Poor Pitiful Karl

Josh Marshall nails it.

Jonah Goldberg has this one line post up at The Corner.

So where does Karl Rove report to get his reputation back?

It occurs to me that this may be meant in jest. Jonah is not without a sense of humor. But I'll assume for the sake of discussion that he's being serious.

As Andrew Sullivan aptly quips, maybe Rove can go look for it in South Carolina. More to the point, let's not forget the salient facts here. The question going back three years ago now is whether Karl Rove knowingly participated in leaking the identity of a covert CIA operative for the purpose of discrediting a political opponent who was revealing information about the White House's use of intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War.

That was the issue. From the beginning, Rove, through Scott McClellan, denied that he did any of that. There weren't even any clever circumlocutions. He just lied. From admissions from Rove, filings in the Libby case, and uncontradicted reportage, we know as clearly as we ever can that Rove did do each of those things.

So he did do what he was suspected of and he did lie about it.

Now, I'm happy to take Patrick Fitzgerald's word for it, his evaluation of the evidence, that there's not enough evidence to indict Rove on any criminal charge. As Rove's defenders have long made clear, the underlying statute dealing with revealing the identities of covert operatives is very hard to bring a charge with. Same goes for making false statements or perjury. Hard to prove and you need lots of evidence as to intent and so forth.

In fact, not only am I happy to take Fitzgerald's word for it, if this is in fact the case, good for Fitzgerald. A prosecutor's role is not to punish people for malicious acts. It is to ascertain whether they've committed specific criminal acts and determine whether there is sufficient evidence to sustain a charge.

But none of this changes the fact, for which there is abundant evidence, even admissions from Rove himself, that he did the malicious act. And he lied about doing it. Indeed, on top of that, President Bush welched on his promise to can anyone who was involved.

So, what reputation is it exactly that Rove wants back? I think this development leaves Rove's reputation quite intact.

Karl Rove will be enshrined in the pantheon of the right wing's vast Monument to Victimhood, next to the poor maligned Christians who are such martyrs because only 80% of the country identifies themselves as nominally Christian, or maybe next to the beleaguered traditional family values heterosexuals whose marriages are threatened every time two boys hold hands.

All he did was leak classified information to a reporter in order to exact political revenge against someone who had the temerity to embarrass the president. And for that he gets to keep his taxpayer-funded White House job as the political adviser, and he gets to keep his security clearance.

Oh, the shame, the shame.