And Rove sticks his weasly nose into things again...

As some of you will have read by now, the slow response time of the federal government was due to the delay in Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's delay in declaring a state of emergency, still not having done so as of Saturday, September 3rd. This courtesy of the Washington Post on September 4th, attributed to "a senior Bush official".

There is only one problem with this "fact" now making the rounds of administration apologists' talking points: It was a lie. Governor Blanco declared a state of emergency on Friday, August 26, when the hurricane had yet to hit, but was projected to follow a path very close to the one it did over the subsequent weekend.

The Washington Post has since issued a retraction of the original story, and it turns out the "senior Bush official" was none other than Karl Rove, seeking once again to put false information out there in such saturation that the truth (when it surfaced) would sound like mere partisan defensive bluster.

Only my bet is that this time it backfires on Rove, for two reasons:

1. The whole hurricane story had somewhat deflected attention away Rove's OTHER now infamous (and still possibly treasonous) leak.
2. Now that the cat is so quickly out of the bag on this one, I can only hope that reporters will finally catch a hint and not report ANYTHING leaked by Karl Rove unless they fact check it first.

By the way, Rove was also apparently directly responsible for the lack of information I've previously noted from Secretary Chertoff on Meet the Press. He has instructed (according to a New York Times article) administration officials not to comment on prior events, but to turn all interviews to focus on the things the Federal government IS doing.

Liam.