Seminal Summer

CBS' Dotty Lynch: Normally A Snooze, This Summer's Stories Have Legs For Fall

(CBS)  6) Karl Rove and the CIA Leak
We now know that Karl Rove was a source in the CIA leak case, although we don’t know if he will be indicted, let alone convicted. And if he is convicted, will President Bush, who has gone out of his way to support him, decide he needs him so much that he will pardon him? The Grand Jury runs out in October and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is up for reappointment just about then. We expect to know a lot in the next few weeks. We may even know why Judy Miller is in jail.

7) Republicans 2008 — the two H’s
While most of the insider speculation about Republicans for the ’08 Presidential race has focused on John McCain, George Allen and Rudy Giuliani, two long shots got a fair amount of national media attention this summer. Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a serious thinker on foreign policy, broke from the Bush administration on Iraq. And, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another man from Hope, received a lot of play for his book on obesity, “Quit Digging Your Grave With A Knife And Fork.” He now heads the National Governors Association and plans to make health initiatives his hallmark.

8) Another H — that would be Hillary
The left is starting to get annoyed with her but, all in all, she has had a rather successful summer. Arianna Huffington, who has started a rather successful blog, has been after Clinton on her timidity on the Iraq war for a while. She, like less well known bloggers on the left, are keeping up the drumbeat on Clinton to speak out.

But Clinton dodged some big bullets. Ed Klein’s book “The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President," was supposed to sink her presidential chances. However, it was widely discredited — even by some prominent conservatives — as being poorly sourced.

Clinton’s former finance director, David Rosen, was found not guilty on a charge that he cooked the books to hide the cost of a fundraiser. And, while the Republicans were successful in recruiting their dream candidate, Westchester District Attorney Jeanne Pirro, to run against Clinton for Senate, Pirro’s campaign kick-off was a disaster. Most of the press was about her husband, who served time in prison for cheating on his taxes and who had fathered a child out of wedlock. Then there was her gaffe during her speech when she uttered “Where’s page 10?” and was stopped in her tracks during her opening press conference. However, Pirro is a tough cookie and could make the race interesting.

9) The State of Ohio
Ohio Republicans were preening so much for their success in putting George Bush back in the White House that they may have forgotten some housekeeping details. This summer, Gov. Bob Taft became the first Ohio governor convicted on criminal charges. Taft pleaded no contest to four counts that he violated ethics rules by failing to report 52 golf outings, diners and other entertainment gifts. Two of the golf trips were from Tom Noe, a Toledo Republican fundraiser and rare coin dealer who is at center a larger scandal involving the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, which invested approximately $50 million in rare coins through Noe. Investigators have found $10 million to $13 million were missing.

Democrats are scurrying to find strong candidates to run for all statewide offices, though Republican Sen. Mike DeWine still looks like he will be hard to beat. Charges of corruption have made Republican Rep. Bob Ney a target of Democrats for his association with indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

10) William Rehnquist
Rehnquist may have pulled off greatest surprise of the summer by staying put while Sandra Day O’Connor announced her resignation. “It’s for me to know and you to find out,” was all he would say about his possible resignation. But with John Roberts’ confirmation appearing to be mostly a matter of how large the "yes" vote will be, the new parlor game is how it will impact the next fight and whether Roberts will be named chief justice.

We’ll take a look at this list in a few months to see what we missed and just how strong these legs turned out to be.