President Obama has inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and has frequently noted this fact publicly. “By any measure,” he said in March, “my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster.” “We are like a relief pitcher stepping into the ninth inning and we can’t just redo the whole game,” Budget Director Peter Orszag said. Indeed, 84 percent of Americans believe Obama inherited the crisis.

Yesterday, on Sean Hannity’s show, former Florida governor Jeb Bush implored Obama to stop criticizing his brother’s legacy. “If I had one humble criticism of President Obama, it would be to stop this notion of somehow framing everything in the context of, ‘Everything was bad before I got here,’” Jeb said. Today, Fox News’s Bill Hemmer hosted a discussion about the subject with Juan Williams. As Williams noted, the Bush administration like to blame President Clinton for 9/11:

WILLIAMS: And you saw the same thing from the Bush administration. When they were the crisis of 9/11, what’d they do? They pointed at Bill Clinton and said, “why didn’t he do more about catching Bin Laden when he had the chance? Why didn’t he take further steps to prevent this eventuality, this possibility?

Fox News’s Bill Hemmer objected, saying, “I don’t believe President Bush ever said that.” “Oh gosh, their administration was saying that all along,” Williams responded. Watch it:

Indeed, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “claimed that Clinton did not leave them a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda,” ABC reported. But the 9/11 Commission report “described Rice receiving a ‘comprehensive paper in January 2001 called ‘Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Networks of al Qaeda.’”

It wasn’t just terrorism; the Bush administration loved to blame the Clinton administration for the 2001 recession. Bush did so up until his last days in office:

“When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession.” — Bush, 8/7/02

“The president inherited a Clinton recession and turned it into the early stages of Bush prosperity.” — Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, 9/2/04

“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.” — Bush, 1/12/09

The National Bureau of Economic Research, which gives the government’s official dictum on recessions, said the “recession” began under President Bush: the economic “expansion that began in March 1991 ended in March 2001 and a recession began.” In fact, before it entered office, the Bush administration was blaming its predecessor for a recession that had not yet begun. “Do you think we’re on the front edge of a recession?” asked Tim Russert. “I think so,” said Dick Cheney in December 2000.

On Tuesday, WAMU reporter Eric Schultz attempted to interview Tommie Canady, a veteran from Maryland, about the poor treatment he said he was receiving from the VA. In the middle of the interview at a VA hospital in Washington, DC, a VA communications specialist named Gloria Hairston, “along with two other employees and four armed security guards, stopped Schultz and wouldn’t let him leave until he handed over his [recording] equipment.” A group of veterans stood nearby during the exchange:

One of those veterans, an amputee in a wheelchair, approached Schultz and asked him for his phone number.

“I started to give it to him and then the woman [Hairston] became irate, she said you can’t give him your phone number. You have to give me all of your equipment or I’m going to get ugly. She used the phrase ‘get ugly,’” Schultz says,

Like any good reporter, Schultz stood his ground and called his boss for direction. Longtime newsman Jim Asendio is the news director for WAMU.

“I told him to give them the flash card and get out of there,” Asendio says. “I didn’t want this to get out of hand.”

“What I mostly feel bad about is Mr. Canady,” Schultz told WTOP reporter Mark Segraves. “He was trying to tell his story, he has an amazing story and he was denied a chance to tell his story to the media because of these tactics.” ThinkProgress contacted the VA but has yet to get a response.

Former deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel has posted a new video of President Bush promoting his presidential library. In the five-minute video, there are a full 35 seconds of clips of 9/11 and Bush’s subsequent reaction. However, there is just one mention of Iraq in the entire piece. Additioanlly, Bush promises to use his library “policy center” to be “front and center” pushing for another attempt to privatize Social Security:

BUSH: At some point in time, the Congress is going to have to fix the Social Security system. I‘d like the center to be front and center in that debate and propose solutions. … Compassion ought to be the center of our domestic and foreign policy. … Some call it consequential, some call it controversial, either way it’ll be a well studied Presidency.

Watch it:

In January, Bush cited his failed attempt to privatize Social Security as one of his biggest domestic policy achievements. Rather than being a place for ‘studying’ the Bush era, the library foundation has already been trying to spin Bush’s disastrous response to hurricane Katrina.

It should come as no surprise that Bush is seeking to use his library for purposes other than actually documenting his presidency. As Think Progress has reported, there are no mentions of Iraq in Bush’s official biography on the library website. Rather, like the actual Bush presidency, the Bush library appears to be aiming to highlight the attacks of 9/11 while ignoring the history and the failures of the Iraq war.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

The New York Times reports that roughly 20 Bush administration all-stars — including Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, and Dan Bartlett — are getting together next week for their first Bush administration reunion. “On tap is a dinner with the former president” and a brainstorming session for the George W. Bush Policy Institute. The man who largely crafted Bush’s presidency, however, will not be at the party:

Not coming to next week’s session is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who in the final days of the administration argued with Mr. Bush about his failure to pardon Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury and other counts for his role in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cheney also broke with the President on a same-sex marriage ban, firing Donald Rumsfeld, overturning Washington DC’s gun ban, and removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terror.

(ThinkProgress has been keeping a close eye on developments with the Bush library, and we will continue to do so. Read our related posts here.)

Organizers of the radical anti-Obama “tea party” protests have been trying to claim that the events are rising up spontaneously. Many of these organizers, such as Eric Odom, are claiming that the tea parties are being held by “regular American[s] in protest of government spending and extreme taxation.”

However, as Media Matters recently documented, Fox News has been aggressively promoting the anti-tax protests:

Specifically, Fox News has in dozens of instances provided attendance and organizing information for future protests, such as protest dates, locations and website URLs. Fox News websites have also posted information and publicity material for protests. Fox News hosts have repeatedly encouraged viewers to join them at several April 15 protests that they are attending and covering.

The network has also been pushing the movement’s talking points, saying that people are “angry,” “upset,” and “feeling disenfranchised,” which is why they’re organizing this “nationwide grassroots movement.” Promising “fair and balanced” coverage, hosts such as Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity are all planning to broadcast live from the events. The Fox broadcasts are in turn being used by the tea party organizers to promote their protests.

Think Progress has put together a video illustrating Fox News’s active role in promoting the “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.” Watch it:

Fox News isn’t the only right-wing organization involved in building up these so-called “grassroots” events. The tea parties have been heavily backed by corporate lobbyists. The principle organizers of many of the local events are actually the lobbyist-run think tanks Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, and Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions. The groups are heavily staffed and well funded, and are providing all the logistical and public relations work necessary for planning coast-to-coast protests.

With its aggressive advocacy for the anti-Obama protests, it looks like Fox is quickly dropping its “fair and balanced” slogan to become the “voice of opposition” to the Obama administration.