THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Toledo Blade takes time from its wonderful documenting of CoinGate to discuss a TurdBlossom. Unlike so many others, they cut right to the chase.

1. In the very beginning Mr. Bush said that it was unlikely that the leaker would ever be found. There is every reason to believe that he would then have taken steps to make that true.

2. It is now clear that presidential adviser Karl Rove did discuss Valerie Plame with reporters, no matter how those discussions are now being described or construed. Mr. Bush said he would fire anyone in the White House who did that.

3. The concept of nailing someone (Valerie Plame, the CIA agent) for what her spouse may have done is unforgivably retrograde in 2005. (Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, is the former ambassador who said that President Bush's State of the Union claim that Iraq had bought uranium was false.)

4. "Outing" a CIA agent is clearly a national security affair. The Bush Administration allegedly regards national security very seriously. Mr. Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, was head of the CIA in 1976-77, so there is reason to believe the current president takes the CIA seriously.

These folks should be at the head of the line for a Pulitzer.

UPDATE:So does The Palm Beach Post.

I'm certainly happy that George W. Bush and Karl Rove are not Democrats. If they were, just imagine the mess this country would be in right now, even worse than the mess it is in.

First, there would be cries of "treason" directed at Mr. Rove from the Republican ranks. Some of the more overheated members of Congress would demand that he be taken immediately out back of the Capitol and shot by a firing squad.After all, he revealed the identity of a covert CIA agent, did he not?

As for his alibi that he never mentioned the name of agent Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, the Republicans would laugh out loud. What he did tell Mr. Novak was that "the wife" of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson worked for the secret agency. Mr. Wilson had been openly critical of some of President Bush's falsehoods that led us into war in Iraq, and this was the White House's way of getting even.

Names never are mentioned at police lineups, either. The witnesses just point a finger or say the number a certain suspect is holding.

Can you envision the reaction to Mr. Rove's cop-out if he, Mr. Bush and even Mr. Novak happened to be Democrats?

"This could have cost that woman her life," the Republicans would cry, and they would be right.

Republican "talking points" might mention that all Ms. Plame's contacts in the Middle East also were in grave danger now. The right-wingers would scream that our efforts to win the trust of the Arab people had been undermined by Mr. Rove's act of vindictiveness. And only the president's mother would believe he knew nothing about this outing of a secret agent.

We would be smack dab in the middle of a constitutional crisis right now, as bad as, if not worse than, Watergate.

But that would happen only if the president, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak — their journalistic shill — were Democrats.

It's OK if you are a Republican.