Shifting statements on Karl Rove.

The poor reality-based community. We keep expecting Mr. Bush to be true to his words. But we should have learned by now that in the Bush Administration, reality is whatever they say it is at the moment! History can be reworked on the fly.

Remember the official White House policy, "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration"? Now that multiple sources have confirmed that Karl Rove and Libby Lewis were both intimately involved in the leak, you would expect them to be gone, gone, gone!

Not so! Because one day later, the official White House policy had always been "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." Note the careful choice of words....we've gone from "involved" to "leak classified information". And there's no mention of being fired, just "appropriate action". Mr. Bush obviously knew of his staff's involvement back in 2003, and he was trying to prepare them an "out" in advance.

But that little bit of hedging wasn't enough, it turns out. The current line from the White House is (and always has been, they will insist!) that one need first actually be convicted of a crime to be booted. ="if someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration.

However, I think we can expect some rapid retroactive rewriting of even that low standard. Because, of course, Iran-Contra criminal Robert Earl is working as chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. And Misters Bush and Cheney have at least one crime conviction each (Bush, Drunk Driving, 1976, Maine. Cheney, Drunk Driving, two instances, Wyoming)

So the new standard (which the White House will insist has always been the standard) will probably shift to, "One may not serve on the White House staff during your actual period of incarceration, but it's okay to keep working during the appeal process and after you're let out".

The government is literally being run by criminals.