Update: 9/29 at 1pm MT:

The White House has denied Karl Rove was behind the leak.

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New reaction to the announcement of a Justice Department probe of the intelligence leak surrounding Joseph Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame:

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said a Justice Department probe would be inadequate. "This is too much for (Attorney General) John Ashcroft," he said. "It strikes right at the heart of our ability to gather intelligence."

Contacted by phone, Wilson said Sunday he thinks it's safe to assume that the CIA would not refer the matter to the Justice Department unless it thought a crime might have been committed. He said if White House officials were to blame, their motives were easy to decipher.

"It's pretty clear to me that, knowing that they could not shut me up because I had already told my story, the purpose for doing this was to intimidate others and keep others from stepping forward," Wilson said.

Wesley Clark told a college audience in New Hampshire Friday that he'd relieve Rumsfeld of his command. Others (Dean, Kerry) have called on Rumsfeld to resign, but this is the first we've seen that a major candidate would give Rumsfeld the boot.

Gen. Wesley Clark, told a New Hampshire audience Friday night he had only fired one person in his life. On Saturday he said he wanted to fire a second person: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

When asked at a house party on the Seacoast about what he would do in Iraq if elected president today, he was met with applause when he said, "First of all I would change the Secretary of Defense. Then I would go to the commanders of the ground and go to Iraq myself personally and I would develop an exit strategy that gives us a success and lets us downsize our commitment there."

Besides Rumsfeld, Clark also criticized Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice for her views of the world and then U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, also a Republican, for his vote on a measure involving Kosovo.

In Washington Saturday, Clark said Americans are embarrassed by Bush.

Speaking after an event in Washington at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual conference, Clark, 58, told reporters that the American people are "really embarrassed" by the administration's leadership.

Back in July, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called upon FBI Director Mueller to investigate the source of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The press release on his Senate website says:

News reports suggest that Administration could have leaked the identity of a CIA agent to discredit a critic of the President and intimidate others from speaking out

US Senator Charles Schumer today asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to open an investigation into reports that two senior members of the Bush Administration illegally disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative. According to Section 421a of the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act, the unauthorized identification of a CIA operative is a criminal act punishable by up to ten years in federal prison.

"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."

Here is the text of the letter Schumer sent to Mueller. Does anyone know what, if anything, Mueller or the FBI did in response? We suspect the answer is "nothing," but we'll be pleased to learn we are wrong.

Six telephone calls to journalists, all of whom must have told their editors, and possibly colleagues....this should hardly be the mystery of the year. We won't be surprised if by tomorrow morning, some enterprising journalist has uncovered it.

Update: A CNN/USA Today poll released today shows the recall is likely to succeed and Arnold is the most popular replacement candidate.

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Sunday's Los Angeles Times editorial Why the Recall Is Wrong is worth reading -- it devotes a section to each of the major candidates, and explains why each falls short of deserving the job of Governor. In fact, the Times says, every one of them would be worse than Davis.

The Times takes the same position as we have taken for months now: No endorsement of a replacement candidate.

Some snippets:

It looks pretty clear that the U.S. will be flying solo in rebuilding Iraq. The United Nations wants no part. Neither does the Iraqi Governing Council.

"They're on their own," a U.N. official said. "It's just between them and the American taxpayer."

We'd say its going to be between the taxpayers and their voting booths come November, 2004.

The Washington Post reports that a "senior administration official" has confirmed that "two top White House officials" called at least six journalists and diclosed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

...."Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

This is major because federal law prohibits the intentional disclosure of an operative's identity.

So, who could the two top officials be? Daily Kos thinks one is Ari Fleischer and the other may be Karl Rove. We haven't a clue, so stay tuned.

Update: Here is the law at issue: The Intelligence Protection Act (50 U.S.C. Sec. 421). Different sections of the act provide for penalties ranging from three years to ten years.

Update: Atrios on the import of the budding scandal:

TalkLeft had its one millionth unique visitor early this morning. We began stat counting on June 22, 2002. There have been 1,611,409 page views in that time.

Unique visitors are not the same as hits. For example, for the month of September, 2003, we've had 89, 111 unique visitors who have made 204,720 visits and viewed 431,961 pages. Hits just for September, 2003 so far number 865, 506.

The blogs and internet news sites referring us the most visitors for the month of September are Atrios, Warblogs.cc, Instapundit, Daily Kos, Buzzflash and Cursor. Thanks, guys!

According to Blogstreet, today we are the 11th most influential blog and the 66th most popular blog.

Most importantly, thanks to all of you who have read and supported this site with words of encouragement, links and donations. Tommorrow is our (the author's) birthday so we feel like hitting one million today is an extra present.

One of our stat programs gave these meanings to the various terms:

If you have ever wondered to what extent Bush and the Justice Department would go to obtain expanded powers in the name of the terror war, the answer is becoming very clear. The Administration is becoming a master at using the media to condition us to their next power grab.

Take Sunday's New York Times, for example. Two journalists, Eric Lichtblau and Don Van Natta, Jr., write two separate articles, on related but different subjects. Neither takes note of the topic in the other's article. Yet the two articles are inextricably linked and clearly demonstrate where Bush & Co. is headed.

A few hours ago we wrote about Lichtblau's article, U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling. It's about how the Justice Department is using the Patriot Act in non-terror cases, ranging from:

....suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders... Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals — terrorists or otherwise.

The focus of the article is whether using the Patriot Act in non-terror criminal investigations....for garden-variety crimes, if you will....is legal or just or even in sync with what Congress intended when it passed the Act. There is no mention of terrorist's involvement in routine crimes in an effort to hide their money to finance more terrorism.

Now we move to the Sunday Times Week in Review section and Van Natta Jr.'s article, Terrorists Blaze a New Money Trail. The article is about how terrorists are not using banks or other institutions to launder money. Instead, the article claims, they've decided to hide money by going into the petty crime business which generates non-traceable cash. There is no mention of the Patriot Act or other terror laws being used to catch such activity.

The father of a U.S. soldier slain in Iraq tells President Bush, 'You lied, they died'.

Fernando Suarez, whose 20-year-old son, Jesus, was one of the first fatalities, said: "My son died because Bush lied."

Mr Suarez, from Escondido, California, speaking at a press conference to publicise tomorrow's anti-war demonstrations in eight US cities, said that about 1,300 parents of troops stationed in Iraq were involved in a movement against the oc cupation. "It is time for these troops to come home," said Mr Suarez. "Neither my wife nor my family want more children to die in this illegal war. We are no less patriotic for wanting peace. Bush wants $87bn [£52m] for this war, but what does he give us for our schools?" he asked.

In another expression of protest against Bush and his Administration, two fathers of slain soldiers took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.

"Donald Rumsfeld Betrayed My Sons and Our Nation. It's Time For Him to Go," said the headline of the ad, which was signed by Larry Syverson from Richmond, Virginia. The ad was paid for by MoveOn.org, an internet-based organisation.

It is estimated that 1,300 parents of troops sent to Iraq have joined an opposition movement.

In May, 2003, the House Judiciary Committee released a report from the Justice Department that acknowledged that the Patriot Act was being used for non-terror crimes. But it gave scant information about the details. The New York Times follows up:

The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said.

Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals — terrorists or otherwise. But critics of the administration's antiterrorism tactics assert that such use of the law is evidence the administration has sold the American public a false bill of goods, using terrorism as a guise to pursue a broader law enforcement agenda.

The Justice Department has not denied it is using the Patriot Act in routine criminal investigations:

Drug WarRant has the uplifting story of a former cop who is about to finish a 3,100 mile horse ride across the country to promote the legalization of marijuana. [news article is here]

On the other hand, this post , about a phyisican in South Carolina who is a now a convicted felon facing 100 years in prison for prescribing opiates as pain medication to her patients with chronic, severe pain, is very depressing.

Dr. Deborah Bordeaux used to be a pain management specialist. Now she's a convicted felon facing a 100-year prison sentence as a drug dealer. Bordeaux was arrested when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and South Carolina law enforcement raided the Myrtle Beach clinic where she once prescribed opioids to severely ill patients... And there are more, a growing number of physicians indicted and sometimes convicted of being drug traffickers but who say they were only doing what was best for patients.

In one of the most expensive settlements in its history, the City of Philadelphia bites the bullet and coughs up $1.9 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit in the "Lex Street Massacre."

Jermel Lewis, Quiante Perrin, Hezekiah Thomas and Sacon Youk - innocent men jailed 18 months awaiting a death-penalty trial - will each receive about $475,000, said Lewis' attorney, David Rudovsky. The amount includes lawyers' fees, which were not disclosed.

....Seven people were killed on Dec. 28, 2000, in a West Philadelphia crack house. It was the deadliest mass murder in the city's modern history. Two weeks later, police arrested the four West Philadelphia men, and prosecutors aggressively pursued the case - even in the face of emerging evidence that others may have committed the murders.

On the eve of the death-penalty trial last year, prosecutors were forced to drop all charges. They later charged four others with the slayings.