSNBC where she'll be getting her own nightly show. Good move for MSNBC, Rita is a top notch reporter and interviewer. [Via Huffington Post.]

Now that we know Matt Cooper's sources were Lewis Libby and Karl Rove, the question that needs answering is: Where did Karl Rove get the information. The AP reports today,

[Rove lawyer Robert] Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson's wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

Was it through attending meetings of the White House Iraq Group with Lewis Libby? I hate to sound like a broken record, but I keep returning to these four articles:

Scott McClellan in today's press conference finally addressed Karl Rove and the leak controversy:

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence," McClellan said.

Say hello to the new blog, Fire Him Now. Let the frog march begin.

Update: Check out Rove's Pink Slip - also a welcome advertiser on TalkLeft.

Rep. Louise Slaughter writes:

It is time to hold the President accountable. He made a promise to the American people that he'd fire whoever leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. Now that we know the leaker was, at least in part, Karl Rove; it is time for the President to keep his word.

Putting the life of an undercover CIA agent and our national security in jeopardy cannot be tolerated. Karl Rove clearly deserves his pink slip, and we¹re going to give it to him.

The Democrats met with Bush today and suggested a few Hispanic judges as Supreme Court nominees. One of them is 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Edward Prado, whom I have often said would make the best choice.

Top Senate Democrats floated the names of potential candidates for the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a meeting with President Bush, describing them as the type of nominee who could avoid a fierce confirmation battle.

Several officials familiar with the discussion said Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Ed Prado of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, both of whom are Hispanic, were among the names mentioned as Bush met with key lawmakers from both parties to discuss the first high court vacancy in 11 years.

Draft Prado.

Thanks to an astute reader who found these quotes on how the Government learned Judith Miller had information on Valerie Plame:

• "Fitzgerald determined which reporters were talking to government officials during that period by reviewing government phone logs."
  Source: The Washington Post, July 7, 2005, p. A13. This sentence appears in the print edition but not the online version.
  

  

• "Investigators studied government telephone records to learn which reporters had spoken to officials in the Bush administration. Among them were Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper."
  Source (interestingly): Voice of America

by TChris

Reversing decisions of a trial court and the state court of appeals, the Wisconsin Supreme Court today ordered a new trial for Ralph Armstrong, convicted of the 1980 rape and murder of Charise Kamps. While the prosecution clung to its theory that Armstrong was the rapist, it had difficulty explaining new DNA tests that excluded Armstrong as the source of the semen recovered from Kamps. It turned out that the semen belonged to Kamps' boyfriend.

The prosecution nonetheless argued that "head hairs found on a bathrobe belt draped over Kamps' mutilated body ... were similar to Armstrong's" hair, and hey, superficial similarity should be good enough to sustain a murder conviction, right? Wrong. New DNA tests revealed that the hairs didn't come from Armstrong.

The prosecution's shakey case was always controversial, given the decision police made to "reconstruct" events by hypnotizing a witness, and the witness' subsequent flip-flopping testimony.

Atrios picks up on a question over at Romanesko: If Judith Miller never wrote about the Valerie Plame leak, how did the Government know she had information about it?

According to her lawyer Floyd Abrams, they've assumed it's because one of the white house officials told the grand jury he had talked to her about it.

Asked why prosecutors sought Miller's testimony when she never wrote a story about Plame, Times attorney Floyd Abrams said, "We don't know, but most likely somebody testified to the grand jury that he or she had spoken to Judy."

Who would it be? Most likely, in my opinion, Lewis Libby. Miller has said that even though her source gave a general waiver, she can't be sure it was not coerced and therefore wouldn't credit it. Also, the subpoenas she received only concerned communications with a single, identified person. From the DC Court of Appeals decision (pdf):

In the meantime, on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”

See also, here and here.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Sunday evening, the LAPD SWAT team encountered a man with a gun who was allegedly using his 19 month old child as a human shield. According to the LAPD spokesman, the gunman fired on the officers and they fired back killing both the gunman and the child. CNN.com carried video of the story since yesterday along with its story here.

Bratton said the fatal shooting was only the second time a hostage had been killed since the department formed its SWAT team in 1967. In that time, SWAT officers have responded to 3,800 calls involving hostages or people barricaded inside buildings.

It was the second time in nine months that Los Angeles officers have fired on an assailant holding a hostage. In November, police shot a man who held a pregnant woman by the neck outside the Mexican Consulate. Officers pulled the woman away unharmed and the man later died.

A radical right religious group, American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) sent out this e-mail today asking people to sign a petition opposing a consensus candidate:

...it is for moments like this that the ACLJ exists ... to help you make your voice heard - opposing the views of left-wing organizations like the ACLU and People For the American Way. To protect men and women of faith in America. To present your views in a manner that will have a lasting impact for you and your family.

So today, we invite you to join us in our nationwide campaign to encourage President Bush as he makes this most important decision in the days to come ... and to ask him to stand his ground ... by signing our Petition to the President for NO CONSENSUS.