Dana Milbank -- DiIulio Saga Highlights Primacy Placed on Secrecy (washingtonpost.com)

The irony of DiIulio's recantation is he wound up rewarding an information control system he decried in his now-infamous e-mail to an Esquire magazine writer. "Bush staff, not just senior political adviser Karl Rove, came from Texas tightly knit and hyper-determined to protect the president and prevent the types of internal policy debates that beget bad press," he wrote in the e-mail. "They staffed and organized themselves accordingly, thereby limiting leaks -- but also eliminating efforts to devise social welfare initiatives in accordance with the president's compassion vision."

These are heady times for Rove and the political aides who have been quite successful at limiting scrutiny of White House operations.