Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lectured the media about a “journalistic standard that should be met” before running with a story. Fine, but isn’t there also a political standard of accountability that should be met as well? McClellan’s issue with the Newsweek story was that it was “based on a single anonymous source who cannot personally substantiate the report.”

Remember when we learned that the evidence for Iraq’s supposed mobile biological weapons labs came from an unreliable source? What was McClellan’s response then?

QUESTION: Does it concern the President that the primary source for the intelligence on the mobile biological weapons labs was a guy that U.S. intelligence never every interviewed?

MCCLELLAN: Well, again, all these issues will be looked at as part of a broad review by the independent commission that the President appointed… But it’s important that we look at what we learn on the ground and compare that with what we believed prior to going into Iraq.

[White House Press Gaggle, 4/5/04]

There you have it. When confronted with an anonymous source who provided faulty intelligence that the President relied upon to go to war, McClellan chose not to talk about standards of accountability that should be met. Instead, the White House passed the buck to an independent commission and suggested that it didn’t matter what subsequent information they learned about Iraq’s intelligence because they didn’t know it when they went to war. Newsweek has taken responsibility by retracting its story. Will President Bush take responsibility for his own errors?

QUESTION: He’s the president of the United States. This thing he told the country on the verge of taking the nation to war has turned out to be, by your own account, not reliable. That’s his fault, isn’t it?

MCCLELLAN: No.

[White House Press Briefing, 7/17/03]

Here was the question, asked May 10-12:

Some Republicans in the Senate want to eliminate the ability of Democrats to use the filibuster, or extended debate, to block the Senate from voting on some of President Bush’s judicial nominees. Do you think the Republicans should or should not be able to eliminate the filibuster in this case?

The poll found that 59 percent of Americans oppose the nuclear option and just 28 percent support it.

Over the weekend Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell said he believes he “will have the votes” to ban the use of filibusters against judicial nominees through the nuclear option. It’s hard to understand where he gets his confidence. Here’s a look at where key members of his own party stand:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

SCHIEFFER: Well, can I just ask you the direct question? Are you opposed to doing away with the filibuster, Senator?

Sen. McCAIN: Yes.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA):

If we have a nuclear option, the Senate will be in turmoil and the Judiciary Committee will be hell… I can see a filibuster in an extraordinary case

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE):

[Y]ou can’t give up a minority rights tool [the filibuster] … you’ve got 100 United States senators. Some of us might be moderately intelligent enough to figure this out. We would, I think, debase our system and fail our country if we don’t do this.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI):

Chafee is the other sure-fire Republican defector. “He feels that it would be a mistake to change the Senate rules,” explains spokesman Stephen Hourahan.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME):

“I don’t think it’s going to be any surprise about what I intend to do on this vote,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a moderate who remains officially undecided but seems all but certain to oppose changing the rules.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME):

I wish this would pass us by because I am concerned about the impact on the Senate of trying to put through a change that does not represent a consensus.

Sen. John Warner (R-VA):

I just look at this institution as really the last bastion of protecting the rights of the minority and we should be very careful before we try and make any changes.

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH):

DeWine “is not going to disclose what he might do,” spokesman Mike Dawson said this week.

Sen. John Sununu (R-NH):

I just decided that I wasn’t going to take a public position and I haven’t.

In yesterday’s New York Times, op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof stated, “Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition.” If some preachers haven’t been talking about justice and compassion what have they been doing? Three stories over the last week will give you an idea:

“A Kansas-based evangelical group plans to picket Englesby Intermediate School June 6 after a student won an essay contest writing about openly gay comedienne Ellen DeGeneres.” The flier announcing the event is an “invective-laden leaflet [that] includes a photo of the Englesby School and a grotesque devil. The diatribe attacks the staff, labeing it a ‘homo-fascist regime,’ among other things.”

A Minnesota priest “denied communion to more than 100 people Sunday, saying they could not receive the sacrament because they wore rainbow-colored sashes to church to show support for gay Catholics…Ann McComas-Bussa did not wear a sash, but she and her husband and three children all wore rainbow-colored ribbons and were denied communion. ‘As a Catholic, I just need to stand in solidarity with those that are being oppressed,’ she said…Last year, some conservative groups in St. Paul kneeled in church aisles to block sash-wearers from receiving communion.”

Reverend Chan Chandler of the North Carolina East Waynesville Baptist Church effectively tried to excommunicate members of the congregation over their political beliefs. According to several corroborated accounts, Chandler instructed the congregation that “if they voted for John Kerry or were Democrats, they were against the church. They had a choice to ‘repent’ their sin or leave.” Now these church members are being asked to return, but the damage has already been done: “Things will never be the same here until he leaves. This all started over politics and our right to vote for whoever we wanted to.”

Two stories today show just how tenuous more and more Americans’ retirement security is becoming.

USA Today reports that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – the government’s insurer of corporate pensions – “has moved from about a $10 billion surplus in the late 1990s to a $23 billion deficit in its single-employer insurance program.” The PBGC “estimates underfunding in [America's overall] pension system has reached a record $450 billion.” In other words, companies are refusing to adequately fund their pension, risking more meltdowns a la. United Airlines.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission “has found that many pension and 401(k) consultants receive large hidden payments from the investment firms they recommend to retirement-plan clients.” That creates massive conflicts of interest, whereby consultants may be urging pension administrators to put workers’ retirement money in investments the consultant has a financial stake in. Read more

A new report on Rumsfeld’s new plan to overhaul U.S. military bases overseas pulled the report from its commission’s website.

Why? The Pentagon set up a roar that the report “divulged classified information.”

Hmmmm. The government-appointed panel says that’s not true – the information in the 262-page report was based entirely on public sources.

What’s not so classified: Inside sources say Rumsfeld wanted the report removed from the public eye because he was annoyed over harsh criticism of his plan. Specifically, the commission found “no evidence of an overwhelming strategic or operational imperative” to handle the redeployment as quickly as Rumsfeld had planned.

Note to Rumsfeld: Hiding bad news doesn’t make it disappear.

According to the Boston Globe, a rich Saudi company called SABIC – which happens to be the leading maker of the cancer-causing gasoline additive MTBE — paid lobbyists more than $1.5 million in an attempt to gain protection from lawsuits stemming from the damage caused by the dangerous chemical.

They got what they paid for — the House of Representatives recently passed an energy bill which shielded the company from all lawsuits stemming from MTBE contamination of drinking water. (Surprise, surprise – the measure had strong support from House leader Tom DeLay.)

In low doses, MTBE makes water undrinkable; in higher doses, it causes cancer. The toxin has been detected “in 1,861 water systems in 29 states, serving 45 million Americans. This is up from about 1,500 systems in 19 states in November 2003.”

It’s a sad, sad day when Congress acts to protect Saudi wallets over the health of American citizens.