• WH dep. CoS Karl Rove could face espionage charges rather than mere indictment under intelligence protection statues.

• Ex-Amb. Joe Wilson may have leaked wife Valerie Plame’s role in his Niger trip to friends in the Washington press.

• New York Times’ Judy Miller may have leaked the Wilson/Plame gossip to the WH.

• Or, Miller and the Times may be protecting another source, one unsympathetic to the WH.

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American Prospect: Blog Rolled

That most bloggers are not journalists is a given. That some are trained partisan operatives out to take scalps is not.

By Garance Franke-Ruta

During one especially hectic week in mid-February, the Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, a k a “Jeff Gannon,” to resign after it was revealed that he was writing under a false name for a Republican activist group (GOPUSA), that he was not really a journalist at all, and that he had posed nude on the Internet in an effort to solicit sex for money. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, created a firestorm after Eason Jordan, the chief news executive for CNN, made controversial remarks during an off-the-record panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting that the U.S. military had targeted journalists in war zones. Jordan was forced to resign. Finally, in Maryland, Joseph Steffen, a longtime aide to Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich, was fired after reporters exposed him as the author of e-mails and anonymous Web-site postings encouraging rumors about the marriage of Baltimore’s popular mayor, Martin O’Malley, a potential ‘06 challenger to Ehrlich.

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Buffalo News: Federal Funds Anticipated for Several Projects

By Thomas J. Prohaska and George Zornick

Money to restore the original Erie Canal locks to working condition and extend Meadow Drive in North Tonawanda is included in a federal transportation bill that passed a House of Representatives committee this week.

The bill also includes money to pay for a hiking and biking pathway along the rim of the Niagara River Gorge from Niagara Falls to Lewiston, and another helping of cash for the planned new passenger train station in Niagara Falls.

The money still has a long way to go before it reaches its destination. The bill needs to pass a floor vote in the House, likely next week, before working its way through the Senate and a probable conference committee between the two chambers. Only then will it reach President Bush’s desk.

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New York Times: Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name

By Katharine Seelye

Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

The Democrats, Representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Louise M. Slaughter from Rochester, wrote yesterday to Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent prosecutor appointed in the Plame case, seeking an investigation into how the reporter, James D. Guckert, who used the name Jeff Gannon, had access to classified documents that revealed the identity of Ms. Plame.

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