AUSTIN -- Now it's getting funnier and funnier. There is an elephant in the living room and we're sitting around having a conversation about whether there's an elephant in the living room.

"I think there's an elephant in the living room."

"Well, there's a lot of elephant poop around, but that doesn't prove there's an elephant in the living room."

The entire Republican Party is shocked (!) anyone would think that Karl Rove (!!) would leak a story to damage a political opponent. Oh, the horror. And Karl has always been such a sweet guy. Just to give you an idea, one time Rove was displeased with the job done by a political advance man and said, "We will f--- him. Do you hear me? We will f--- him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever f---ed him!" (From an article by Ron Suskind). And that was a guy who was on his side.

Attacking an opponent's wife is standard operating procedure for Rove. Have Republicans actually convinced themselves that he wouldn't do such a thing? People, sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

Greetings,

  Ya know,one of Saddam's favorite torture styles was using bolt cutters to lop off fingers. I wonder how many would be missing before you started begging to have your picture taken with the woman's panties on your head. Torture and humiliation mean different things dumbass. G Kirk ,Visalia,Ca.

It's perfectly clear that Rove - the person at the center of the slash and burn, smear and divide tactics that have come to characterize the Bush Administration - has to go. Despite carefully worded denials, it is now apparent that Karl Rove discussed the identity of an undercover CIA agent with a reporter. His clear aim was to discredit that agent's husband who had dared to challenge the Administration in the buildup to the war. There appears to be no limit to the lengths to which Rove - and this Administration - will go. But, there is a limit to the patience of the American people - and we have reached it. President Bush has a choice to make: Spend the months ahead focused on protecting Karl Rove's job security or spend them focused on protecting America's national security. We are asking the President and the White House to do what they promised. When the scandal first broke, here's what the President's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said: "If anyone in this Administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this Administration." (9/29/03, White House press briefing). Now we will find out if the Administration is good to its word.

Treason, no less. A leading Democrat, Rep. Henry Waxman, howls in Congress that "The intentional disclosure of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name -- then that jeopardizes national security."

Liberal columnists like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times join the Waxman chorus. But suppose one of the attractive Plame's covert missions, until outed by Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers planning to assassinate president Hugo Chavez, possibly masquerading as a journalist to secure an audience with the ebullient Venezuelan president. In an earlier incarnation Scheer would surely have been only too happy to jeopardize national security by exposing Plame's true employer.

Thirty-eight years ago, Scheer was one of the editors of Ramparts, and in February of 1967, that magazine ran an expose of covert CIA funding of the National Student Association, prompting furious denunciations that it had endangered national security, which, from the foreign policy establishment's point of view, it most certainly had.

Is Karl Rove following in the fatal arrogance of his father figure, Richard Nixon?

Like his equally twisted mentor, Rove is an amoral, mean-spirited gutter fighter. Both share the crime of treason.

With a brutally effective blitzkrieg of dirty tricks, racist manipulation, character assassination and public deceit, Karl Rove has spent a lifetime avenging Richard Nixon's lasting shame.

But Watergate was small potatoes. Nixon's truly impeachable crime was his illegal attack on Cambodia, which sent millions to the killing fields. For that he should have been imprisoned forever, forced to face a 24/7 audio-visual wall blaring the screams of his innocent victims.

Nixon's actual treason came in the 1968 election. On Hubert Humphrey's behalf, Lyndon Johnson was on the brink of signing an October peace deal with North and South Vietnam. A cessation of hostilities would have defeated Nixon.

But Nixon's covert minions intervened. In direct violation of American and international law, the Nixon campaign offered the south Vietnamese a "better deal" if they would reject LBJ's peace overtures.