I’m back from vacation and surprised anyone believed the alleged scoop about Karl Rove’s indictment, which was posted on the left-wing website Truthout.org by disgraced journalist Jason Leopold. Predictably, it’s been retracted, though Truthout’s “partial apology” is a mishmash of cant:

On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, “Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators.” The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story’s title.

The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it.

As such, we will be taking the wait-and-see approach for the time being. We will keep you posted.

Marc Ash, Executive Director – t r u t h o u t

Here’s a hint to all you Rove indictment watchers out there: When someone posts claims that would be huge national news on a website that specializes in reprinting other publications’ articles under the guise of “fair use,” it means they’re likely to be bogus.

But the whole fiasco did provide an occasion for Robert Luskin, Karl Rove’s attorney, to get off a good line to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz at Leopold’s expense (via Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web):

Robert Luskin, Karl Rove’s lawyer, says he spent most of the day on May 12 taking his cat to the veterinarian and having a technician fix his computer at home.

He was stunned, therefore, when journalists started calling to ask about an online report that he had spent half the day at his law office, negotiating with Patrick Fitzgerald — and that the special prosecutor had secretly obtained an indictment of Rove.

The cat’s medical tests, Luskin says, found that “the stools were free of harmful parasites, which is more than I can say for this case.”