The "Strange Doctrines" Undercroft

No Wonder He Thinks He Needs to Know More

From the New York Times:

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming

In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, [White House] official[] Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties," tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

 

Moderation Howls

Moderation meets prevarication. Shrillness results.

Orwellian Word Association

This Daily Show clip on Bush's fake Town Hall meetings is disturbingly good.  (The first half is the part really worth watching--the punchline is where Samantha Bee stumps GOP pollster Frank Luntz.)

(Via one good move.)

Jon Stewart Cannot Deploy Our Military...

...so George Bush should not be able to make fake news.

Alas, the WaPo reports that the Department of Justice has given the go-ahead to federal agencies to continue creating prepackaged "news reports":

The [DoJ] legal counsel's office "does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency's role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or 'covert,' regardless of whether the content of the message is 'propaganda,' " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency." [Emphasis added.]

So: no advocacy, no problem. Er...

(Via Mark Kleiman.)

Making the News (Up)

The other day I watched Ari Fleischer on the Daily Show limn the tension between the President and the press: the President, he explained, wants to "make the news."

I was puzzled by this statement when I first heard it. But now I think I know what Fleischer meant.

To Put Too Fine a Point On It...

TPM logs another pseudodistinction offered by your Bush White House.

Irrational Insecurity

The Memory Hole posts on some remarkable redactive practices over at Justice. (Via Lance McCord via Is That Legal?) For some reason, all of the links to the primary documents over at the ACLU site are dead.

Iniquity is Redemption

See why here. (Via Political Animal.)

Now is Then

Before and after. (Via TPM.)

Subsumption is Independence

Here Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld characteristically draws a distinction as semantically fine as it is morally immaterial:

My impression is that what has been charged thus far [in the matter of Abu Ghraib] is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture.

Sort of like how abstruse is technically different from tortuous.