Amorphous Mound wire story

I wrote this back in July as an email to some friends, during the whole Karl Rove death-watch as he went to and from Fitzgerald grillings. The whole thing just made me wonder, how obscene and obvious would someone's transgressions have to be before the White House could bring itself to fire them? It seemed like even if the White House had hired an evil blob of protoplasm as an aide, they would proceed as if everything were normal and tell everyone to just look the other way.

I laughed a lot when I wrote it, but it was late and I was pretty punchy.
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Friday July 15, 6:27 pm

White House Mum on Amorphous Mound

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- For the fifth consecutive day, an amorphous, fleshy mound of pulpy human viscera that has quietly served in the White House for three years declined to take questions from reporters.

The mound, a shifting blob of bone-shards, cartilage and fetid organ matter whose purpose is unknown, deferred questions to the White House press office, which said it could not comment while a federal probe into the amorphous mound was continuing.

While officials were uncharacteristically silent on the matter, the amorphous mound was seated prominently behind President Bush at a Cabinet Room photo opportunity -- a gesture the White House typically uses to signal its loyalty to embattled aides. Evening news programs showed the mound just past Bush's right shoulder, seething and roiling audibly in its chair.

Later, the mound accompanied a group of officials onto a waiting helicopter on the South Lawn, shivering and crackling as steam escaped from bubbling fissures in its red, mottled surface. As reporters shouted out questions, the mound gestured upward to the helicopter's rotor as if it could not hear them.

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman yesterday called the spate of mound-related inquiries by Democrats "the basest form of partisanship."

"We are a nation at war," Mehlman said. "This entity, whatever it may actually be, has the full confidence of the president." He urged reporters to "take a long, hard look in the mirror.... There is no story here."

Democrats on the House Science Committee last week attempted to hold a hearing on the nature of the mound, but were denied room space by Republicans who called the request "a fishing expedition." The Democrats nonetheless staged their event at a card table set up in the parking lot of the Rayburn Building

(c) 2005 Reuters Inc.