Joe test

It took a couple years and dogged persistence by House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI) and his staff and colleagues, but Karl Rove finally spent a day under oath answering questions about his role in the U.S. Attorneys scandal:

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said.

Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning.

“He was deposed today,” Conyers said in an interview. “That’s all I can tell you.”

This was a long time coming. I wonder if Rove realizes what it means to be under oath?

Back in March of 2007, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff was reporting on Rove's central role in decisions surrounding U.S. Attorneys. Several U.S. Attorneys who were fired believed it happened because they wouldn't launch politically-based prosecutions. Rove was obsessed with pushing the prosecution of voter fraud -- even where none existed. We all know Rove like to play dirty and preventing people from voting was one of his favorite tricks. Interestingly, that the GOP's fixation with ACORN was at the core of at least one of the firings:

New disclosures in the U.S. attorney controversy have increased the pressure on White House aide Karl Rove. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's ex-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testified last week that "during the run-up to the midterm elections," the A.G. told him Rove had "complained" that David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, and two other federal prosecutors, were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud—a top GOP priority. It was shortly after that, Sampson said, that Iglesias got added to the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. (Iglesias told NEWSWEEK he had been repeatedly pushed by New Mexico GOP officials to prosecute workers for ACORN, an activist group that was registering voters in minority neighborhoods, but he found no cases worth bringing.) Justice was also forced to correct its earlier assertion that Rove did not play "any role" in replacing the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Sampson's e-mails showed he had described the replacement as "important to ... Karl."

How great would it be if Rove went to jail because of ACORN? That would be fitting.

Test of Koukla

Mom and dad, finally, took Koukla to get a haircut. Mom likes the dog's long hair, so they were delaying it. But being a warm Chicago summer, and the fact that Koukla was about to bump into poles, it seemed time. Well. The haircutter informed my mom that even though she was in fact brushing Koukla's hair on a regular basis, the hair was all matted at the base - i.e., one big knot. There was not way to trim it. So, a buzz cut was in order. The results are, well, disturbing.

Bobby Jindal's volcano erupted

The one he was criticizing the monitoring of? Just erupted. A friend writes:

Erupted 4 times overnight. Nobody’s dead. The FAA and the National Weather Service know where the ash cloud is (drifting away, not toward, Anchorage, thank God) and planes are being diverted around it. Gee, it’s a good thing people were monitoring.

The eruption was accurately predicted when the number of earthquakes on the mountain suddenly jumped to 40 to 50 per hour Sunday morning. So everybody had time to get ready.

Your tax dollars put to work by dedicated scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey who keep doing their jobs even when politicians decide to demean their work for a cheap sound bite.

If we were approaching this from a less scientific perspective, some might be tempted to appease the volcano gods by throwing somebody into the crater. Since he doesn’t like volcano monitoring, perhaps Bobby Jindal would volunteer?

Test: Congress Approval Soars, believe it or not

No more back seat for Helen Thomas

Karol Seabolt Goldstein