Bushs Spindoktor Rove wird zur Last fürs Weiße Haus

--- Bush verdankt seinem Ober-Spindoktor Karl Rove zwar letztlich den Wiedereinzug ins Weiße Haus, doch im Umfeld von Plamegate wird der smarte Texaner immer mehr zur Belastung für die zweite Amtszeit des Präsidenten:

Top White House aides are privately discussing the future of Karl Rove, with some expressing doubt that President Bush can move beyond the damaging CIA leak case as long as his closest political strategist remains in the administration. If Rove stays, which colleagues say remains his intention, he may at a minimum have to issue a formal apology for misleading colleagues and the public about his role in conversations that led to the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to senior Republican sources familiar with White House deliberations. While Rove faces doubts about his White House status, there are new indications that he remains in legal jeopardy from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame leak.Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove -- who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff -- said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime. But some top Republicans said yesterday that Rove's problems may not end there. Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied -- that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war. ... A swift resolution is needed in part to ease staff tension, a number of people inside and out of the White House said. Many mid-level staffers inside have expressed frustration that press secretary Scott McClellan's credibility was undermined by Rove, who told the spokesman that he was not involved in the leak, according to people familiar with the case. Some aides said Rove told Bush the same thing, though little is known about the precise nature of the president's conversations with his closest political adviser. McClellan relayed Rove's denial to reporters from the White House lectern in 2003, and he has not yet offered a public explanation for his inaccurate statements. "That is affecting everybody," said a Republican who has discussed the issue with the White House. "Scott personally is really beaten down by this. Everybody I talked to talks about this."

Da wird wohl nicht mehr viel auszusitzen sein.

Und sonst: Hubsi Heil soll SPD-Generalsekretär werden: Kommt die Generation Golf? Der Göttinger Politologe Franz Walter warnt davor, die SPD-Netzwerker auf einen Geselligkeitsverein zu reduzieren.

Der Ex-Chefredakteur von Forbes ASAP, Michael Malone, glaubt an die mediale Sprengkraft von Weblogs: Five years from now, the blogosphere will have developed into a powerful economic engine that has all but driven newspapers into oblivion, has morphed (thanks to cell phone cameras) into a video medium that challenges television news, and has created a whole new group of major companies and media superstars. Billions of dollars will be made by those prescient enough to either get on board or invest in these companies. At this point, the industry will then undergo its first shakeout, with the loss of perhaps several million blogs - though the overall industry will continue to grow at a steady pace. And, at about that moment, Forbes will announce that the blogosphere is the Next Big Thing for investors.

Die Zahl der eifrigen Inhalte-Produzenten im Web wächst jedenfalls gerade in der jüngeren Generation rasant: A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says, "Fully half of all teens and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories, or videos online, or remixed online content into their own new creations." This is just a teenage thing, right? Won't they grow out of it? Isn't this Myspace.com thing just a fad? Don't count on it. Media usage patterns are established early in life and tend to persist.

War on Flu: Im Krieg gegen die Grippe. Der Schutz vor der Vogelgrippe wird von der Bush-Regierung wie der Krieg gegen den Terror propagiert.

Merkels Schicksal (war da nicht schon auch Schröder dran gescheitert, damals nur mit den Arbeitsplätzen?): Merkel erhebt Schuldenabbau zur Schicksalsfrage. Die designierte Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel räumt der Konsolidierung des Haushalts höchste Priorität ein. Auf dem Arbeitgebertag in Berlin erhob sie die Aufgabe zur Schicksalsfrage für die gesamte Nation.

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