Fox News mutes it. The Washington Post just pretends it didn’t happen.

UPDATE: The Post’s gossip column, Reliable Sources, gets the story right “Vice President Cheney, tapped to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at yesterday’s Nationals home opener, drew boisterous boos from the moment he stepped on the field until he jogged off.”

UPDATE: 64-year-old Washington Nationals usher Harry Horton on the Cheney boo: “I have never – ever – heard anyone get booed like that man.”

Washington Post defense analyst Bill Arkin: “The public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war — despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion ‘is not contemplated’ — is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I’ve heard CONPLAN 1025.”

In February, the New York Times revealed that “thousands of declassified documents had been reclassified by executive branch agencies and removed from public access in questionable circumstances.” The Federation of American Scientists called the reclassification efforts “a threat to the integrity of the entire national security classification and declassification program,” and warned they would reduce the National Archives to a “mere repository of officially-sanctioned history.”

Now, thanks to the National Security Archive (a nonprofit based at George Washington University), we know how the reclassification scheme came about:

The National Archives and Records Administration secretly agreed to a covert effort, led by the Air Force, the CIA, and other still-hidden intelligence entities, to remove open-shelf archival records and reclassify them while disguising the results so that researchers would not complain, according to a previously secret Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

As part of the secret agreement, the National Archives “agreed that the existence of the program was to be kept secret as long as possible” and that “the withdrawal sheets indicating the removal of documents would conceal any reference to the program and ‘any reason for the withholding of documents.’” Read more about the secret agreement HERE.

Ten years ago, Elouise Cobell and 500,000 individual claimants filed suit against the government for cheating American Indians out of $27.5 billion. The government has refused to settle despite having lost in 17 prior decisions. American Progress is hosting a discussion on the case which is live on C-Span right now.

Press Conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, today:

Q: What planning, if any, has the Pentagon been undertaken for the possibility of military action involving Iran? And has the nuclear strike option been ruled out?

RUMSFELD: You know, someone comes up with an idea, runs it in a magazine or a paper; other papers pick it up and reprint it; editorialists, then, say, Oh, Henny Penny, the sky is falling, and opine on this and opine that.

…But it is just simply not useful to get into fantasyland.

Press Conference with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/22/02:

Q: Sources say the President has a war plan on his desk about attacking Iraq? What types of options were provided to the President?

Rumsfeld: Of course I could and I won’t. I must say I find the people that are talking to the media about war plans are so far out of line and so disgracefully misbehaving that I find it stunning and a weak effort.

First of all I can tell you that anyone who knows anything isn’t talking and anyone with any sense isn’t talking therefore the people that are talking to the media by definition people who don’t know anything and people who don’t have a hell of a lot of sense.

According to Bob Woodward’s book, “Plan of Attack,” intense war planning for Iraq began in December 2001.

Vice President Cheney threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the home opener of the Washington Nationals game today. The crowd was was less than thrilled to have him there, loudly booing over the Fox News reporter. (Note: Fox producers muted the crowd audio halfway through before letting viewers “listen in” after the pitch.)

Watch it:

The good news: Cheney’s pitch landed in the dirt, not in someone’s face.

UPDATE: Wonkette has the pool report: “Gorgeous day, 70 degrees with happy, red-capped turnout est at 25k. VPOTUS stepped out onto field dressed in khakis and a Nats bomber jacket to the sound of thunderous boos and catcalls…”

UPDATE II: Garrett at FishBowlDC wonders whether the media tried to censor the boos.

Charlie Cook: “There comes a point for some unfortunate presidents when the American people begin to hit the mute button; they just stop listening. Or to put it differently, when the public turns strongly against an elected official on an issue, they begin to turn on that official on everything. In this case, Iraq has become a ball and chain for President Bush, weighing him down on every issue. The separation between his weakest issue, Iraq, and his strongest, terrorism, is just five points.”

Percentage of Americans who believe President Bush did something unethical or illegal related to the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Yesterday, former House speak Newt Gingrich declared that the occupation of Iraq has been a mistake for the last 34 months:

It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy [Iraq] after June of 2003.

For Gingrich, it’s a dramatic reversal. In December 2003 (six months after he claimed the occupation of Iraq became a mistake), Gingrich expressed his support for the continuing operations:

I think it’s easy to go back now and second-guess. But when I look back and I think about what we felt in February and March and April, I think it was the right war, it was the right decision. [Fox, Hannity & Colmes, 12/8/03]

In September 2004 (15 months after he says the occupation was a mistake) Gingrich blasted critics who complained “we’re not winning fast enough”:

And instead of applauding this deliberate effort to minimize American casualties and to strengthen the Iraqis, we have some of our friends here at home who want it both ways. They want to complain that we’re not winning fast enough, and they want to complain if we take any casualties. You can’t have it both ways. [Fox, Hannity & Colmes, 9/27/04]

Meet the new Newt. Nothing like the old Newt.

UPDATE: Salon’s War Room finds another good Gingrich quote from 1/19/06: “I think it’s quite clear…that bin Laden and his lieutenants are monitoring the American news media, they’re monitoring public opinion polling, and I suspect they take a great deal of comfort when they see people attacking United States policies.”

UPDATE II: Gingrich persuades the Argus Union Leader to change its headline, claiming his position on Iraq has been “consistent and clear.“

Huffington Post hears he’s thinking about running in Pennsylvania.