Change of Heart?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer — who says White House adviser Karl Rove may have committed a crime when he identified Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA agent — voted against the law he says Rove may have violated. In 1982, Schumer, then in the House, was one of only 32 congressmen, all Democrats, to oppose the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which made it a crime to out covert U.S. intelligence agents.

What's more, seven years later, Schumer criticized a new Justice Department policy to prosecute federal employees who leak certain kinds of information, telling the Los Angeles Times at the time, "I am worried that this policy is so broad it could easily be abused."

Poll Results

A new Fox News Opinion Dynamics poll shows that significantly more Americans want President Bush to nominate a conservative judge to the Supreme Court, than want him to nominate a liberal or moderate one. What's more, the vast majority says that if President Bush nominates a well-qualified, strong conservative, Senate Democrats should vote to confirm him or her.

Blog Hopes to Make a Stink

The left-wing Web log "A Liberal Dose" is urging people to drop their excrement on the lawn of Karl Rove's Washington home, where he lives with his family. And it furnishes explicit directions to the home, complete with a detailed map. The blog calls it "considerate thing" to do, insisting, "We suggest a special bouquet for our esteemed latter-day Wormtongue. ... Now wouldn't it be so nice to see Herr Rove's lawn carpeted with such lovely lawn decorations."

Colleagues Weigh In

After Mark Yost, an editorial page editor for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Knight Ridder News service, called Iraq war coverage, "slanted" and said much of Iraq is stable, his Knight Ridder colleagues are now making it clear they think the war isn't going so well.

Baghdad bureau chief Hannah Allam calls his assertions, "pure fantasy," noting that an Iraqi working for Knight Ridder has "joined the ranks of Iraqi civilians shot to death by American soldiers." And Washington editor Clark Hoyt says, "Yost asks why you don't read about progress being made in the [Iraqi] power grid ... Maybe it's because there is no progress."

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report