So what your problem? The administration has already said that reality is
whatever they decide it is............
And the "sheeple" buy anything as long as it's wrapped in the flag and
supported by religious wackos!

"Jim," wrote in message
...
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