Karl Rove furtively performs his patented HASSAN CHOP finishing move to the delight of recent St. Anselm College graduates.

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Democrats are stepping up calls for an independent investigation of the leak of a CIA officer's identity, charging that political ties between Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House political adviser Karl Rove represent a clear conflict of interest. Meanwhile, a senior administration official told NBC News on Friday that the Justice Department set a deadline for the White House to turn over documents related to the investigation.

A COMPANY controlled by Rove, who stands accused by the CIA office's husband of at least condoning the leak, was paid more than $300,000 by Ashcroft's 1994 Senate campaign in Missouri for direct mail work and other services, the New York Times reported Friday, citing campaign finance data.

President Bush's top political adviser also played a role in two earlier Ashcroft gubernatorial campaigns.

Information about the ties between Rove and Ashcroft has emboldened Democrats to push harder for a special counsel to investigate the leak.

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"This (is)... the equivalent of the CIA declaring bureaucratic nuclear war on the White House. CIA chief George Tenet could not have allowed this to happen lightly."

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Salon has not only what seems to be a pretty good overview of the whole affair, as well as what sounds like a fairly educated deduction as to the identity of the leaker (here's a hint: It's Scooter Libby), as well as an interview with goddamn American hero Daniel Ellsberg and an op-ed by John Dean that's worth sitting through the commercials to read.

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There are lots more links to this story I wanted to put up here, but the newscycle is moving pretty quickly-- treason, Schwarzenegger's nazi-and-tits fetish, Rush gooped up on the hobogaine-- and they vanish.

There was a Reuters story the day this thing hit big that ended with a graf saying that, when they got off of Air Force One, Rove was swarmed with photographers while Bush was ignored.