Karl Rove is known as a neo-conservative and has always supported a Conservative Christian position especially when it comes to Church and State issues. It is apparent from the data collected, that the first amendment is in danger from his past and future actions.

Upon calling his office in June 2002and asking about which religions he considers "real," we find that the religion of Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, Shintoism, and everything except Christianity "..aren't "Real" religions." What is a real religion, Mr. Rove? What you have been practicing? Read the following and remember: "By their Works may they be known."

(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at allegations about anyone. Don't believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself! And remember, the First Amendment Coalition does not represent any political party nor do we recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political process. )

Karl Rove Lied

Bush's Brain

All About Carl Rove

See No Karl Hear No Karl

Click Here to See Karl Rove Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 1

Click Here to See Karl Rove Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 2

The Collapse of Karl Rove

The strategist from Texas built up the Republican Party by exploiting the religious right -- and now his handiwork is crumbling.

Exerpts from an article at http://www.salon.com By Lou Dubose

Aug. 14, 2007 | A month ago, a friend who has spent his entire career working for the Republican House leadership pulled up beside me at the intersection of Seventh and Pennsylvania in Washington. A House institutionalist, and a fiercely partisan secular Republican, he was oddly cheerful. "Call me next time you're in town," he said. "We'll talk about how George Bush destroyed the Republican Party."

It will be a long conversation.

But the president doesn't get all the credit. If Karl Rove was responsible for the remarkable ascent of the Republican Party since 2000, he is equally responsible for what is beginning to look like its vertical collapse. With the Christian right deeply disappointed at Bush and in search of a candidate for the 2008 election, economic conservatives alienated by the White House's failure to impose fiscal discipline on the Congress when the Republicans were in charge of both houses, and congressional Republicans caught in the undertow of a failing president's failed war, the party Rove predicted would become a permanent majority is no more. Rove could put the party together, but in the end he proved incapable of holding it together.

Karl Rove prepares to speak during the Republican National Committee 2006 annual winter meeting in Washington on Jan. 20, 2006.

In Texas, we saw this modern iteration of the Republican Party come together in the summer or 1994, as Bush kicked off his first successful run for public office. (He had lost a congressional race in West Texas in 1978, in which Rove was only marginally involved.) Social conservatives had already joined together with economic conservatives when Ronald Reagan got into bed with the Rev. Jerry Falwell. But it was Rove who consecrated the union. A nominal Christian and Episcopalian, Rove had little regard for the evangelical extremists who have become essential to the success of the modern Republican Party, even cracking the occasional joke about his own lack of faith.

Then the Christian right showed up at the Republicans' state convention in Fort Worth, in 1994, with enough delegates to seize control of the party. The dominant Christian faction tossed George H.W. Bush's handpicked state chairman and longtime friend, Fred Meyer, out of office and replaced him with a charismatic Catholic lawyer from Dallas. It banned liquor from convention hotels and replaced hospitality-room bars with "ice cream sundae bars," where chefs prepared designer confections. It summoned delegates to Grand Old Prayer Sessions, required Christian fealty oaths of candidates for party leadership, and made opposition to abortion the brand by which Texas Republicans would be defined.

This political great awakening was not unique to Texas. But it occurred in a context in which a brilliant, Pygmalion political consultant saw in George W. Bush a malleable idol who could be fashioned into a governor and ultimately a president. And Bush was a candidate whose genuine evangelical faith was an asset rather than a liability. After initially fighting the dominant evangelical delegation at the state convention -- proposing Texas Rep. Joe Barton as a compromise candidate for state party chairman -- Rove joined them.

He found religion, even if he didn't find Jesus. And it was a foxhole conversion at best. Rove had been brought to Texas by the elder Bush in the early '80s and devoted his energies to building a Republican Party where there was none -- using direct mail, money and databases in ways that Texas Democrats never imagined. There was one statewide Republican elected official when Rove began his work, U.S. Sen. John Tower. Today, Republicans hold all 22 statewide offices. But the party Karl Rove built was based on the economic conservatism of Barry Goldwater, not the social conservatism of Jerry Falwell. Once Bush was elected governor, Rove marginalized the Christian right's party chairman, Tom Pauken, denying him access to party money, and when Pauken ran for state attorney general, Rove quietly assisted the campaign of his primary opponent, John Cornyn, who now represents Texas in the United States Senate. Yet despite the low regard in which he held evangelicals, Rove recognized the importance of keeping them in harness with economic conservatives.

The "guns, God, and gays" campaigns that defined Texas politics and the politics of the South became the model for Republican Party campaigns across the country. It was Rove who was responsible for the whispering campaign that characterized Democratic Gov. Ann Richards, Bush's opponent in the 1994 governor's race, as a closet lesbian, in a successful attempt to peel away conservative Christian votes in East Texas.

Perhaps the most recent example of a successful social-issues campaign was in Ohio during the 2004 election, which provided critical electoral votes to secure George Bush's second term. With Bush in peril of losing to John Kerry, the Republican National Committee looked to David Barton to go into Ohio and turn out the base. Barton is a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party and one of the founders of the WallBuilders, a Christian advocacy group working to restore God to His central position in American history, and in the history and social studies curricula of the nation's public schools.

Barton comes straight out of the social conservative wing of the Republican Party Rove put together and then left behind in Texas when he followed Bush to Washington in 2001. And Barton represents both the success and what now might be the failure of the Republican Party Rove cobbled together. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III mentioned Barton by name, in his 2005 opinion that declared "intelligent design" (biblical creationism dressed up as science) unconstitutional to teach in the nation's public schools. Jones, a George W. Bush appointee to the federal bench, was particularly offended by the Dover, Penn., school board president's stated intention to move from Christian intelligent design in biology classes to Christian social studies in history classes. The judge cited both Barton and his book, "The Myth of Separation," as examples of a school board that was in open violation of the Constitution. (WallBuilders do not recognize the separation of church and state as defined by the First Amendment.)

In Pennsylvania, Judge Jones' angry repudiation of the Christian majority on the school board was both a portent and part of the dissolution of the union over which Rove presided in 1994 in Fort Worth. Jones, a Tom Ridge protégé, was unequivocal in asserting the primacy of the Separation Clause over the religious interests of local governing bodies. Like this moderate judge, the larger public -- and even the Republican Party, if the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani means anything -- has grown weary of the Christian right. It was a marriage as unlikely as the union between an evangelical George W. Bush and Episcopalian Karl Rove.

It appears that it's over. As Rove returns to the Hill Country home in Texas he and his wife, Darby, bought and refurbished, the party in which he invested his energy, if not his soul, is divided among social and economic conservatives. Even Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a one-time moderate who drank the Kool-Aid with the Christians in the Texas Republican Party, is in trouble with the state's voters. Cornyn, like Bush, was a creation of Karl Rove. Maybe Rove can save a Senate seat, if not his soul, by quietly throwing in with Cornyn's campaign, after he settles back down in the state where it all began.

Did Karl Rove Blow a Spook's Cover? The White House Won't Say.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2003, at 4:59 PM PT

A minor flap has been brewing since syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing "two senior administration officials," reported in July that Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to a Central Intelligence Agency specialist on "weapons of mass destruction" named Valerie Plame. Wilson is the former diplomat sent by the CIA last year to check out allegations that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. He caused the Bush administration no small embarrassment by stating, in a July 6 op-ed, that he'd reported "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Novak hasn't particularly supported the Iraq war, and his column essentially took Wilson's side. But the fact that Novak blew Plame's cover (in the course of relating that Wilson was sent at Plame's suggestion) gave The Nation's David Corn the opportunity to accuse the Bush administration of compromising national security, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Wilson wouldn't confirm that his wife works for the CIA, but he told Corn that if she did, then Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.

The question of whether to investigate who in the Bush administration blew Plame's cover surfaced Aug. 21 at a forum about intelligence failures on Iraq held by Rep. Jay Inslee, a fervently anti-war Democrat. Wilson, who was present, had this to say: It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words. This appeared to be an unsubtle hint that Wilson knew one of the leakers to be Rove. Taking the bait, someone asked White House press spokesman Scott McClellan about it today:

Q: On the Robert Novak-Joseph Wilson situation, Novak reported earlier this year quoting "anonymous government sources" telling him that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative. Now, this is apparently a federal offense, to burn the cover [of] a CIA operative. Wilson now believes that the person who did this was Karl Rove. He's quoted from a speech last month as saying, "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." Did Karl Rove tell that"

A: I haven't heard that. That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. If I could find out who anonymous people were, I would. I just said, it's totally ridiculous.

Q: But did Karl Rove do it?

A: I said, it's totally ridiculous.

Now, on one level, Chatterbox feels mildly sympathetic toward McClellan. White House etiquette prevented him from saying, "How the hell should I know? If Rove blew the cover of a CIA agent, do you suppose he'd be stupid enough to tell me about it?" And McClellan deserves points for not taking a leaf from his predecessor Ari Fleischer's playbook, which says that you should always deny damaging stuff well before you know whether it's true. But on another level, it's pretty unsettling that McClellan refuses to answer the question at all. Rove is, after all, the president's principal political adviser, a man so influential that a recent book about him was titled Bush's Brain. McClellan could have said something like, "I have a very hard time imagining that to be true, but if you like I'll ask him." But McClellan didn't say that. Maybe he finds all speculation about wacky national-security skullduggery repellant in light of his father's embarrassing new book alleging that Lyndon Johnson murdered John F. Kennedy. Or maybeâ€”just maybe”McClellan wonders himself whether Rove got a little overzealous.

Wilson, for his part, denied today that he ever accused Karl Rove. He told Chatterbox "Karl Rove" was simply a handy metonym for whatever two "senior administration officials" fingered Plame (correctly or falsely, Wilson still won't say). But Wilson's "I measure my words" comment at the Inslee forum suggests to Chatterbox that Wilson is now being coy about what he knows, or at least suspects, regarding Rove. Maybe it's time for somebody to ask Karl Rove himself whether he risked 10 years in jail in order to suggest that Wilson got his Niger assignment based on nepotism. And, perhaps, deliberately to punish Wilson by destroying his wife's career at the CIA. Rove is ruthless enough to have done so. The only real question is whether Bush's Brain is stupid enough. [Update, Sept. 28: The CIA having now asked the Justice Department to investigate, McClellan says "it is simply not true" that Rove leaked the information.]

Published on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 by Democracy Now!
Does A Felon Rove The White House?
by Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill

Allegations are swirling that Karl Rove, senior political adviser to President George W. Bush, may have committed a felony by blowing the cover of a CIA operative. CIA Director George Tenet has called on the Justice Department to
investigate but the White House said Monday that "President George W. Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role." And what makes this story even more remarkable is how seriously the Bush family has viewed outing intelligence operatives in the past.

The man at the center of this firestorm is Joseph Wilson, the retired U.S. diplomat who debunked the White House's key evidence that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear program.

Two weeks ago Democracy Now! aired Wilson's comments before a suburban Seattle audience that he believes Bush's closest aide, Karl Rove, told reporters that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

At the forum Wilson declared, "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of White House in handcuffs." Wilson added, "And trust me when I use that name, I measure my words." Wilson told Democracy Now!, "I have reason to believe that it was the political office that at a minimum confirmed it and the political office was Karl Rove.It was a reporter who told me it was Karl Rove and that's as far as I want to go right now."

The whole scandal began in July a week after Wilson went public in an op-ed piece in the New York Times saying he was the diplomat sent by the Bush Administration to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from the African country. His findings: the accusations were baseless.

Wilson was not alone. The US ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, knew of the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq and had already debunked them in her reports back to Washington. Wilson's conclusions also coincided with those of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces four-star Marine Corps General, Carlton Fulford, who had also researched the matter on the ground in Niger. Wilson felt he had authoritatively debunked the Niger rumor and "the matter was settled."

But the lie refused to die. In January 2003, Bush made his famous 16 word line in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In July, soon after Wilson blew the whistle in The New York Times, the White House was forced to admit that the accusation should not have been included in the State of the Union. A few days later, conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote a column in which he cited "two senior administration officials" and stated that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative dealing with weapons of mass destruction. In an extensive interview on Democracy Now!, Wilson said that the outing of his wife as an alleged CIA operative and other attempts to discredit him "are clearly intended to intimidate others from coming forward."

But it's not just intimidation; it's a felony. Until now, a crime the Bush family has taken very seriously. According to Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst who worked under Bush Sr. at both the CIA and the White House, "The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was made draconian, it was made very, very specific, automatic penalties that would accrue to both officials and non-officials-anyone who knowingly disclosed the identity of a CIA agent or officer." The penalty: fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years.

Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee's blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company. George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.

So seriously did the Bushes take the crime of exposing CIA operatives that Barbara Bush, in her memoirs, accused Agee of blowing the cover of the CIA Station Chief in Greece, Richard Welch, who was assassinated outside his Athens residence in 1975. Agee sued the former first lady and Mrs. Bush withdrew the statement from additional printings of her book. Still, at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, the elder Bush again singled out Agee in his remarks, calling him "a traitor to our country."

David MacMichael worked as a CIA analyst at the time the law was passed. He told Democracy Now!: "If former President Bush could define Philip Agee as a traitor for exposing the identities of serving intelligence officers, if his son's political advisor has done the same.it is a very serious felony under the current Act."

(If in fact it was Karl Rove who leaked or authorized the leak to Novak, it won't be the first time the two have worked in tandem. According to Esquire, in 1992, Rove was fired from the Bush Sr. presidential campaign for leaking a negative story. The difference is, whoever authorized this leak, committed a felony.)

Rather than investigating who in the administration committed this alleged felony, the White House spent months dodging reporters' questions. "I'm telling you flatly, that is not the way this White House operates.No one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature," declared White House spokesperson Scott McClellan, careful legalistic language. Neither Bush nor Ashcroft has publicly called for an investigation.

And Vice President Dick Cheney's only public comments on Joe Wilson have been when questioned on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, "I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson" and "I have no idea who hired him." Cheney's comments strain credulity. While technically he may have never met Wilson, the investigation into Niger was done at the request of the vice president's office. Surely, Mr. Cheney learned of this, if not before the request was made, then after, when, as the Washington Post revealed, Cheney traveled repeatedly to the CIA during 2002.

"This is not unusual. This is unprecedented," retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Democracy Now! "The Vice President of the United States never during [my] 27 years came out to the CIA headquarters for a working visit.. this is like inviting money-changers into the temple."

While Cheney may not know Wilson, there is little doubt he knows of him. When Cheney was helping run the Persian Gulf War, as secretary of defense, Wilson was one of the key players. As the acting US ambassador on the ground in Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the war, the White House consulted Wilson daily. In those weeks, he was the only open line of communication between Washington and Saddam Hussein. Cheney was the Secretary of Defense at the time and a key player in the day-to-day operations and intelligence gathering. Furthermore, Wilson was formally commended by the Bush administration for his bravery and heroism in the weeks leading up to the war. In that time, Wilson helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, negotiated the release of more than 120 American hostages and sheltered nearly 800 Americans in the embassy compound.

"Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq," President Bush wrote Wilson in a letter. "The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."

Wilson says that he heard from people who were at meetings chaired by Bush in the lead up to the Gulf War, "When people would come up with an idea, George Bush would often lean forward and ask them, 'What does Joe Wilson say about that? What does Joe Wilson think about that?' So at the highest level of our government there was keen interest in knowing what the field was saying and Dick Cheney was probably at those meetings."

What's Cheney hiding? What's the White House hiding? There is a scandal brewing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that if treated properly by the Department of Justice and elected officials could prove to be one of the clearest cases of documentable criminal conduct and blatant lies by an administration since Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Research assistance for this article was provided by producers Mike Burke and Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Democracy Now! a daily national grassroots radio/tv newshour.

Bush's Brain

All About Carl Rove

See No Karl Hear No Karl

Click Here to See Karl Rove Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 1

Click Here to See Karl Rove Connections with Large Corporate Scandals part 2

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