It looks like the White House is once again flexing its political muscles to squash any opponents. This time, though, the victims are civil rights, environmental, and similar advocacy groups. A recent CNN report shows that the FBI possesses thousands of papers on record — upwards of 3,500 to be precise – which monitor the targeted organizations. Crying foul (and rightfully so), groups such as the ACLU and Greenpeace are claiming that they are being scrutinized by task forces used to combat terrorism.

Although infuriating, this information isn’t necessarily a surprise. The Bush administration has a proven track record of arrogant unilateralism, irresponsibility, and political bullying. Ranging from the current scandal implicating Karl Rove in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the atrocities committed at Guantanamo Bay, the play-by-play of this administration is anything but compassionate. The monitoring and censoring of groups such as the ACLU and Greenpeace is simply another example of the White House using its powers against its peaceful critics. Apparently, the President is attempting to re-write the constitution — this time without the first amendment. All of this, of course, begs an obvious question: when will Bush start listening to his critics, as opposed to shutting them up?

- Grant Ginder

QUESTION: Scott, the president seemed to raise the bar and add a qualifier today when discussing whether or not anybody would be dismissed for in the leak of a CIA’s officer’s name, in which he said that if someone is found to have committed a crime they would not longer work in this administration.

QUESTION: That’s never been part of the standard before; why is that added now?
Read more

A few important, unanswered questions: Has former Rove deputy Ken Mehlman discussed the Plame matter with any White House officials, specifically Karl Rove, in the past three weeks? What was the specific nature of those conversations — who was involved, how long did they last, what was discussed?

The answers to these questions are important. If the answer to the first is yes, (a) the White House claim to be “not commenting” on the grand jury investigation falls apart, since administration officials are merely pushing their talking points out to Ken Mehlman; and (b) Mehlman immediately loses serious credibility, since he has suggested that he has not coordinated his message on the Plame investigation with the White House.

Now, a few journalists have tried to get answers to these questions. McClellan has been asked three times — the first time, on 7/12/05, he referred the question to Mehlman. Two days later, he refused to answer, saying he would be “happy to talk about it once it’s over, but until that time, we’ll let the investigation continue.” And today, he told reporters, “I think I’ve addressed these issues.”

Mehlman was just as elusive the one time he was asked, during a 7/12/05 appearance on CNN: Read more

You knew they could spin, dodge and disseminate, but did you know they could sing?

Last week, a Fox News headline fretted, “Can Bush Survive Without Rove?” We wonder the same thing, in the White House disco classic, I Will Survive, starring the vocal stylings of Scott McClellan, Karl Rove and, yes, President George Bush.

If you think disco’s dead, try a little rock and roll instead. The right-wing spin machine has been working overtime these days to shield Uber-aide Karl Rove from the fallout after his national security breach. Listen here to Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, Johnnie Cochran and friends in their rendition of “Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog.”

Note Of Shameless Self-Promotion: All songs are a direct product of the creative genius of Peter Ogburn, producer of America’s new progressive radio show, the Bill Press Show (With Christy Harvey). For these hits and more, like Stand By Your Joe Wilson and I Smell A Rat, Karl, listen to us live every morning on Sirius satellite radio from 6-9 AM.

The “welfare reform” element of PlameGate seemingly died a quiet death with the release of Matt Cooper’s Time article this weekend.

To refresh, Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the National Review last week that “Cooper originally called Rove — not the other way around — and said he was working on a story on welfare reform. After some conversation about that issue, Luskin said, Cooper changed the subject to the weapons of mass destruction issue, and that was when the two had the brief talk that became the subject of so much legal wrangling.”

Conservative talking heads took this story and twisted it even further. Suddenly Rove’s discussion of Plame with Cooper was “an ‘Oh, by the way’ moment at the end of that conversation,” according to Rove defender Ed Rogers during a 7/13/05 PBS appearance. Fox News host Sean Hannity went even further — in his version, Cooper actually tricked Rove into talking about Plame.

You know what’s amazing about this…is, you know, here Karl Rove tells a reporter who wanted to talk about welfare reform. He tells the reporter, [who] then sneaks in this other question, [and Rove replies] “Hey, you don’t want to go too far out on a limb here.” [7/13/05]

In his new Time article, Matt Cooper offers a very different explanation:

I was transferred to [Rove]. I recall saying something like, “I’m writing about Wilson,” before he interjected. “Don’t get too far out on Wilson,” he told me. …

[E]arlier in the week, I may have left a message with his office asking if I could talk to him about welfare reform. But I can’t find any record of talking about it with him on July 11, and I don’t recall doing so.

To be clear, it’s not just that Rove and Cooper apparently didn’t talk at all about welfare reform, despite claims by Rove’s lawyer. It’s that Cooper couldn’t get a single sentence out of his mouth before Rove interrupted to start talking about Plame.

So, could this be a barb that catches Rove on perjury charges? Cooper’s piece offers some tea leaves: “A surprising line of questioning had to do with, of all things, welfare reform,” he writes. “The prosecutor asked if I had ever called Mr. Rove about the topic of welfare reform. … To me this suggested that Rove may have testified that we had talked about welfare reform.” And now we know what Cooper had to say about that.

According to an article in the New York Times this weekend, many new hybrid cars don’t save much in the way of gas–they just accelerate faster. While first generation hybrids (like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius) were genuine friends of the environment, the same cannot be said of some newer models:

The 2005 Honda Accord hybrid gets about the same miles per gallon as the basic four-cylinder model, according to a review by Consumer Reports, a car-buyer’s guide, and it saves only about two miles a gallon compared with the V-6 model on which it is based. Thanks to the hybrid technology, though, it accelerates better Hybrid technology, it seems, is being used in much the same way as earlier under-the-hood innovations that increased gasoline efficiency: to satisfy the American appetite for acceleration and bulk.

This should be of obvious concern to environmental activists and politicians, including President Bush, who point to hybrids as a way of reducing pollution and dependency on foreign oil. But it should be joyous news for a different demographic: stingy tax evaders. After all, the Times article continues,

Despite the use of hybrids to achieve better performance with about the same fuel economy, consumers who buy the cars continue to get a tax credit that the Internal Revenue Service allows under a “clean fuels” program that does not take fuel savings into account.

This adds tax fraud insult to environmental injury. And if Bush’s proposal to let “every American who purchases a hybrid vehicle receive a tax credit of up to $4,000″ goes through, the insult to honest Americans will only get worse. These tax credit laws might have the right idea, but they are useless (if not harmful) when they are so easily circumvented by carmakers and buyers who lack good intentions, or just want to go a bit faster.

- Conor Clarke

Even the Associated Press isn’t falling for President Bush’s attempts to now move the goalposts on the Karl Rove leak case. Fresh off the wire:

President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of a CIA operative, that person will “no longer work in my administration.” At the same time, Bush yet again sidestepped a question on the role of his top political adviser, Karl Rove, in the matter.

[snip]

Bush said in June 2004 that he would fire anyone in his administration shown to have leaked information that exposed the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame. On Monday, however, he added the qualifier that it would have [to] be shown that a crime was committed.

UPDATE: Bush on June 10, 2004:

Q: Given — given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney’s discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent’s name?

THE PRESIDENT: That’s up to –

Q: And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that’s up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.