The official said the White House "is in panic mode," despite Monday's on-the-record briefing by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who played down any concern over the recent spate of GOP senators who have spoken out publicly in support of changing course in Iraq.

The Republican defections are seen as "a crack in the dike," according to the senior White House official, and National Security Adviser Steven Hadley is most concerned.

Karl Rove is allegedly concerned as well. Although you'd never know it from defiant speech like this:

Look, I make no apologies," Rove said in response to a question from the audience about whether he felt personally responsible for the war.

"It was the right thing to do. The world is better off with him gone," he said, referring to Saddam Hussein. "We all thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The whole world did. He didn't."

Rove has more to worry about than the war.

We just got off the phone with Tracy Schmaler, a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Democratic majority. Schmaler told us it is her understanding that — despite President Bush’s invocation of executive privilege in regards to the testimony of former White House staffers Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers about the ongoing U.S. Attorneys scandal — Taylor will still appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Sara Taylor used to be Rove's assistant. If her lawyer is telling her to defy the President and talk to Leahy...well...could be trouble.

Things are getting a little touch and go.

Both committees also issued subpoenas last month to White House chief of staff Josh Bolten or the "appropriate custodian of records" for documents relevant to the investigation, raising the question of whether Congress would seek to hold Bolten in contempt if the White House continued to refuse to hand them over.

When it rains it pours. If this wasn't bad enough, this Thursday Bush is going to issue an Iraqi progress report.

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

That will no doubt do nothing to staunch Stephen Hadley's great concern. Neither will the news that the DC Madame has released her client phonelists. Beltway divorce attorneys are turning cartwheels. This could be one of the ugliest scandals in Washington political history. Or...maybe not.

But it might help people not to notice that we've reached 4,000 dead soldiers in Iraq. Oh...Iraq. William Kristol has some advice for the President about Iraq:

The best strategy for the president is to hold firm. There is every reason to believe that he can survive the current calamity-Janes of the Republican party (does anyone really imagine that a veto-proof majority will form in the Senate this week or next?). This nonsense will pass, Congress will go on recess, and Petraeus will have a chance to continue to produce results--and the president and his allies will have a chance to gain political ground here at home. Why on earth pull the plug now? Why give in to an insane, irrational panic that will destroy the Bush administration and most likely sweep the Republican party to ruin? The president still has a chance to emerge from this as a visionary who could see what the left could not--but not if he gives in to them. There is no safety in the position some in the Bush administration are running towards.

'Destroy the Bush administration and most likely sweep the Republican party to ruin?'

That ship has left the port. Sane Republicans would start worrying less about their party and more about our country.