Today President Bush announced that he plans to veto any legislation that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research:

I’ve made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers’ money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life — I’m against that. And therefore if the bill does that, I will veto it.

That’s strange. When he’s talking about the death penalty, President Bush says he likes policies that destroy life in order to save it:

I have been supportive of the death penalty, both as governor and President. … And I happen to believe that the death penalty, when properly applied, saves lives of others.

So, let’s get this straight: President Bush supports state-sanctioned killing because he “believes” that it will save lives, despite the multitude of studies showing that’s nonsense. And President Bush opposes research that could rescue millions from the living hell that is Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injury, stroke, etc., because he objects to “destroying” embryonic, in vitro stem cells that would have been discarded anyway.

Oh, and don’t forget, this mangled, convoluted logic is called “principled.” And it shows a committment to a “Culture of Life.”

My head hurts.

Nearly 20 days after the Downing Street Memo was leaked, and after the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post already previously wrote stories on it, the New York Times today finally joined the fray. The Times reports that the leaked memo is “creating a stir among administration critics” because it provides “evidence that Mr. Bush was intent on war with Iraq earlier than the White House acknowledged.” And with that sentence, the Times buried the lede and the most damning criticism found in the British memo.

What really roils “administration critics” more than the concealment of the original decision to attack Iraq (which journalists seem to care more about because it directly relates to what they were told by the Administration) is the intelligence behind the justification for the war itself. Were the Iraq intelligence accurate, critics probably would not have as great an issue with the White House having concealed the timeline. In the 8th paragraph, the NYT story finally gets it: “‘But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,’ Sir Richard was reported in the memorandum to have told his colleagues.” If the intelligence and facts were known to be wrong (which the Bush White House has never acknowledged), then the post-9/11 WMD justification for attacking Iraq as a national security threat was based on a deliberate falsehood. And thus, the timeline for Iraq would appear more to have been an attempt to deceptively shove the falsehood down the throat of Congress and the American public.

So where does the story go from here? At least three possible ways.

First, McClellan has said the memo was “flat-out wrong” and is not an authoritative account of the Administration’s decision-making. Yet, the British have not disputed the authenticity of the memo. Because the memo was based on a meeting that the British held with Tenet and other “senior American officials,” don’t you think someone on our side was taking notes? To resolve this case of he-said-she-said, doesn’t it make sense to find out whether the U.S. notes of the meeting contradict those of the now-public British notes?

Secondly, the mere passage of the presidential election does not absolve the White House from answering questions of great import such as whether the White House was being completely truthful in selling the Iraq war to the public. Representative Conyers and the other 88 members of Congress deserve a thoughtful response to their letter.

And third, the White House should ensure the Senate Intelligence Committee does not drop its investigation into the pre-war intelligence, as has been previously suggested by Pat Roberts.

At the beginning of his first term, President Bush also spoke a good deal about the obligations that the government had to the Social Security system. The lines went something like this:

“My [tax relief] plan will keep all Social Security money in the Social Security system, where it belongs.” — President Bush, 2/3/01

“We’re going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus.” — President Bush, 3/3/01

“And we set aside all the money for Social Security for only one thing, and that is Social Security. Take all the payroll taxes and make sure it’s only spent on Social Security.” — President Bush, 3/20/01

“The President has made it unequivocal to all that Congress should not take any action that would lead to any spending, at all, of Social Security money. That money belongs to Social Security. Under the Bush budget, even with these new numbers, Social Security need not be touched. If there’s any touching, it’s as a result of too much spending by the Congress. So this is a wake-up call to the Congress not to spend tax dollars, because if they spend, and go back onto a spending spree, the Congress risks tapping Social Security’s money. And Congress should take no step that will put Social Security within reach.” — Ari Fleischer, 7/2/01

But now that President Bush is trying to cook up a Social Security crisis, he is doing everything in his power to erode the American people’s trust in the Social Security trust fund. Which is why his new line is…

“Now, secondly, Social Security is not a savings account. In my travels around the country I hear people say, why don’t you just give us the money back we put in. But that’s not the way Social Security works. It’s a pay-as-you-go system. You pay; we go ahead and spend. (Laughter.) You pay through payroll taxes; we spend on paying for the beneficiaries, the retirees for that year. But if we’ve got any money left over, we didn’t save it for you, we spent it on government. That’s the way it works. It’s a pay-as-you-go. And then there’s — all that’s left over is a file cabinet full of IOUs. I have seen the file cabinet in West Virginia firsthand, and I saw all the IOUs. But the system is not the kind of system where we’re holding the money for you. That’s not the way it works. We’re spending your money and left behind some paper that can only be good if the government decides to redeem the paper. That’s a pay-as-you-go system.” — President Bush, 5/19/05