Latest Plame/Rove News

Joe and Valerie Wilson are my next door neighbors in a hilly neighborhood just west of Georgetown. We moved in within months of each other seven years ago, attracted to our respective houses by the view of the Capitol in the distance and the Washington Monument in the foreground. The patriotic view is stirring.

I have another view from my window, of a neighbor who is a working, devoted mother of 5-year-old twins, a volunteer for charities, a woman active in her church, and a caring person. Soft-spoken, self-effacing and very private, Valerie is very easy to label “the lovely woman next door.”

To some, I am known as Joe and Valerie’s lawyer, a fact that has surfaced by my occasional statements on their behalf. The Wilsons don’t need a lawyer for any pending proceeding; I am simply helping them understand some of the technicalities of the criminal investigation and collecting facts for any eventual civil suit.

Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about the report, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card.

“I specifically had our lawyers go back to the Department of Justice lawyers and ask them, `Do you want us to notify the staff now, immediately, or would it be OK to notify the staff early in the morning?’ And we were advised, go ahead and notify the staff early in the morning, that would be OK.” He said most of the staff had left by the time the Justice Department called and that “no one knew about the investigation.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has agreed to headline a fund-raiser for Alabama Republicans seeking to gain control of the state Legislature, according to Monica Cooper , an aide to GOP state senators.

In addition to his star power, organizers likely want strategic advice from the man critics sometimes call “Bush’s Brain.”
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A rumor circulated in Montgomery that the GOP legislative campaign, which announced a $6 million fund-raising goal, lost money on its first big event. Former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller , a Georgia Democrat and key speaker at last year’s Republican National Convention, was featured at a $150-a-plate dinner last month.

In recent weeks, Mrs. Harris has reportedly met privately with Mr. Rove and, separately, with Mrs. Dole to press her case and argue she has been underestimated in statewide races before, only to prove wrong both polls and the Republican establishment. “I know I can win this,” she told party officials.

But the polling data Mr. Rove and others have shown her suggest otherwise. A Quinnipiac University poll last month showed Mr. Nelson leading Mrs. Harris by 12 points (his 50 percent to her 38 percent). She runs especially poorly among independents, a large and growing force in a state of political transplants.
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