George Bush publicly stated this week that anybody in his administration who's convicted of a crime, as in the case of Valerie Plame Wilson's outing as a CIA operative, will no longer be part of his administration. In other words fired.

In a New York Times article Elaine Kaplan, formerly of the Federal Office of Special Counsel, commented on the threshold federal employees are held to when allegations concerning the divulgence of classified information is involved: "Government employees and officials who are negligent with classified information can lose their jobs for carelessness. They don't have to be convicted of intentionally disseminating the information. Crime has never been the threshold. That's not the standard that applies to rank-and-file federal employees. They can be fired for misconduct well short of a crime."

Karl Rove will survive this one because his boss' loyalty to him outweighs national security interest.

George Bush's well documented strengths, friendship and loyalty, are in this case his achilles heel.