Karl Rove made sure that agency and department officials were busy, busy, busy come election time, The Washington Post reported this weekend. And now House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants to figure out just how busy.

Waxman sent out a request to 19 different agencies/departments today (take a deep breath: Departments of Justice, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Labor, State, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration, General Services Administration, United States Agency for International Development, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy), all of which apparently took part in Rove's scheme to use agency officials to help vulnerable Republicans.

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The New York Times and others weigh in with the obvious: Karl Rove's departure doesn't change a thing with regard to the Democrats' investigations of him. They'll keep pursuing him, and the White House will keep stonewalling with the same sweeping claims of executive privilege. The only thing that changes is that Rove has got to get himself a lawyer.

As for Rove, he says that he's the Democrats' Moby Dick. Given how well read he is, I'm sure he knows how that novel ends (not well for Captain Ahab). The Democrats, to be sure, would prefer another metaphor.

Karl Rove on whether he's running away (sub. req.) from Democratic oversight:

What about those who say he's leaving to avoid Congressional scrutiny? "I know they'll say that," he says, "But I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob." He also knows he'll continue to be a target, even from afar, since belief in his influence over every Administration decision has become, well, faith-based.

"I'm a myth. There's the Mark of Rove," he says, with a bemused air. "I read about some of the things I'm supposed to have done, and I have to try not to laugh." He says the real target is Mr. Bush, whom many Democrats have never accepted as a legitimate president and "never will."

So there you go. However much the U.S. attorney firings, the political briefings to senior agency officials, and other dirty deeds that have been pegged as Rovian (an adjective that will live on) might seem like his handiwork, it's just the phantom Mark of Rove. One wonders if the Mark will continue to haunt the Bush Administration after he leaves.

After he gets to work on his book on the Bush presidency, Rove says that he'd like to teach. Will college freshmen be clamoring to get into Dividing The Electorate 101? Any ideas on what that course might be called?

Note: A portion from The Wall Street Journal piece that I'll note without comment:

It is his long and personal relationship with Mr. Bush that has made Mr. Rove arguably the most influential White House aide of modern times. The president calls him to chat about politics on Sunday mornings, and they have a contest to see who can read the most books. (Mr. Rove is winning.)

As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, Justice Department officials attended a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001. You can see the Justice Department's catalog of the briefings here.

Karl Rove and his aides, remember, delivered the briefings for agency officials throughout the government. Briefing slides from a presentation at the General Services Administration and the State Department show that Rove's shop lectured the officials on which GOP incumbents were vulnerable. It wasn't publicly known until Friday that Rove had included Department officials in his briefing circuit. White House aides have defended the briefings by saying they were merely meant to "inform" appointees by giving them the "political landscape."

As you can see, most briefings were attended by the White House liaison at the Department, and a number were delivered by Karl Rove himself.

Most notable is a September 5, 2006 briefing for "agency Chiefs of Staff and White House Liaisons" at the White House; both Kyle Sampson, Gonzales former chief of staff, and Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, were scheduled to attend. Rove led the briefing.

These, of course, were the two 30-something senior staffers at the center of the U.S. attorney firings, and the briefing was given shortly before the firing process entered its final stage. One week after the briefing, Sampson sent then-White House counsel Harriet Miers another draft list of U.S. attorneys to fire -- the first such list he'd drafted for more than six months. There's no evidence that the briefing, which was given to political appointees from a number of agencies, led directly to the generation of that list, but surely it helped Sampson and Goodling, who were at the forefront of the politicization of the Department, to be well apprised of "the political landscape."

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From The Washington Post:

Justice Department officials attended at least a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001, including some meetings led by Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, and others that were focused on election trends prior to the 2006 midterm contest, according to documents released yesterday.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that he did not believe that senior Justice Department officials had attended such briefings. But he clarified his testimony yesterday in a letter to Congress, emphasizing that the briefings were not held at the agency's offices....

Justice officials attended 12 political briefings at the White House, and another held at the Department of Agriculture, from 2001 to 2006, according to the list sent to Waxman. At least five were led by Rove or included presentations by him.

We'll have more on this tomorrow.

The scheme was simple: dispatch political aides from the White House to agencies throughout the government and make sure political appointees there knew which Republican members of Congress were faltering. There was a line, however, that ought not to be (openly) crossed. Political appointees got a "not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans," but they were not given explicit directions. That would be a blatant Hatch Act violation.

Karl Rove's aide Scott Jennings understood the game. That's why when he briefed (pdf) employees at the General Services Administration early this year (see a sample slide above), he knew to keep things at the not-so-subtle level -- but no more. From The Washington Post:

At [the briefing's] completion, GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan asked how GSA projects could be used to help "our candidates," according to half a dozen witnesses. The briefer, J. Scott Jennings, said that topic should be discussed "off-line," the witnesses said. Doan then replied, "Oh, good, at least as long as we are going to follow up...."

Today, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) took advantage of Jennings appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to question him about the briefings. And Jennings, like Rove's former aide Sara Taylor, was right on message.

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Even though Rove's aide Scott Jennings said less than nothing today about the U.S. attorney firings (he wouldn't even testify about emails which had already been turned over to the committee), he did testify about two other areas of interest. One of those concerns the White House's use of Republican National Committee-issued email accounts. A number of aides, including Jennings, violated the Presidential Records Act by using those accounts for official business. The underlying allegation, of course, is that Karl Rove's shop used a kind of off-the-record email system on purpose. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who's investigating, has called it "the most serious breach of the Presidential Records Act in the 30-year history of the law."

The White House's fig leaf for that has been the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for political activities. Staffers in the White House Office of Political Affairs have both a White House address and computer and a RNC email address and devices. And as Jennings testified today, he frequently used his RNC address for official business (including matters related to the U.S. attorney firings) for "convenience and efficiency." (That's also what Jennings' boss Sara Taylor testified. Rove also found using his RNC blackberry incredibly convenient.) In fact, it sounds like he hardly used his White House address, since he carried an RNC-issued blackberry with him. The problem was not lost on Jennings, apparently, who testified, in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), that he had actually asked for a blackberry for his White House email once.

It was "very early in my employment," he testified, "the President was doing a lot traveling in my region [the South]... I was receiving a lot of email on my official account and I requested [a blackberry for White House email] at that moment, and I was told that it wasn't the custom to give the political affairs staffers those devices."

So even though Jennings was aware that this was a problem and apparently raised the issue with a supervisor, he was told to ignore it. That doesn't quite square with the White House explanation for the illegal use of the RNC accounts, which is "oops."

Here's a little taste of how Scott Jennings answered any questions that had anything remotely to do with the firing of U.S. attorneys this morning.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) couldn't even get Jennings to answer the question "what role you have in the selection of nominees to be U.S. attorneys." When Jennings refused to answer based on the President's assertion of executive privilege, Leahy cautioned, "now, let's not be too contemptuous of this committee, I'm just asking you what you do."

Other lines of questioning were (slightly) more fruitful. We'll have more on that later.

Note: Jennings' former boss in the White House, Sara Taylor, began her hearing last month with a similar tack, but then ended up answering a number of questions that Jennings has refused to answer.

The White House, as expected, claimed executive privilege with regard to testimony by Karl Rove and Rove's aide Scott Jennings about the U.S. attorney firings. You can see that letter here.

But while the White House found that Rove, as an "immediate presidential advisor" was "immune" from Congressional subpoena, they did not make that claim for Jennings. And so he's up this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee. We'll bring you a little from that hearing, which is going on now, shortly.