This is reminiscent of how Dan Rather's doctored documents innoculated Bush against the all-too-real charges of non-performance of his National Guard duties.

Rove knew what was coming from the FitzGerald investigation. His over-the-top rant in New York 2 weeks ago was simply to generate enough noise that the specific meaning of the Cooper message largely gets lost.

What the general public hears, filtered through the media, is that Rove is an intensely partisan figure who really gets the Democrats pissed off. Oh, and by the way, a few weeks later and they're still ticked off at him.

They're trying like hell to transform this into a partisan political issue.

Just another shot fired in the culture war.