[Professor S]

Ok, here's what happened.

Karl Rove, Bush's key advisor, is being charged with leaking the name of a covert CIA agent who is now married to a former Clinton era ambassador. The leak came from an e-mail in response to an inquiry made by a Washington Post (I think it was the Post) journalist. In this e-mail Rove refers to the agent by last name. The journalist then outed the agent in a column (and how that isn't being investigated, I have NO idea).

There is a law that was put on the books in the early 80's that made it against the law and a treasonous offense to expose the names of covert agents for up to 5 years after they have left covert operations overseas.

Here are the facts:

1) Rove referred to the agent by last name, which may protect him as using last names is a common way of protecting anonymity.

2) At the time that Rove revealed the name, the agent had not been working overseas and when dates are looked at, she had not been overseas for for 6 years. In fact she was in the midst of being given a desk job.

3) Those that have written the law that Rove is accused of breaking have said that there is no evidence that the law was broken.

Now does any of this excuse what Rove did? Hell no, but he'll most likely get away with it. Rove exposed the name because he did not like her or her husband, who was a big supporter of Kerry in 2004 and openly hates the Bush administration. I think Rove should be fired and if Bush has the balls he should fire him. The one thing that I have always liked about Bush, beyond all his obvious faults, is his moral sensibility and strength to do what he said he would do and what he feels is "the right thing". In this situation he needs to stick by those strengths and get rid of Rove, whether or not the law was technically broken.