Karl Rove continues to skate by on his good looks and pleasant personality.

But outing a CIA agent is usually a pretty serious crime, I hear.

Lawrence O'Donnell is to be credited with going after this in a strong way. I keep looking at his column, and we all owe him for pushing this story further.

Unless someone starts doing some Watergating, Rove will walk away from all this unscathed. If the Newsweek article is our best indication, Rove will likely be found perjurious, at best.

The Rove machinery works better than our investigative reporting machinery and better than our justice machinery. Reporters know too much and don't make enough to pursue a scary Bush puppeteer like Rove. The justice system is going after two lesser known (than Novak) reporters, one of whom did not even go to print with his info. Meanwhile, the big guy who broke the story (Robert Novak) apparently is not significant. And the persons who actually outed Valerie Plame do not have the guts or honor to come forward to reveal their own identities, a move that could help two reporters from being sent to jail to for the crime of keeping their promises.

The machine that is winning is the one that Karl designed.

I am not a reporter. I do not live in Washington, D.C. I also do not have the guts to pursue Rove. In fact, I can be fairly certain that no one is even reading these lightweight commentaries.

Still, we must keep bleating at each other, keeping our memories fresh, and watching justice stagger ahead, by hook or by crook.