Will the last person in the Bush White House please turn off the lights?

The Svengali of the Beltway… the King of the Swamp… the head rat of the sinking ship… Karl Rove is resigning.

According to an interview in the Wall Street Journal (new motto: “Now with more right-wing”) Karl Rove is resigning as White House Supreme Commander Deputy COS effective Aug. 31 in order to, as usual, spend more time with his family… though it’s anyone’s best guess if they want to spend time with him.

Rove’s resignation is a major turning-point for the Bush(whacked) Administration as one of the most polarizing figures in this White House leaves and, as the WSJ article states, signals the “effective end of the lame duck administration's role in shaping major domestic policy decisions.” (Not that it was doing that well with Rove involved anyway…)

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “Obviously it’s a big loss to us. He’s a great colleague, a good friend, and a brilliant mind. He will be greatly missed.”

During the interview, Rove couldn’t help himself and had to offer his opinions on just about everything, saying that he expects the Democrats to give the 2008 presidential nomination to Sen. Clinton (whom he described as "a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate – hello kettle, this is the pot; you’re black) and that republicans have “a very good chance” to hold onto the White House in next year's elections… (not unless Ronald Reagan comes back from the dead to run…) Rove also expects Bush's approval rating to rise again, that conditions in Iraq will improve as the U.S. military surge continues and that Democrats will become divided this fall in the battle over warrantless wiretapping.

Never mind that his prognostications have lately been WAY, WAY off… the most glaring being his declaration on NPR about a week before the midterm elections that there would be “a republican Senate and republican House” when, back here on planet earth, the Democrats won both the House and the Senate in 2006…

And lest Rove think he’s getting away with something; his resignation will NOT help him avoid Congressional investigation as Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy issued a statement today vowing to continue the investigation into Rove's involvement in the prosecutor purge.

Stay tuned, this could get interesting…