It seems Code Pink really got under Karl Rove's skin because he lashed out at FOX & Friends for bringing up the issue to him.

Fox News contributor Karl Rove directed some unfriendly fire at the hosts of "Fox and Friends" this weekend when the show's anchors decided to ask Rove to respond to protesters who disrupted the former top Bush adviser's book tour.

"This is sad, you people are recycling stuff that happened three to four weeks ago, this is a small blemish on what was a great trip," Rove said when asked about members of the group Code Pink who showed up at a March 30 book signing in Beverly Hills, Calif., called Rove a "war criminal" and brandished handcuffs.

"It was a blemish," he insisted, adding that there were no such incidents at other stops on his book tour.

"Please don't paint this as much a sign of anything," he continued. "These are sort of sad and pathetic people ... Can you imagine being some kind of nut wandering around with handcuffs? Let's not give them any more attention."

The Code Pink protesters have proven to be a thorn in Rove's side at several stops on the tour to promote his book "Courage and Consequence."

Wow, Rove bashing his own people. Hey Karl. It was news and you have to deal with it. It's not Jodie Evan's fault that Rove served under Bush when he attacked a country that didn't attack us and lies were used to sell America on a war with Iraq after 9/11. America is still angry about this issue, but Rove would like nothing more than to sweep it under the rug with all the other deceptions he used during the Bush administration.

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The bobbleheads sure are doing their part in the Bush Magical Legacy Rehabilitation Tour. First we have the mysterious "Miss me yet?" billboard, then Tweety "Doesn't he look yummy in a flight suit?" Matthews asks if the nation will feel "nostalgia" for Bush with his memoir coming out, and every time you turn around there's a Bushie or a Cheney promoting the failed policies that saw Bush leave office with a record disapproval rating. Talk about a disconnect--or maybe it's just willful misinformation. There are no Americans wishing back for the days of the Bush presidency, for crissakes. We're still scarred from it, why would Americans want to open those wounds again?

Whichever way you want to categorize it, there is nothing more ludicrous and absent of facts than Kathleen Parker insisting that Bush has acted "nobly" since leaving office.

Is that right?

So is criticizing his successor not once, but twice--even after saying that the new Commander-in-Chief "deserved his silence", noble? Don't forget one was when he went to a foreign country--his speech in Calgary, Canada--and took thinly veiled swipes at Obama, saying that the two month old presidency harkened back to Hoover?

Is saying that Jimmy Carter "made his life miserable" noble?

Bush's post-presidency life has been fairly low-profile, especially in comparison to his ever-present and compulsively vocal vice president. He's made a few paid speeches, wrote his memoirs (which garnered him a comparatively small advance--perhaps a better indicator of how much Bush is expected to be missed by the American people) and worked on his fundraising for his library housed at SMU, whose primary purpose appears to be to rehab his legacy, much to the consternation of the staff there:

Their objections stem from the fear that the Bush center will act like a private think tank for neoconservative ideologues. “They get the cover of a university without having to play by its rules,” says Benjamin Johnson, an associate professor of history whose Bush Library Blog detailed the controversy at its height, between 2007 and 2008. The plans for the Bush institute sailed through S.M.U.’s administration, however, with the help of people like Ray Hunt, the oilman and longtime Bush supporter and friend, who is on the university’s board of trustees.

“We’re not going to have any of the usual controls over teaching and research hires and reviews,” complains Johnson. “My concerns have actually been heightened by the collapse of the Bush administration because it seems to me he and his circle are intent on rehabilitating him, and he is held in such disrepute by so many people across the country and the planet. I’m afraid this is going to be the main vehicle by which they try and rehabilitate their reputation.”

And by no measure, Kathleen Parker, can that be considered a noble effort.

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I spent all day traveling yesterday, so I wasn't able to get this up, bu Darcy Burner's keynote speech at Netroots Nation on Saturday night was classic Darcy: concise, but compelling. Especially the heart of the speech:

So President Clinton -- how many of you were here for President Clinton's speech the other night? -- President Clinton did something very interesting in his speech. He delivered two fundamentally contradictory messages. He said, support the health-care legislation no matter what it is. That was one message he sent that he delivered quite clearly. But the other message that he delivered was that "Don't ask, don't tell" became policy even though he knew it was the wrong thing, because, he said, we didn't support him and make him do the right thing. That second message, that we have to make our leaders do the right thing was raw and true.

We can't rely on people in authority to make everything right. We have got to do the hard work of governing. It's our job as Americans. It's our obligation. And to be perfectly blunt, I consider it my obligation for Henry.

The vehicle we have for change is the people we have elected, and we have done, collectively, a tremendous job of electing people to office in this country. We have taken back the House, we have taken back the Senate, we have taken the presidency of the United States.

But that is just the beginning of the battle. There are a lot of people -- mostly not the people in this room, but a lot of people who thought that was sufficient and have stopped. We have to help the people that we have elected. And to be perfectly blunt, we have been asked to.

I have been working for the past several months with the Congressional Progressive Caucus -- eighty-three of the most progressive members of the United States House and the United States Senate -- and the message that I get from them consistently is: "We are doing everything in our power to make a difference. But we have to have the support of the grassroots. We need the grassroots helping to frame the message, we need the grassroots applying pressure."

In the health-care debate that's going down right now, the Congressional Progressive Caucus did something absolutely revolutionary in March -- which is that in March Congressman Raul Grijalva, the newly elected co-chair of the caucus, whipped the progressive members of the caucus and got enough of the members to say, "We will not support any piece of health-care legislation that doesn't include a public option."

That the progressives were able to then send a letter to President Obama and to Nancy Pelosi and to Steny Hoyer saying, "Guess what? You want health-care legislation? It isn't the Blue Dogs you need to be worrying about. You need to talk to progressives, because we are drawing the line, and we are not going to back down."

The next day I heard it being bandied about that Darcy suggested caving on the public option. As I told my friends, that wasn't what I heard. And if you watch the video, I don't think it's what you'll hear either.

[Video from Sum of Change. Mine sucked.]