The chatter that Rove may be indicted soon is getting louder, and as Dan noted yesterday, there’s even dates being bandied about. Everything suggests that if it happens, it will happen before the new year. Here we go again…

TODAY IN SPECULATION

* Byron York at the National Review sums up the state of the gossip thusly:

There have been rumors flying around Washington in the last few days that Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser, might soon be indicted in the CIA leak investigation. At least for now, the rumors appear to be based on someone hearing that someone else had heard something, or that someone had gotten a sense that something was about to happen and told someone else. Are there any facts to back up such gossip and guessing? No one seems to know.

But it is true that there is growing nervousness among people who support Rove’s side in the case. They know that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in addition to presenting some new evidence to a new federal grand jury, has also re-presented previously-gathered evidence to that grand jury. To most observers, that suggests Fitzgerald could be planning to indict someone.

* Over at Raw Story, the claim of the day is that Fitzgerald has long been suspicious that Rove hid evidence from investigators and perhaps destroyed documents — and that this makes it unlikely Rove will escape an indictment, although he may in the end be indicted on fewer counts than Fitzgerald once wanted to hit him with.

* And over at the federal courthouse in D.C., Fitzgerald is said to be presenting evidence to his new grand jury as we speak.

* Meanwhile, Robert Novak says he is “confident” Bush knows who originally leaked Plame’s identity. (Question: If this is true, has Bush shared this rather important piece of information with Fitzgerald? And more importantly: Why hasn’t he shared it with the public?)