When presidents begin their lame-duck lap, top advisers are often the first to flee. And lo, it came to pass last week that President Bush found himself in the Holy Land without his Karl Rove.

WASHINGTON - Republicans are nervously watching the fight over Karl Rove's involvement in a news leak that exposed a CIA officer's identity, fearing that President Bush's chief adviser has become a major political problem.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

WASHINGTON - The White House is suddenly facing damaging evidence that it misled the public by insisting for two years that presidential adviser Karl Rove wasn't involved in leaking the identity of a female CIA officer.

WASHINGTON - Chief presidential adviser Karl Rove testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of an undercover CIA officer but that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources, according to a person briefed on the testimony.

WASHINGTON - Top White House aide Karl Rove arrived at the federal courthouse Wednesday for his fifth grand jury appearance in the Valerie Plame affair.

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove won't be indicted Friday as prosecutors and his lawyers try to resolve questions in the CIA leak investigation, two people close to Rove told The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON - White House political mastermind Karl Rove surrendered a key policy role Wednesday and press secretary Scott McClellan resigned in an escalation of a Bush administation shake-up driven by Republican anxieties.

Democrats will lose even more congressional seats two years from now, former George W. Bush political aide Karl Rove predicted Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - Presidential adviser Karl Rove blamed the war in Iraq on Monday for dragging down President Bush's job approval ratings in public opinion polls. "People like this president," Rove said. "They're just sour right now on the war."

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove testified for the fourth time Friday before the grand jury in the CIA leak probe, following public disclosure of his conversations with two reporters about the identity of a covert officer at the spy agency.

WASHINGTON - Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation.

The White House finally caught a break on scandals. Thanks to the uproar over former GOP Rep. Mark Foley’s steamy e-mails, the departure of a top aide to White House political guru Karl Rove passed, as planned, almost unnoticed.

WASHINGTON - White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told President Bush and others that he never engaged in an effort to disclose a CIA operative's identity to discredit her husband's criticism of the administration's Iraq policy, according to people with knowledge of Rove's account in the investigation.

WASHINGTON - Top White House aide Karl Rove has been told by prosecutors he won't be charged with any crimes in the investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity, his lawyer said Tuesday, lifting a heavy burden from one of President Bush's most trusted advisers.

Freed from the threat of indictment, President Bush’s political swami, Karl Rove, was on the road and on the attack again.

“In regards to (Chandler police Sgt.) Tom Lovejoy leaving his police dog in the vehicle, I do believe that we all need to see that people do make mistakes. He had worked a double-shift and had everything else going on. Tell me out there, do you ever forget to do something?”

WASHINGTON - Two key White House aides await their fate in the CIA leak probe, after a prosecutor spent three hours before a grand jury that could hand up indictments and rock the Bush administration.

The continued belief among conservative radicals that President Obama conducted an “apology” tour early in his administration proves that these people are not really interested in the truth.

They say in Washington that no one’s indispensable, but for the Bush White House Karl Rove comes close. Now, in another blow the White House didn’t really need, Rove has announced that he is resigning at the end of the month and returning to Texas.

“...for the President to perform his constitutional duties, it is imperative that he receive candid and unfettered advice and that free and open discussions and deliberations occur among his advisors and between those advisors and others within and outside the Executive Branch.”

From a military outlook, the odds of apprehending Osama bin Laden looked good as soon as his complicity in the 9/11 attacks was established. This optimism began to fade after I watched the Bush Administration stumble over the months and years. After I watched the inept spectacle at Tora Bora, I was fairly certain that the Bush Administration would never come back with bin Laden's head in a sack. We've had some spectacularly incompetent generals and politicians over the last nine years.