Boy, Karl Rove is nothing if not consistent.

Dick Cheney has always claimed he could have declassified Plame’s identity. But at the same time he was making such claims, Harriet Miers, as White House Counsel, disagreed with that claim.

I confess to being underwhelmed with the work HJC did with Scott McClellan’s appearance before HJC today. I’ll do a post later (once I’ve recovered from a terrible day for Democracy) on what I think was missed. But I’ll start with the positive–what I consider the highlights of the hearing.

Conyers started the hearing right, IMO, by introducing the meat-grinder note, showing that as Cheney was pressuring Bush to have Libby exonerated,

Scottie’s back in the House.

Here’s how I would go about getting Mukasey to release the transcripts.

Scottie McC describes his reluctant efforts on October 4, 2003 to exonerate Libby this way:

“Were you involved in the leak in any way?” I asked him.

“No, absolutely not,” Scooter replied.

“All right,” I said. “I plan to tell reporters that you did not leak the classified information, nor would you condone doing so.

Scottie McC seems prepared to testify more broadly about Plame (and about pre-war intelligence) than Chairman Conyers thus far envisions.

How does Scottie’s September 29, 2003 briefing match up with his description of it? Not badly–but there are some key differences in what he reported in his book and what he said in his briefing.

Waxman wants Condi’s FBI transcripts. Here’s why.

I said yesterday that Scottie McC was still protecting Bush–either deliberately or out of blind faith. One of the areas where that’s apparent is in his discussion of efforts to have both Rove and Libby exonerated in fall 2003. Scottie McC presents some significant new details about discussions of the leak within the White House just as DOJ started the CIA leak investigation. But he presents a chronology that downplays the degree to which those White House discussions were a reaction to public news that the DOJ had already started a probe.