Over at AmericaBlog, they’re clicking their heels in the air at this Bloomberg report, announcing that “It’s confirmed, Bush rushed Supreme Court pick to get attention off of Rove.” The relevent passage:

Bush originally had planned to announce a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on July 26 or 27, just before his planned July 28 departure for a month-long vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, said two administration officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named.
The officials said those plans changed because Rove has become a focus of Fitzgerald’s interest and of news accounts about the matter.

Media Blog readers know that Bloomberg has given the NY Times a real run for its money for the most one-sided, anti-administration coverage of the Plame leak, and this story fits the pattern. My problem isn’t the claim that the media’s incessant harping on Rove partially motivated the timing of Bush’s Supreme Court pick. It’s probably true, and I don’t think it’s such a bad thing anyway. My problem isn’t even that, once again, reporters are using anonymous sources to spread political rumor and speculation. That’s obviously never going to change. My problem is that, like everything else the Bloomberg agency has put out about the Plame leak, the rest of the story reads like a DNC press release — dubious polls cited uncritically, Joe Wilson again portrayed as a victimized whistleblower, etc. It’s not a coincidence that Bloomberg has been the go-to source for news on the Plame leak for lefty bloggers.

UPDATE: I should clarify: I made a mistake in characterizing the Pew study referenced in the Bloomberg article as “dubious”. I should have said that the reporters cited the poll selectively to support their already preconceived hypothesis that Americans are intensely interested in the Rove controversy.

Forty-eight percent said they are paying either “very close” or “fairly close” attention to the story, the poll found. By comparison, only 29 percent of Americans said they were paying close attention to reports earlier this year that current House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had violated ethics rules by accepting travel from a lobbyist.

By that standard of comparison, it seems like Americans are paying close attention to this lame scandal. But the Pew study also found that — out of this month’s news events — the Karl Rove scandal ranked dead last, behind London, Iraq, Hurricanes and O’Connor’s retirement. So, my apologies. The poll just seemed dubious, the way Bloomberg quoted it.