The Washington Post has obtained those emails and reports that they reveal contacts between Rove, Bush aides and White House lawyers about the firing of three of the nine federal prosecutors dismissed in 2006.  According to The Post, those prosecutors are “New Mexico’s David C. Iglesias, the focus of ire from GOP lawmakers; Missouri’s Todd Graves, who had clashed with one of Rove’s former clients; and Arkansas’s Bud Cummins, who was pushed out to make way for a Rove protégé.”

Rove had previously described himself as “merely passing along complaints by senators and state party officials to White House lawyers.”

Rove yesterday finished his second day of closed-door testimony to the committee — testimony that was negotiated after he and former White House counsel Harriet Miers had refused to testify, and the House sued to compel their testimony. As part of the negotiation, transcripts of their testimony could be released in August.

Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy is still investigating whether the apparently politically motivated firings could warrant any criminal charges.

The Justice Dept. internally investigated how the White House/Justice Dept. decided which U.S. attorneys were considered disloyal to the Republican Party and should be dismissed. But it didn’t look at the corollary: Did prosecutors avoid dismissal by prioritizing the wishes of GOP lawmakers and state Republican parties?

Justice Dept. Inspector General Glenn Fine said that it was certainly a possibility, and that the Department’s Office of Personal Responsibility is investigating what may have been politically motivated prosecutions by U.S. attorneys.

The most prominent of these possible cases involves former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

Davis has been a leading critic of that prosecution, suggesting that none other than Karl Rove pressured Alabama U.S. Attorney Leura G. Canary to re-open the probe of Siegelman. U.S. attorneys in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have also been investigated for politically tinged prosecutions.

Beyond evoking the Siegelman case, Davis raised another point: “Virtually anyone can say they were politically targeted,” Davis said at the hearing. “Almost everyone on this side of the aisle (meaning Democrats) has been getting phone calls saying, ‘I’m being prosecuted because I’m a Democrat.’”

According to Davis, every federal prosecutor is now– fairly or not– susceptible to having their credibility questioned.

This could, of course, be cleared up if the White House revealed they prosecutors they actually spoke with.

It appears the committee may have just stumbled upon a bipartisan solution: pardon Rove.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) asked Fine whether a pardon of Rove by George W. Bush would preclude Rove from testifying before the committee.

Fine gave her a quizzical look and said he hadn’t considered that hypothetical, but that, no, that shouldn’t prevent him from testifying.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) then pounced on the idea, saying that if all the committee wants is the truth, it should encourage the president to pardon Rove, and then he can talk. He compared a pardon with immunity for a witness who testifies in a criminal trial.

This is probably just a blip on the screen in the ongoing U.S. attorney scandal. But it’s interesting that Issa, a critic of the committee’s investigation, would seek out a pardon of Rove, when the “boy genius” has yet to be charged with a crime (besides contempt of Congress).

It’s also interesting that a presidential pardon of Miers and Rove is in the realm of possibility. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t pardon the key players of Iran-Contra when he left office.