WASHINGTON - A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a mad scramble by Cheney to find the next patsy after Scooter.

The present White House is begining to look like the Nixon White House after Watergate.

Bush had sought to avoid the "media spectacle" that would result from his closest aid being questioned by Congress and failing to tell the truth that Bush and Cheney organized the whole thing.

The committee rejected Bush's offer a day earlier to have his aides talk privately to a lamppost in the lawn outside Congress, not under oath and not on the record.

Rove said he is beginning to get that lonely feeling experienced by Scooter when he was hung out to dry.