Throw ... GEORGE Under the Bus?

The Confidence Man has been watching the UAE-port-management scandal fairly closely.

And most inexplicable dimension to the scandal has been the apparent utterly potically tone-deaf response by the administration.

Now, W. digging in his heels and insisting that as God's Handmaiden, his choices are not to be first-guessed, let alone second guessed -- that's nothing out of the ordinary.

Likewise, to make hollow veto threats -- SOP for W.

But to totally not get the symbolism of the issue, and the mechanics of the political perceptions on the ground -- that's a shocker for the Rove machine.

The strategic answer at which the Confidence Man arrives is this: Rove has decided that it's time to throw W. under the bus.

With his approval numbers pretty much permanently stuck below 40% now (the only thing that would bump them up at this point, frankly, would be another Reichstag Fire, and that's a huge-risk/high-reward proposition) and his having radioactive coattails for the '06 midterms, W. himself is presenting as the greatest obstacle to Rove's putative 30-year/permanent-GOP-majority plan.

We've always known that Kreepy Unka Dick, as incompetent as he is, has nonetheless been the operatively indispensable element of the administration. Last week's shooting controversy has pretty much demonstrated that Dick runs the show and ain't going anywhere -- and recall that Dick has always been a much more solid chit with the American Taliban crowd than W. himself.

No, it looks to the Confidence Man that Rove has decided to get rid of W. -- not in the sense of actually kicking him out of the WH (although we have to say that it is looking more and more likely that Rove's been the one encouraging the Moonbat WashTimes/Insight impeachment-and-dissension-in-the-WH talk), but in the sense of unhitching the GOP's wagon from him. Rove will have the entire GOP running away from W. by May.

1 + 1 ... + 1

John Travolta in Blow Out: "And three people makes a conspiracy, right?"

The Confidence Man has of course been following the whoop-de-do over Unka Dick's postshooting interview with Bret Hume, and Dick's minor revelation that he has the power to summarily declassify government secrets.

The invaluable firedoglake has been putting 1 and 1 together with this revelation in light of Sc0ooter Libby's defense filing last week, in which Scooter's mouthpiece suggested that Scooter had been instructed or given permission to leak certain previously classified facts in the overall effort to discredit Plame and Wilson.

Now, here's where the third 1 comes into play: If, as we can clearly surmise from Dick's revelation and Scooter's allegation, that Dick Cheney himself declassified Plame's NOC status -- and as Patrick Fitzgeral;d has demonstrated in his filings thus far that there was a conspiracy to discredit Plame and Wilson -- then doesn't that detail itself definitively make Dick Cheney part of the conspiracy?

Reality Is Unconstitutional

The Confidence Man has been closely following the FISA-bility flap regarding the illegality of Bush's domestic wiretaps.

We were intrigued this morning to read Josh Marshall pointing to a potential Constitutional defense of Bush's actions: to wit, that if in fact wiretapping/surveillance powers are vested in the Presidency, then FISA itself may be Unconstitutional per se -- Congress illegitimately constraining the power of the President.

An interesting theory.

But it doesn't go far enough.

The Confidence Man would submit that REALITY ITSELF is inherently Unconstitutional. The President -- this President, in particular -- should be able to flap his wings and FLY should he so desire. Gravity and wind resistance -- and the entire theoretical apparatus that underlies these heretical obloquys -- represent not merely a sop to Our Enemies, but an encroachment onto the powers that rightfully devolve onto the highest office in This Land.