Was John Bolton Karl Rove's Accomplice?

Just when you think the Democrats can't get any kookier, they come up with the scandalmongering equivalent of tying their shoelaces together:

A Democratic opponent of John Bolton asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday whether the nominee for U.N. ambassador had testified to a grand jury about the leak of CIA operative's identity.

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee say they want to determine whether Bolton was truthful when he wrote on a questionnaire for his confirmation hearing that he has not been interviewed in any recent investigations.

In a letter to Rice, Senator Joseph Biden, D-DE, referenced an MSNBC report from July 21 that Bolton was among State Department undersecretaries who "gave testimony" about a classified memo that has become an important piece of evidence in the leak investigation. [emphasis added]

There ya go. The Extreme Media floats wild partisan speculation as fact, and elected Dems take the handoff and run with it.

And yes, Donks on both sides of the Capitol are mobilizing for this latest round of nutbaggery:

California Representative Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has asked the State Department for two different versions of the memo from its bureau of intelligence and research that discussed Plame, a congressional aide said.

And just to leave no doubt about this being a partisan fishing expedition, Senator Barbie Boxer added this:

[I]t is unclear whether Bolton lied on his questionnaire because senators do not know if he testified before or after he signed the document - or at all.

Is it any surprise that this latest anti-Bolton gambit comes just two days after rumors of his recess appointment gained steam, and just two days before Congress blows town for its August [drumbeat, please] recess? The Democrats' obstinate obstruction of Bolton's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is being transformed into a "scandal" designed to bring him down before he can ever get to Turtle Bay. Or, even more likely, a piece of naked intimidation to deter the White House from making the recess appointment at all.

That's where the link to "Plamegate" comes in, particularly this wishful thinking graf:

The memo could have been the way someone in the White House learned - and then leaked - the information that Plame worked for the CIA and played a role in sending Wilson to Africa to explore whether Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons.

Even though there was no White House leak, and neither Karl Rove nor Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, are targets of this pointless investigation, and both have given the go-ahead to all relevant reporters to answer SP Fitzgerald's questions, and Valerie Plame was not a covert operative at the time in question, and everybody in D.C. knew she worked for the CIA, and it wasn't illegal to say so, and her role in lobbying for her misbegotten hubby to go to Niger and then lie about everything he was told was the truth, and her misbegotten hubby lied about that too, and....

Well, etc., etc., etc.

What an exercise in lame pathos. It's just like the emperor with no clothes. What the Dems hope nobody realizes is that they have no leverage with these endless threats and bully-boy tactics because they don't have the one thing (aside from a legislative majority) that could provide them with said leverage: actual evidence of Administration wrong-doing. In anything. For six years they've been trying to smear George W. Bush and every single time they've come up empty. Yet they keep soldiering on, blindly certain that paydirt is around the next corner or in the next classified memo they demand.

The facts are that the minority party has nothing on Karl Rove, which means they have nothing on John Bolton. They are, consequently, powerless to stop the latter's recess appointment to Turtle Bay. And it's just killing them.

Wendy Long observes over at NRO Bench Memos that, "The Democrats are acting like they think they will never be in charge of the Executive Branch again." This is in the context of their documentary fishing expedition against SCOTUS candidate John Roberts, but it applies just as well here.

The irony is that by acting like they'll never get the presidency back, they're helping to ensure that they never see control of the Legislative Branch again for years and years, either.

Does nobody in that party ever do any political cost-benefit analysis?

UPDATE: Now Biden is calling the entire State Department dishonest.

I guess this is "BUSH LIED!!!!!" from the bottom up....

UPDATE 7/29: Hmmm. Well, I guess this is another example of why the State Department is known as "Foggy" Bottom:

John R. Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, failed to tell the Senate during his confirmation hearings that he had been interviewed by the State Department's inspector general looking into how American intelligence agencies came to rely on fabricated reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa, the State Department said Thursday.

Reacting to a letter from Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Mr. Bolton had not disclosed the interview with the inspector general because Mr. Bolton had forgotten about it. Mr. McCormack said the interview, on July 18, 2003, had nothing to do with a federal investigation into who leaked the name of an undercover C.I.A. official to reporters, a potential crime.

"When Mr. Bolton completed his forms for the Senate he did not recall being interviewed by the inspector general," Mr. McCormack said in a telephone interview Thursday. Mr. McCormack reiterated that Mr. Bolton had not been questioned by the grand jury in the leak investigation. ...

In a form submitted for his confirmation hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Bolton said he had not been interviewed or asked for information in connection with any administrative investigation, including that of an inspector general, during the last five years.

Stopped clocks and Democrat senators. My, my, my.

His colleagues should nominate Senator Hairplugs for the Bullwinkle Award. By making a recess appointment far more problematic, this last-minute adorable, bucktoothed rodent extracted from the haberdashery headwear product may, tactically speaking, be the final nail in John Bolton's UN posting.

I guess we'll see if the White House has the brass ones to install Bolton anyway, but this not inconsiderable oversight does little to reinforce the confidence of the grassroots faithful - on this nomination or others to come.

[HT: CQ]

'NOTHER UPDATE: Rich Lowry is more optimistic:

The Dems have now fired what is probably their parting shot at Bolton: that he incorrectly filled out a Senate questionnaire when he said he hadn't been interviewed in any invetigation over the last five years. Turns out he was interviewed in 2003 by the State department IG in an investigation of how the famous 16 words made it into the State of the Union address.

The Dems probably had this information for weeks - and were probably given it by someone inside State - but were holding it to the last moment to try to scare Bush out of a recess appointment. Bolton filled out the form incorrectly because he had
forgotten about the interview. Because he had nothing to do with the 16 words
the interview was a very forgettable event. Bolton also hasn't been before the
Plame grand jury nor has he talked to any of Fitzgerald's people, as fevered left-wing blogs have been speculating.

This latest Plame line of attack on Bolton is as pathetic as the rest (remember the Russian hotel charge?). As soon as the Senate gets out of town - which can't happen soon enough - Democrats lose their leverage entirely and Bush is free to make a recess appointment, as he probably should have done long ago. [emphasis added]

Guess I should trust my instincts more. Wow, who'da thunk I wouldn't've?