Rove in the Crosshairs?

There has been a bit of a low-key roller coaster ride in the left blogosphere today over an investigation into Karl Rove. It started with this report in the LA Times informing us

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

So it would seem that Karl is once again on the hot seat. And considering that there is plenty of reason to suspect improper activity by Karl, given that the Attorney General doesn't know anything about how the USAs got fired, it's a good guess that Karl knows something. Also, where are those missing emails? You get the idea.

Enthusiasm cooled a bit, however, as folks got looking into who would do the investigating. The OSC is headed by Scott J. Bloch who it seems is a pretty loyal Bush supporter. In fact he is, or has been, under investigation for much the same sort of thing that he is now supposed to investigate Rove for. Not encouraging. For more on the sordid tales concerning Mr. Bloch check out Jeralyn at Talk Left and mcjoan at Kos. So, there seems to be little reason for hope.

Then the latest news in this story is that the investigation was started by a Hatch Act complaint filed by David Iglesias. Yes the David Iglesias of fired USA fame. You can read about it at Think Progress. This makes the whole story much more interesting. I still have little confidence in Mr. Bloch, but not quite so little as I had after reading Jeralyn and mcjoan. There are two reasons for this. One is that if David Iglesias is filing the complaint then he intends to fight the White House and fight it hard and he thinks this might work, or at least produce some results. He, at least, is not expecting a pointless whitewash. Maybe he is just wildly optimistic, but assuming he is not, something might come of this. The second reason to be hopeful again, is that while there are no doubt many Bush sycophants who will do anything to support the man, not all of the Bush "loyalists" will turn out to be quite so completely loyal. It might be that Mr. Bloch falls into this category.

So, in short, I would not start decorating for Fitzmas yet, but I also will hold out some hope that this latest investigation will help in at least a small way to bring justice to this White House (and Karl Rove in particular)