Bush League

According to the New York Daily News, President Bush long ago reprimanded Karl Rove for his involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame:

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.

As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble.

Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official said he did not know, then added: "I'm very concerned it could go very, very badly."

"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

Well, we can all agree that Turd Blossom certainly handled this in a Bush League way: Over-the-top, below-the-belt, and crude-as-hell. It's par for the course from a group that insinuated that John McCain had an out-of-wedlock baby -- and a black one, too! -- and then had the cojones to mock John Kerry's military service and play up Bush's record of keeping Texas safe from imminent Viet Cong air strikes. Balls as big as church bells, these folks have.

What's more surprising here is the suggestion that Bush knew Rove was involved from the beginning and did nothing about it, except give him one of his patented pouty scowls. Apparently, all those comments to the press -- about (a) not knowing who was involved and (b) wanting to fire whoever it was -- were just more administration bullshit.

Anyone surprised?