Away from your computer over the weekend and wondering if you missed anything important in the Plame Game scandal? Let’s see…<\/p>\n
* Time’s Matt Cooper wrote his cover story<\/a> for Time in which he explains — surprise, surprise — his two sources about Plame were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. This confirms what most people have believed for nearly two years. It also contradicts two years of White House denials about Rove’s and Libby’s involvement in the leaks.<\/p>\n * A State Department memo that discussed Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger and Plame’s role at the CIA, written before the leak occurred, may have been circulated among top WH aides during a July presidential trip to Africa. Because it could explain how Rove, Libby, Fleischer, and others learned about Plame’s identity, the memo has become a subject of “intense interest<\/a>” to prosecutors.<\/p>\n * Newsweek reported<\/a> that Fleischer and WH Communications guru Dan Bartlett, on that same trip to Africa, “prompted clusters of reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip.”<\/p>\n * The Washington Post’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen had a solid overview<\/a> of what we’ve learned over the last week or so, for those who are trying to catch up on the details.<\/p>\n * Frank Rich wants<\/a> us to keep our eye on the ball and insists this entire scandal is but a part of the broader fraudulent campaign Bush waged to launch his invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n * Jonathan Alter<\/a> dismisses the “no big deal” argument; David Broder<\/a> more or less calls Rove a lying hack; and CBS’s Bob Schieffer<\/a> had some unusually strong criticism of the White House’s approach to the entire fiasco since its inception.<\/p>\n