Is Karl Rove losing it?

Given his shrill, nutty letter to MSNBC's Dan Abrams, one has to wonder if indeed Karl Rove is approaching the edge.

Rove fired off his missive after Don Siegelman appeared on Abrams' The Verdict and said Rove's "fingerprints were all over" the former Alabama governor's prosecution. Naturally, Rove has refused to appear on the Abrams program and answer questions himself.

But he sure can castigate the MSNBC host in a letter, which can be read here.

Melissa, at Left in Alabama, has an amusing take on Rove's fragile mental state. But she also provides links to articles that provide important background on Turd Blossom's nasty tendencies.

Mark Crispin Miller, of News From Underground, was looking for some perspective on Rove's letter. So he contacted Scott Horton, of Harper's, who has been a leading chronicler of the political nature of the Siegelman case and other prosecutions under the Bush Justice Department.

Horton's response? Here it is:

Rove has been described to me by several of my GOP sources in Alabama as being in a state of panic. He has been pressing senior Alabama GOP figures to speak out for him and to attack me and Jill Simpson, as well as CBS and MSNBC. But they're keeping quiet, which shows more political smarts than Rove, frankly. Of course Rove has a simple objective here. He wants to know all the underlying evidence that has been accumulated to make a case against him and he's desperate to know it before he speaks any more about it. Which is precisely why CBS, MSNBC and others will keep things close to the vest.

But just to show you how ridiculous his tantrum is, he asks how I "know" he was involved in strategizing and fundraising. Of course he wants the names of my sources in Alabama so he can have them pressured and pilloried. But his involvement is established just by looking at the White House website. The key fundraising event of the campaign was the July 15, 2002 fundraiser for Riley in Birmingham - it brought in $4 million. It was arranged by Karl Rove, working closely with Bill Canary. President Bush was the featured draw. How can he deny he was involved in fundraising and strategizing? The very effort is absurd.

The evidence linking him to the use of the Siegelman case as a technique is of course thinner. That's because this is a felony, and those involved in it are not going to speak voluntarily. Which is why his denial should be under oath and subject to crossexamination, just as Jill Simpson's was.