Treason, no less. A leading Democrat, Rep. Henry Waxman, howls in Congress that "The intentional disclosure of a covert CIA agent's identity would be an act of treason. If Rove was part of a conspiracy and intentionally disclosed the name -- then that jeopardizes national security."

Liberal columnists like Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times join the Waxman chorus. But suppose one of the attractive Plame's covert missions, until outed by Rove, had been to liaise with Venezuelan right-wingers planning to assassinate president Hugo Chavez, possibly masquerading as a journalist to secure an audience with the ebullient Venezuelan president. In an earlier incarnation Scheer would surely have been only too happy to jeopardize national security by exposing Plame's true employer.

Thirty-eight years ago, Scheer was one of the editors of Ramparts, and in February of 1967, that magazine ran an expose of covert CIA funding of the National Student Association, prompting furious denunciations that it had endangered national security, which, from the foreign policy establishment's point of view, it most certainly had.

Is Karl Rove following in the fatal arrogance of his father figure, Richard Nixon?

Like his equally twisted mentor, Rove is an amoral, mean-spirited gutter fighter. Both share the crime of treason.

With a brutally effective blitzkrieg of dirty tricks, racist manipulation, character assassination and public deceit, Karl Rove has spent a lifetime avenging Richard Nixon's lasting shame.

But Watergate was small potatoes. Nixon's truly impeachable crime was his illegal attack on Cambodia, which sent millions to the killing fields. For that he should have been imprisoned forever, forced to face a 24/7 audio-visual wall blaring the screams of his innocent victims.

Nixon's actual treason came in the 1968 election. On Hubert Humphrey's behalf, Lyndon Johnson was on the brink of signing an October peace deal with North and South Vietnam. A cessation of hostilities would have defeated Nixon.

But Nixon's covert minions intervened. In direct violation of American and international law, the Nixon campaign offered the south Vietnamese a "better deal" if they would reject LBJ's peace overtures.

The tooth fairy, Santa Claus, WorldCom profits, the Easter Bunny, al-Qaeda.

The cruel, evil jerks who blew up the London subway last week, despite appropriating al-Qaeda's name for their website and T-shirts, have about as much to do with al-Qaeda as a Beatles tribute band has to do with the Fab Four.

For all the horror, hoopla and hair-pulling, this was no September 11. Timmy McVeigh slaughtered a heck of a lot more people in Oklahoma City with his cow-poop bomb.

I'm not belittling the heartbreaking hideousness of this crime, but let's get the facts straight. If al-Qaeda is the Panzer Division of terrorism, these London bombers were terrorism's Cub Scouts. We're talking a few pounds of nitro wired to a clock -- a design badly copied off the Internet.

A witness watched some Arabic-looking teenager nervously checking his bag on a bus which, London's un-hysterical police now believe, he accidentally triggered, blowing apart himself and a bunch of unlucky commuters.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Osama bin Laden cigarette lighter is adorned with his raised, chrome portrait, an embossed "9.11", sketches of the World Trade Center, an approaching airplane, and a big red splotch.

When you flick the sleek, metal lighter open, a light-emitting diode illuminates the splotch so it glows bright red on one of the buildings, emphasizing the first crash site.

Loud, computerized music beeps out a loop of Mozart.

Made in China -- as are many of the latest, gimmicky, Osama bin Laden souvenirs -- the butane lighter recently showed up in Cambodia.

"I paid two U.S. dollars for it, in the old Soviet market in Phnom Penh," a Canadian traveler, who asked not to be identified, said in an interview after visiting the Cambodian capital.

"One man's catastrophe is another man's cheesy souvenir. I bought three, for the novelty. I'll give them to people who would appreciate the irony that they even exist.

"When you open it, it plays a classical tune. It's quite freaky, eh?"

Members of the Progressive Ohio Backbone Campaign traveled to Hocking County on Monday morning, July 11, and filed an affidavit of fact alleging criminal conduct with the Hocking County Sheriff’s Department against the county’s Board of Elections (BOE) Director Lisa Schwartze.

Schwartze had previously admitted at the July 5 BOE meeting that she had used the office to promote a Republican Party fund-raiser last fall. The affidavit of fact alleging criminal conduct filed against Schwartze, however, does not to pertain to Schwartze’s use of the BOE office for partisan political fund-raising. Rather, the affidavit filed pertains to her alleged illegal shredding of election documents, the Free Press has learned.

Sherole Eaton, the fired Hocking County BOE deputy director and Congressional whistleblower, who swore an affidavit against a Triad company technician for allegedly offering a cheat sheet and replacing the county’s central voting tabulator hard drive during last year’s presidential recount, says that Schwartze may have destroyed up to “ten thousand documents.”

“I told her that she couldn’t shred and delete the changes of addresses