Newsbusters shows that ABC is jumping off the “Rovian Conspiracy” bandwagon:

“ABC’s World News separated itself from the media pack Thursday night. Though ABC’s coverage was keyed to how e-mails supposedly show that Karl Rove was at ‚Äúthe center‚Äù of early 2005 discussions about replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys, anchor Charles Gibson pointed out how ‚Äúthese U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them at any time. So did anything really get done that was wrong?‚Äù Jan Crawford Greenburg answered, in a broadcast network evening newscast first, by informing viewers of how ‚ÄúPresident Clinton, in fact, fired all the U.S. attorneys when he came into office from the previous Republican administration.‚Äù

I know, I know, the classically clueless left says, “Not the same, Clinton did it at the beginning of his first four years, not like Bush who illegally did it in his second term!!”

Well that will soon be out the window when we reveal the other 30 Rove talked about. But for now, via Newsbusters here the transcript beginning with Charles Gibson asking:

“The Bush administration launched a new defense of its controversial decision to fire a handful of U.S. attorneys without making the reasons immediately clear. Today top White House aide Karl Rove said several of the prosecutors had been fired because they did not make administration policy their top priority. And he said the critics are motivated by politics.”

Karl Rove, before a group in Alabama: “Now, we’re at a point where people want to play politics with it. And that’s fine. I would simply ask that everybody who’s playing politics with this be asked to comment about what they think about the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration, and see if they had the same superheated political rhetoric then that they’re having now.”

Gibson: “What Rove didn’t say but we now know from White House e-mails released just tonight is that Karl Rove was more involved in the firing of U.S. attorneys than the administration has previously acknowledged. ABC legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg joins me now from Washington. Jan, I had a chance to read this e-mail that you first learned about today, and it does show that a lot of people at the White House, very early on, were discussing the firing of U.S. attorneys, including Rove, but do they show there was political motivation involved?”

Jan Crawford Greenburg, a former Chicago Tribune Supreme Court reporter who recently joined ABC News: “Well, the emails that were released tonight show that Rove was at the center of these discussions from the beginning along with Alberto Gonzales. These emails took place a month before Gonzales was confirmed as the Attorney General. Now, Rove was asking whether any decisions had been made about whether to fire the U.S. attorneys, whether they should just target certain ones, so these emails show he was in on that from the beginning.”

Gibson: “But to come back to the point the White House makes, was anything necessarily wrong? These U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them at any time. So did anything really get done that was wrong?”

Greenburg: “Well, that’s exactly right. And President Clinton, in fact, fired all the U.S. attorneys when he came into office from the previous Republican administration. Of course, a President can fire U.S. attorneys when he chooses. The problem for the White House now and the Justice Department is that these e-mails seem to suggest the White House, at least that’s what Democratic Senators are saying tonight, the White House hasn’t been forthcoming with how this whole plan began, and they show that Rove was in on it from the beginning.”

Here’s a bug for those on the clueless left - the administration doesn’t have to tell anyone why they fire someone who serves at the expressed pleasure fo the President.

It didn’t matter if Rove showed Powerpoints with bubble-graphs, or even bulls-eyes for that matter. He’s a “Presidential Adviser” and such gives advise to the President. It didn’t matter if he recommended (nothing says he did, but for the sake of argument) that the whole crop of US Attorneys be dusted, it’s the right of the President to fire whom he chooses.

And spare me the “political purposes”, hell what was Clinton’s complete purge, gas from a Big Mac?