Now back to Rove… Top Aides Reportedly Set Sights on Wilson:

Top aides to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were intensely focused on discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV in the days after he wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times suggesting the administration manipulated intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq, federal investigators have been told.

Prosecutors investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, and Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson’s credibility, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Although lower-level White House staffers typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told.

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove’s interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: “He’s a Democrat.”

Right on cue to knock the Rove controversy out of the news, Bush makes his choice for the Supreme Court known.

CNN.com – Roberts’ nomination mobilizes advocacy groups – Jul 20, 2005:

..If confirmed by the Senate, the conservative Roberts would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who gained a reputation as a moderate swing voter in her 24 terms on the nation’s highest court.

The conservative group Progress for America rallied in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington on Tuesday night, carrying signs reading “Confirm.”

A liberal advocacy group, People for the American Way, sent out 400,000 e-mails to supporters after the announcement, according to the group’s president, Ralph Neas.

…A prominent liberal advocacy group — NARAL Pro-Choice America — opposed Roberts’ second nomination to the appeals court, saying he has worked to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that struck down state laws outlawing abortion.

Arguing a case for the first Bush administration in 1990 when he was deputy solicitor general, Roberts said Roe v. Wade “was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”

In his 2003 confirmation hearing, however, he told senators he was acting as an advocate for his client, rather than presenting his own positions.

He told senators Roe was “the settled law of the land” and said “there’s nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent.”

Roberts, a native of Buffalo, New York, who now lives in Maryland, is married and has two children. He is a Roman Catholic.

I hear, more and more, mainstream rightwing news organizations attacking blogs on the left, and indeed blogs in general. A whole bunch of generalizations that could apply to the left or the right. They are attempting to frame the word “blog” the way they framed the word “liberal”. Consider this a warning.

The Electoral-Based Community:

…Democratic party seems to be under the impression that bloggers are an enormous, important constituency–and that it must go to whatever lengths necessary to win the hearts and minds of this virtual community.

…This seems like a major miscalculation, because the politics of the left-wing blogs are far out of the American mainstream. Where most of the 120 million Americans who voted in the last election bear a benign indifference to political matters, the left half of the blogosphere seethes with hatred for George W. Bush and his supporters. What’s more, the blogs take numerous positions that would strike all but the most passionate Democratic partisans as patently preposterous. For example, several of the left-wing blogs recently ran an advertisement that referred to West Virginia Senator and former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd as an “American Hero.”

Also, the level of discourse on the Daily Kos and other prominent liberal blogs is not something that would be attractive to the majority of the American public. The writings are often obscene and usually relentlessly hostile and negative. Crude personal attacks, whether aimed at right-wing bloggers or politicians, are the order of the day.