For the last couple of weeks, the news outlets have been saturated with stories on the eight fired US attorneys, stories which included wild speculation and accusations from (mostly) Democrats that the President has ‘abused his power’ and ‘we want to get to the bottom of this’ yada yada.

We already know that one of the big goals of the Democrats in Congress is to undermine this President to the point where he has no political capital whatsoever, but another goal of this Congress that has been forgotten since the pLamegate trials didn’t end up with numerous administration officials being paraded in front of the cameras for their perp walks is their desire to see Karl Rove fired/force to resign/arrested. At the heart of pLamegate was that desire - honesty on their side was a casualty of their almost obsessive nature towards ‘getting Rove’ at any costs, truth be damned. Democrats have had a hard time nailing Bush directly on anything, so their aim has been to target everyone around him in hopes of destroying the administration.

With that in mind, it’s worth noting that in many of the Attorneygate stories has been an exploration of just what role Rove had in the firings, as if him commenting or making suggestions on US attorneys would be out of bounds (it isn’t). Well, today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed the underlying motivation for the Dems push on the fired 8 attorneys scandal. It’s to get Rove - because he wasn’t indicted in pLamegate (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON (CNN) — White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove should testify to Congress under oath regarding the U.S. attorney firings because he was “this close to be indicted” in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Thursday.

“When you’re dealing with the cast of characters we have, you might consider putting people under oath,” Reid said. “Karl Rove is an example — who came within this close to being indicted for involvement in the Valerie Plame case. So I certainly think people should be under oath. At least Karl Rove”

Translation: We don’t care whether or not Meirs will testify under oath. It’s about Rove. We couldn’t get him on the pLamegate allegations, so we’re going to give it another try with these latest allegations. We’re hoping something will finally stick.

I’m trying to figure out how Karl Rove came ‘this close’ to an indictment, according to Reid. You are either indicted, or you are not. I think Reid has spent too much time at lefty blogs and really does think that Rove was ‘almost indicted’ - after all, it was reported by Truthout.org (with other lefty blogs picking up on the story) that he was going to be indicted back in May 2006. I guess Reid didn’t get the followup news that there would not be any charges filed against Karl Rove.

In any event, this story just goes to prove once again how Democrats will fly the banner of “concern” over what the administration is up to when what they are really ‘concerned’ with is settling political vendettas, even if it comes at the expense of confusing the American people over what is legal for the President to do versus what isn’t.

Update: Watch Senator Pat Leahy flip out in response to a suggestion by Senator Arlen Specter re: Attorneygate: