Shots in the Dark

We now know, of course, that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source—apparently his only source—for the Valerie Plame leak. It’s a safe bet that Rove also spoke to Robert Novak.

But in his original column, Novak said that “senior Administration officials” told him that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent. That means at least two. So who’s the other one? Or did Novak just add an “s” to make his sourcing look stronger?

Back in March, then-Morgan Stanley CEO Phil Purcell appointed a “co-president” named Stephen S. Crawford to help calm troubled waters. It didn’t work, and Purcell was ousted. As a result, Crawford’s leaving too. And guess what? Morgan Stanley is paying him a jaw-dropping $32 million severance package. For all of three months work.

The money-management firm has now dropped $150 million in payments to two departing executives, Purcell and Crawford, one of whom was a complete failure, one of whom showed up at work for about 90 days, earning something like $300,000 a day.

Why anyone would invest their money with Morgan Stanley after this, I don’t know. Because guess where your fees are going? Into the silk-lined pockets of incompetent and greedy fat-cats.

Morgan Stanley is a public company. Time to sell, baby.

Andrew Sullivan and I have been having a little back-and-forth about the nature of the Huffington Post. You can find his writings on his blog. Here’s my first. Below is my second.

<Andrew has graciously answered my earlier post criticizing his blanket description of the HuffPo as a site where nutty lefties advocate negotiating with al Qaeda. Okay, he admits, no one at THP actually called for negotiations with Osama bin Laden.

But he does link to three postings that, he says, give the impression that THP is filled with left-wing wackos: this, from Deepak Chopra; this, from Jann Wenner; and this, from Tom Hayden.

In fairness to Andrew, he’s got a point; at least two of these postings imply a moral equivalence between George Bush and the London bombers, or suggest that Bush has some responsibility for the bombing. And that’s a dangerous, wrong-headed road for liberals to go down.

Deepak Chopra’s ode to peace doesn’t bother me. We’d all like to believe that his vision of the world is plausible.

But it is disturbing to read Jann Wenner say this: “If the London bombings are the work of an Al Qaeda offshoot, then you have to fairly say, in the same way we condemn other’s terror, this is in part the result of Bush’s War on Iraq.”

I know what Wenner’s saying, but I can’t support it: Even if you think that Bush is responsible for the killing of innocent people in Iraq, that doesn’t justify others going out and doing the same. Anyway, 9/11 (etc.) happened before the war in Iraq, so al Qaeda clearly doesn’t need that particular rationale to commit acts of terror.

Finally, it’s infuriating to read this from Tom Hayden: “Imperial fantasies, as shattered as the London transit system. The G-8 leaders feign innocence while the innocents die.”

That’s not logic. That’s warmed-over ’60s rhetoric with more punning than thinking. To talk of the G-8 leaders “[feigning] innocence while innocents die” is the worst kind of bogus, lazy moral equivalence.

But as I said to Andrew, such rhetoric from the far left, while unhelpful, doesn’t bother me as much as the analogous points of view from the far right, because the far left doesn’t actually have any power, and the far right has a hot line to the White House. >>

Maybe you and the University of Texas at Austin would be a good match—UT’s in the market for a new president. According to the help wanted ad, “an application should include a letter describing relevant experience and interest in the position and a curriculum vitae. Submission of materials as an MS Word attachment is strongly encouraged.”

What do you think? Should I apply? Should you apply? Rumor has it that the education system in Texas could use some help….

Today’s Times picks up on a theme discussed here several days ago: Given his involvemenent in disclosing Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA agent to at least one reporter, how can Karl Rove remain an employee of the White House?

The newspaper adds something that I’d forgotten—that President Bush had, on two occasions, promised to fire anyone involved in the Plame matter.

As the Times nicely puts it, “Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House refused on Monday to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove’s role in the matter.”

Given that Rove has already admitted some involvemement in the matter—though whether he mentioned Plame’s name is unclear—Bush has cause to fire him now. So what’s the hold-up?

Obviously, it’s that Rove is a vital figure in this White House. “In private,” the Times’ Richard W. Stevenson writes, “several prominent Republicans said they were concerned about the possible effects on Mr. Bush and his agenda, in part because Mr. Rove’s stature makes him such a tempting target for Democrats.”

Just one question: What agenda?

Or, reasons not to visit the New York Times website for the next few days….

Or, not what you want to see first thing in the morning….

(No offense, Tucker: It’s just a little much.)

Headed into the All-Star break, the Yanks trail the BoSox by 2 1/2 games…

It’s been a crazy half-season for the Yankees so far, and they could well collapse again after the All-Star game.

But if you’d told me, after some of the losing streaks the Yankees have endured this season, that they’d be 2.5 down at the halfway mark with a four-game series against Boston coming up, I’d take that in a heartbeat.

Over the weekend, I chatted with one of my relatives who’s a loyal employee of the Baltimore Orioles. (Thanks for the t-shirt! Your book is on the way.)

One thing he and I could agree on: It’s wonderful to have a competitive race in the AL East. Of course, we both hope our teams will win the division, but three good teams within 2 1/2 games of each other…pretty great.

* Named after the Boston Globe columnist who predicted the Red Sox would win the division by a landslide.

Newsweek publishes an e-mail from Matt Cooper to his editor, Michael Duffy, regarding Karl Rove. It begins: “Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation …”

This story only gets more confusing, and the disclosure that Time reporters use “double super secret background” doesn’t help.

According to the Newsweek piece, Rove told Cooper to be skeptical about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s claim that his trip to Niger was authorized by CIA director George Tenet. In reality, Rove said, the trip had been authorized by Wilson’s wife, who worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction.

So Rove apparently did not use Valerie Plame’s name or indicate that her work was classified. Whether he knew these facts or not is unclear.

To make the story even more confusing, the circumstances under which Cooper decided to testify before a grand jury now turn out to have been murky at best. Cooper announced that he had decided to testify rather than go to jail because he had received “an express personal release from my source.”

Well, now that “personal release” turns out to be a quote from Karl Rove’s lawyer in the Wall Street Journal….

This story gets harder and harder to follow, and I’m sure that the vast majority of American’t aren’t following it.

But I think the main point is this: The drive to start a war in Iraq was based on deceit and dishonesty by the Bush administration, and the consequences of that deceit and dishonesty are still raining down around us like embers from a burning building. The Matt Cooper-Judith Miller-Karl Rove matter is one such ember, and it may fizzle out or re-ignite elsewhere….

But still…”double super secret background”? An unfortunate choice of words. It makes relations between the press and the White House sound like a game, and I guess all too often, that’s exactly what they are…..

This week the Ethicist, a.k.a. Randy Cohen, gets a letter from a North Carolina printer who doesn’t think much of Republicans.

Susannah Meyers of Asheville, North Carolina, writes: I work for a small print shop where a customer placed an order for bumper stickers that read, ”Defend American Against the Communist/Vote Republican.” I think his faulty grammar suits his ridiculous message, and I do not want to correct it. I’d rather save my energy for helping those who mean well. What should I do?

The Ethicist’s Response: “You should do your job according to the usual professional standards, ensuring that the printing isn’t blurry and the ink doesn’t run in the rain. You have no obligation to provide extra services — correcting this customer’s solecisms, improving his prose, painting his house. You may, if your boss consents, reject the job altogether….”

The Re-Ethicist Says: Wrong!

First, it would be well within a printer’s professional responsibilities to point out glaring errors of grammar, and you do not have to agree with the customer’s sentiments to agree. In fact, if Ms. Meyers is indeed as liberal as she proclaims herself, she should want to help educate the customer, or at least teach him that he’s making a couple of gramattical mistakes.

Second, while the printer has the legal right to reject a job, she would be ethically wrong to reject this one.

While Cohen does add that the decision not to print something should be used only rarely, as with a racist screed, he does give Meyers license to not print this one, as long as it’s okay with her boss. (Spoken like a true Timesman, always deferential to power; whatever you do, check with your boss first.)

Imagine if every printer who didn’t like a political sentiment refused to print a customer’s request….or every editor who didn’t agree with an article’s point of view refused to print it. Or every publisher… Or every broadcaster…. Or every billboard owner…

I could go on, but you get the point: This is America, where we not only tolerate dissenting points of view, we encourage them; we think that dissent makes us stronger. We have a responsibility to air opinions we disagree with, in the belief that the exercise of free speech is something fundamentally American that ultimately makes this a stronger nation.

A printer’s greatest pride and highest calling is to print something she couldn’t disagree with more…..

Morgan Stanley is giving fired executive Phillip J. Purcell a golden parachute of $113 million.

The mind boggles.

This is a man who, in his short tenure as chief executive of Morgan Stanley, was a complete disaster—so much so that he had to be fired lest every other executive at the firm quit.

One wonders what he would have been paid if he’d been even reasonably competent.

But one doesn’t have to wonder why Morgan Stanley announced this late on a Thursday afternoon after a terrorist attack…. The firm clearly hopes no one will notice. Let’s hope they’re wrong.