The Washington Post is reporting that White House Political Aide Karl Rove gave secret briefings to diplomats regarding top White House targets for the 2008 Election.

On Jan. 4, just after the 2006 elections tossed the Republicans out of congressional power, Rove met at the White House with six U.S. ambassadors to key European missions and the consul general to Bermuda while the diplomats were in Washington for a State Department conference.

According to a department letter to the Senate panel, Rove explained the White House views on the electoral disaster while Sara M. Taylor, then the director of White House political affairs, showed a PowerPoint presentation that pinned most of the electoral blame on "corrupt" GOP lawmakers and "complacent incumbents." One chart in Taylor's presentation highlighted the GOP's top 36 targets among House Democrats for the 2008 election.

On Rove's hit list where Representatives Nancy Boyda and Dennis Moore. With both of Kansas' Democratic legislators in Mr. Rove's sights, only three states have more targeted House seats.

But wait, how appropriate is it to brief Foreign Relations staff about political targets?

The briefings struck some former ambassadors as highly unusual.

"That just didn't happen. Frankly, I am shocked to hear it," said former senator James Sasser (D-Tenn.), who served as President Bill Clinton's ambassador to China in the late 1990s. "I'm one who strongly believes that politics ought to end at the water's edge."

Perhaps Mr. Rove and his staff should read up on the Hatch Act.