[Posted with permission from Deep Harm at ePluribus Media/Daily Kos]
As the Bush administration enters its final six months, truthtellers in government positions should take care: government officials will be tempted to sweep their agencies clean of evidence and whistleblowers before a new administration takes over.

Already, the Bush administration has issued a new executive memo allowing government agencies to conjure up their own penalties for disclosing information covered by a new, broad and poorly defined controls on information  (thanks, smintheus). It's a bad portent of things to come.
Saving truthtellers and restoring government integrity depends on proposed legislation that would give whistleblowers badly-needed protections; legislation that is now stalled.

America is looking for a leader who inspires us, someone who can rebuild our trust in government and our good name worldwide. Barack Obama is drawing both young and old out of the woodwork and into the Primary election. Progressives see a path to change and are poised to invigorate politics in ways we haven't seen since the 1960s. But can we sustain the current "Barack the Vote" progress and keep the attention of our youth when pitted against the likes of pop culture movie stars and idols that dominate our news? Will the "Yes We Can" movement last long enough to carry us through the elections next fall?

This year there is more at stake than just the U.S. presidency. We have a potentially historic opportunity to take back the Senate and fire all the Bush-policy rubber-stamping obstructionists in Congress. If Democrats, Independents & progressives want to win the 2008 presidency and, more importantly, achieve a landslide takeover of Congress, Democrats need a candidate who doesn't have cultural/religious/ideologi cal baggage the GOP can use to rouse their conservative religious base. Both Clinton and Obama have issues the GOP will exploit. Why is it that the fake-morality minority continually out-votes progressives? Because fear and hate are greater motivators than desire for positive change. The GOP is well aware of that dynamic and uses the fear of gays and anger about legal abortions to motivate their conservative fundamentalist base. Meanwhile, the left rarely uses its majority political clout to ensure the country is run the way we want it to be run.

President Bush has been uncharacteristically quiet on the subject of an embarrassing incident involving the Secret Service, which has yet to receive a public attaboy similar to those he gave Michael Brown and Donald Rumsfeld. The reason, perhaps, is that this time, the failure struck close to home. The Guardian writes (November 23):

The US secret service are supposed to take a bullet for those they protect. Just don't expect them to put themselves out for a handbag.

Being surrounded by a phalanx of agents with wires sprouting from their ears did not save Barbara Bush, the president's 24-year-old daughter, from having her bag and mobile phone stolen at a Buenos Aires restaurant, according to an ABC News report yesterday.

Personal note. After seven weeks of Travel and Real Life interference, I am back at my computer. Thanks to the Political Cortex family for tolerating (encouraging?) my absence.

It's becoming more and more clear as to why our favorite gumshoe, Patrick Fitzgerald, indicted Scooter Libby for perjury and not espionage.

Libby's lawyers' recent request for potentially classified material in this case is most telling. Mark Kleiman spells it out:

Scooter Libby's demand for information about Valerie Plame's work for the CIA is of a piece with his demand for copies of the Presidential Daily Briefs: graymail, pure and simple. The idea is to ask for something arguably relevant to the defense which the government can't allow to appear in open court for national-security reasons, hoping to force a dismissal.

So, Osama made another speech and stated the obvious: He's still alive and still a threat because Bush got us all involved with this distraction in Iraq which has done more for Al Qaeda than it's done for us. And the GOP reaction, of course, is to show how serious they are about terrorism by attacking Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean and other Democrats or liberals.

President Bush gave a speach today and the White House released a supporting document called "The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." Together, they are supposed to...erm,...make us feel better knowing that we now have a plan in place to win this war?

Have you read this thing? It's here in a PDF document for your reading pleasure.

Let me give you a preview. Here's the Executive Summary, and believe me, the rest of the doc goes into no more detail than this.

From Think Progress:

From today's White House pool report:

Scott gaggled on AF1 and yes, he gave a preview of tomorrow's speech on the war. Among the hightlights [sic], the WH will be releasing an unclassified "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." He said they hope to have it out by 6:30 a.m.

Question: Shouldn't we have had a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" before the war started?

I wonder what NEW initiatives we are going to hear from the preznet.

In honor of Devilstower's must read diary, I doubt it will be a well considered, analytical step by step approach to carefully withdraw the US military from Iraq. I also doubt it will have the security of the Iraqi and American people as its center piece of consideration.

How can we trust this administration, who so thoughtlessly lead the world into this mess to extract us from it with nuance and intelligence? How can we trust anything that comes from the White House to be more than arrogant political cover? Their history has taught us the screeming answer.

Sad and pathetic. If someone with some sense doesn't take over soon, we are really going to be in trouble, because leaving Iraq is going to be far more dangerous than invading it.

[cross-posted at And, yes, I DO take it personally]

oh, lord... not as if we haven't figured out long ago how this man-child we call a president behaves but, heaven help us, it's playing out now to the bitter end...

"We're just plodding along," admitted a senior Bush aide from deep within the West Wing bunker. "It's up to the President to turn things around now."

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
November 23, 2005

A majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while fewer than a third of Americans believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate, the latest Harris Interactive poll finds.

64% of Americans believe that the White House generally misleads the public to further its political agenda while 32% believe the WH is being generally accurate.

What makes these results interesting is that the numbers aren't issue specific. This is about the WH SOP.

How do you turn your numbers around when no one believes anything you say?

When it comes to convicting Bush in the court of public opinion, the jury is getting a bit more friendly.  Still, even those open to the idea that Bush & friends may not be perfectly honest are a bit hard to sway when you start your case with something as large and complex as the reasons for going to war.  A case like that, gives the administration too many "outs," too many ways to cloud the water.

But there's another case that clearly shows the lengths these guys will go to cover up their actions, to try and make themselves look incapable of error.  It's a little thing, yeah, but you know what they say: if you can't trust them on the small things...