Bush administration: Fake news is A-OK

Remember those fake video news reports the Bush administration has been
distributing to local television stations? Back in February, the
Government Accountability Office warned federal agencies to stop pushing
the phony news reports on the grounds that continuing to do so would
amount to the distribution of domestic propaganda in violation of
federal law.

That might have been the end of the matter, but the Bush administration
has other ideas. Last week, budget director Josh Bolten and a Justice
Department lawyer named Steven Bradbury issued their own opinion about
the fake news stories. Their conclusion: The GAO is wrong, and the fake
news reports are perfectly legal. Moreover, as the Washington Post
reports today, Bolten and Bradbury said that legal advice for the
executive branch is supposed to come not from the Government
Accountability Office but from the Justice's Office of Legal Counsel.

That would be the same Office of Legal Counsel that issued a legal
memorandum in August 2002 defining torture out of existence and opining
that the president's commander-in-chief power gives him authority to
defy federal law in the name of national security -- and the same Office
of Legal Counsel that retracted that memo in December 2004, just in time
for Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearings.

The OLC may well be the right entity to provide legal advice to the
executive branch, but that doesn't mean that its advice is any better on
the fake news stories than it was on the torture of detainees. In words
that could have described either issue, the head of the GAO told the
Post yesterday that the administration's approach to the fake news
stories is not just illegal but wrong. "This is more than a legal
issue," said Comptroller General David Walker. "It's also an ethical
issue and involves important good government principles, namely the need
for openness in connection with government activities and expenditures.
We should not just be seeking to do what's arguably legal. We should be
doing what's right."

A government that aspires to morality and not just to the bare minimum
of legality? The notion seems so . . . quaint.

Tim Grieve -- Salon