Business As Usual

Slate runs down the awfulness of Bush's latest read, the aforementioned Andrew Robert's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.

The meeting at the White House that took place with the klatch of right wing nut jobs in attendance, listening to this flatulence and nodding their heads eagerly smacks of nothing so much as Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

Even Bush's throw away line at the correspondents dinner last night is illuminating. He said: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers." Think about that. We're still untangling the web of half-truths that the justice department has spun, still coming to grips with the facts surrounding the case, and Bush has reached his conclusion. It is not the act that was in any way wrong, only the execution. They botched it, that's all. No appreciation of the fact that the highest law enforcement office in the country was compromised by petty partisanship, and lied to cover the fact that Rove and Bush replaced AGs around the country for not supporting their political agenda. Hubris defined.

Remember that I pointed out earlier in the week that John Yoo said:

Unless there are more clear facts of interference with prosecutors for partisan purposes, Mr. Gonzales should keep his job.

Get ready folks, the party line will be laid out by Kyle Sampson when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Namely that partisan purposes are inextricable from performance issues when it comes to the firings, and that if in fact the President and Karl Rove felt that the AGs in question were not supporting the Bush political agenda, then their firings can be justified. It's the conclusion of the same spin cycle that they've used every time they've been accused of wiping their asses with the Constitution. Abu Ghraib, FISA, signing statements, national security letters, and now this.

1. It didn't happen
2. If it did happen, we didn't know about it.
3. We concede you have the evidence proving that we knew about it, but we don't remember.
4. Although we don't concede that we remember, if we did remember, we did it to protect us from the terrorists.
5. We are completely within our rights to do what we said we didn't do at the outset.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.