Why Wasn't Karl Rove Indicted? Good Question, Indeed.

When a football game is over, there is a winner and a loser. It's all over but the nightly sports wrap-up, and then it's on to the next game.

That's roughly how the mainstream media treated the announcement by Karl Rove's attorney that the man who helped expose a CIA operative who tracked the illicit transfer of Weapsons of Mass Destruction, that this man -- Rove -- would not be indicted.

The terse statement by Rove's attorney allowed the Washington Post to quickly restore Rove to the Pantheon of Bush advisers, all the time puffing up his status and reputation.

Of course, someone should remind the writers of the Post's front page story that although Rove is apparently not going to be legally indicted in PlameGate, he was clearly involved in leaking classified information that endangered the national security of the United States. He also initially lied -- as in committed perjury -- to Department of Justice Attorneys.

But, remember this: the questions as to why Rove wasn't indicted linger like the raw stench of sewage.

Did he decide to cooperate with Fitzgerald, with the understanding that Rove's turning state's evidence won't be revealed until Libby's trial -- which is after the mid-term elections? Rove is a master of delaying incriminating news until after an election. This, however, is only one speculative possibility.

There is also the chance that Fitzgerald didn't have a strong enough case for perjury. A former Time Magazine reporter, Victoria Novak (no relation to "traitor" Bob) tipped Rove's lawyer to the fact that Time reporter Matt Cooper had testified that Rove had told him about Valerie Plame. Rove's lawyer then had his client voluntarily return to the Grand Jury, his memory "refreshed," to indicate that he had previously forgotten the Cooper conversation. Novak's leak to Rove's attorney was the key link, possibly, to getting Novak off the hook.

But then there is a far more ominous speculative possibility.

That is that Fitzgerald was stymied in his efforts to indict Rove by higher ups in the Department of Justice. Since Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate Plamegate, the Assistant Attorney General who gave him independent powers within the DOJ has left. A far more partisan man replaced him -- and that man would be more likely to put subtle pressure on Fitzgerald, at the request of Alberto "Bush Consigliere" Gonzales, were they able to get away with it without being exposed themselves.

The only way that we would know if this took place would be if Fitzgerald went public with it. That would take quite an act of courage, and likely mean the practical end of the entire investigation and Fitzgerald's career in the Justice Department.

Are we saying that Fitzgerald was told to back off a Rove indictment?

No, we have no firm indication of that whatsoever. But, we took note of the possibility laid out on one blog -- and, well, it is a possibility after all, isn't it? But, like all things in the Bush Administration, we are left only with various hypotheses about why Rove wasn't indicted.

Only Patrick Fitzgerald knows for sure.

And, right now, he's not talking.

The guy is a professional to the core -- unlike loose lips Ken Starr.

We respect him for that.