So the subpoenas issued to try and overcover the murky dealings to do with the attorneys debacle have been rejected by the White House, they used that old chestnut ; Executive Privilege.
Guessing then that President Bush will remain consistent and do, or maybe already has done the same to the new set that were issued yesterday to dig into the phonetapping conducted post-Septembr 11th. Interestingly, many have already made it clear that this form of surveillance is illegal. Not in the difficult, takes a team of lawyers to uncover some obscure footnote from several decades ago. It's covered by some amendment or other. Does the White House remember what those are?
Tell The Truthiness ; Next they'll be using Executive Privilege to push in front of you in the queue at the grocery store, any excuse is ok now.
A number of things seem to have happened at once in the past 24 hours, though seemingly unconnected, their effect could be the change in the wind which may make the US turn it's tide of offense in Iraq.
Firstly, in Washington, two leading senior Republicans, supporters of the President's strategy (if you can call it that) in Iraq have both spoken out against more of the same in the continuing conflict. Senator Richard Lugar voiced his concerns in a floor speech that the surge in Iraq just isn't working. Plus John Warner agreed with Mr Lugar's comments.
Secondly, the UK Prime Minister stepped down and his replacement, Gordon Brown, the former Chancellor is expected to have a cooled relationship with the US and is due to announce plans to scale down UK troop numbers in Iraq. As one commentator said '' Brown can have a more remote relationship with Bush and no-one will say a word against him, because unlike Tony Blair, Gordon Brown never said he would stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with him''.
Tell The Truthiness ; We might not have to wait until September for changes, Mr Bush may not be able to leave Iraq for the next guy and just might have to begin to clean up his own mess.
Dick Cheney has declared his office exempt from a presidential order which allows the public to know how much material is classified and declassified.
As unsurprising as it sounds, the White House has given it's full support to Mr Cheney's Big Brother exemption.
This must be like reason 143 that shows Cheney is more in control of 'command and control' in the White House and federal government than that other guy, the one who stands up and waves on his way to and from the helicopters. That man called President George Bush.
Tell The Truthiness ; Dick Cheney only sleeps during daylight hours, hanging upside down by his feet from a ceiling beam in the White House Messroom.
It just occurred to us, if Gordon Brown can set up a Scottish Soul tribute band he could corner the market (there must be) of bored Labour voters who like Scottish Soul Music.
Tell The Truthiness ; To some though, he still looks shifty, like a bank manager you just can't feel comfortable with.
With Tony Blair to stand-down as UK Prime Minister this week, his deputy, Gordon Brown has just been made head of the Labour Party in preparation for his premiership later this week.
In his speech to the party in Manchester, the Deputy PM who many depict as quiet and brooding has said the party has to get soul.
Yes, get soul.
We're not sure yet whether he means UK based, northern soul, or it's fatherly relative, the US original created by people like Mr James Brown.
Tell The Truthiness ; If Mr Brown can sell his Scottishness and soul to the public, he could become a popular leader. He could be a soul man.
You'd imagine that nearly six years after the waking up of the United States to it's unfit border entry requirements that a safe and efficent system would now be in place. Well you'd be wrong, and it's going to be like that for a whole twelve months more.
New rules were due to be effective from January 1st 2008 stating any US citizen returning by land or sea would require a passport to gain entry. But because of the mountain of applications, the Department Of Homeland Security has pushed back this rule to 'Summer 2008'.
It must be difficult when you announce a rule, then when people try and comply with it you don't estmate the administration needed to meet those needs. All you need to do is take the US population, minus those with passports, and those who on average do not travel abroad and you have your number.
Tell The Truthiness ; As the Department's website says, 'Preserving our freedoms, protecting America ... we secure our homeland...sorry about the backlog, but we really can't be assed to pay the overtime'.
We don't want to get too excited with this 'nearly a story' story, but it's such a leap back to decent criminal procedures and common sense that you'll have to forgive us.
There's strong indications coming out of Washington that the detention center for those suspected of being a terrorist threat against the US, based at Guantanamo Bay, is soon to close.
Discussions are being carried out to determine what to do with the 375 remaining detainees.
Tell The Truthiness ; A horrible chapter in foreign policy and supposed terrorist prevention could be about to end? Could this be the start of something bigger and a turning of the tide in policy and how the US sees itself being viewed abroad?
According to some, these billboards may already have been taken down, but they show the difference a foreign news organisation can bring to news coverage.
Tell The Truthiness ; The BBC may have gone through a bit of recent naval gazing regarding bias within the organisation, but any increase in the number of media outlets in a country that prides itself on 'freedom of the press' can only be a highly welcomed event.
Just to confirm, if anyone was still wondering, no-one has been found to blame for the mess (what else would best describe it?) of the British Navy personnel held by Iran in March.
The UK Defence Secretary Des Browne said, in perfect political fudge language while talking about allowing the freed sailors to sell their stories, that there had been a ''collective failure of judgment'', that's one of the few parts of the report released to the public.
To protect current soldiers, in the Gulf area, the report is to remain classified. This is the same tactic the government uses to give out scant details about alleged terrorist plots. ''We can tell you the really scary details, but not all of it, because we don't want to scare you too much, by the way, don't have nightmares''. You know the type of thing.
Tell The Truth ; If the government were to put up their hands and say they made a total hash of the entire situation and were even suspected of hijacking it to ratchet up anti-Iranian feelings, then they may gain more respect and perhaps some trust from the public.
After the G8 Summit, the impossible was, it appeared, achieved.
Mr Bush agreed to reductions in emissions. We never thought we'd ever see those words.
But, he won't tell us he will cut emissions, just that he will work on agreeing to cut them, in 2008, just before he leaves office.
So, the beginning of a process about a process.
Tell The Truthiness : And there we were thinking Mr Bush had a poor grap of the english language, clearly he's an expert at double-speak, congratulations to him and never mind about the polar bears; until 2008 that is.
If President Bush decides to pardon Scooter Libby his approval ratings have got a better than even chance of plunging into negative numbers. But some suggestions have pondered, if he is as reckless as some people believe him to be, he could just do it anyway and damn the consequences.
Besides what does he have to lose anyway?
His pride some might say? No, he lost that a long, LONG time ago.
Tell The Truthiness ; Just let him serve his time, it might give his administration the chance to earn some repentance for facing up to it's mistakes.
Yes, we know we didn't really see President Bush's watch get stolen when he was on a walkabout, having praised heaped on him by the people of Albania, but it just seem so funny to start with.
As reported, Mr Bush took off his watch and placed it in his pocket. No watch stolen, No story.
Can we be so sure?
Why, in the middle of a big public event would the President be more concerned with taking his watch off?
Did he get bought a new strap for it, is it made from the pelt of something Dick Cheney's recently shot? A congressional democrat? Maybe alligator hide, maybe he's allergic.
Tell The Truthiness ; Wasn't it more fun when we thought his watch has been lifted, lets hope Tony Snow announces tomorrow that it did actually get stolen and they're planning to carpet bomb Albania.
A testy TV news editor has taken the high road by refusing to allow his 24 hour rolling news channel from broadcasting news about Paris Hilton being released then re-imprisoned.
Despite this, on air anchors have been filling their void of news with bluster about how 'outraged any decent citizen should be about this wall to wall coverage of non-news'. That comment from HYWS TV anchor Mitch Dakota.
HYWS is keen to point out that it is going to broadcasting a special about how the news media shouldn't be giving airtime and column inches to Paris Hilton's jailtime this evening from 7/8 eastern for two hours.
To make sure no one misses anything, it will do an updated edition of the show tomorrow morning to compete with the breakfast shows.
Tell The Truthiness ; Did Paris Hilton have someone lean on someone to get the release? If she did they can't be very persuasive, she wasn't free for very long.
Like the end of some movie studio created rainbow, the reality that seems to have been absent from politics since mid summer 2001 has begun to be restored with the satisfying news of Lewis Scooter Libby's jail-time being broken.
After revealing the name of a CIA agent in a dangerous and highly irresponsible dirty-tricks game, it seemed any sort of holding-to-account was going to be lost under government heel-dragging and the glacial pace of court procedings.
But eventually, time has caught up with one of those who assumed a position of power provided exemption from the law.
In the end, the truth will out.
Tell The Truthiness ; The news also that President Bush may give Mr Lewis a pardon before he leaves office is perhaps bittersweet, but we should keep faith that accountability should also reach Bush and of course Scooter Libby's former boss, Mr Cheney before too long. Indictments for two anyone?
With the news media running the JFK fuel bomb plot as a ''phew we just got away with it, are you scared yet?'', piece, some facts have come through that suggest things weren't quite as we thought.
Firstly, it's become pretty common for big 'we just dodged a bullet' terrorist plots to be revealed at some politically important time for the White House, since this story came though the day before the Democratic New Hampshire debate, we have no doubt that Bush it trying not to disappoint.
Secondly, the huge devastation this plan would have caused has been cast into shadow as engineers have said any explosion could have been easily averted by switching off the flow of fuel. Some media outlets seemed to relish the fact the pipeline runs through Queens, getting all speculative about what 'might have occurred'. It might have caused huge casualties in a residential area? Yeah, it might and Paris Hilton just MIGHT be smarter than we all think, but really it's probably not the case. Law of averages and all that.
Thirdly, the man who gave the tip-off about the plan is a convicted drug-dealer and revealed the information as a deal for a lighter sentence. Now we have no proof, but deals made with those facing jail time, tend to sometimes be exaggerated. We're sure George Bush has on occasion returned to the ranch and told a story about how big the fish was that he almost caught with Dick.
Tell The Truthiness ; People are getting tired of all these plots being drip fed to us and being told how lucky we are, then defence and security officials saying, 'but there's loads more plots we've foiled, we just can't tell you for security, but that shows how efficent the security services are'. Really, if you want to scare us, just rerun the 2000 presidential inauguration tape, or get Dick Cheney to jump into frame during a White House press conference dressed like Ming The Merciless from Flash Gordon.
In a flurry of conversion, not unlike that of some biblical Damascus, many heralded President Bush's announcement of much activity by the US federal government as a turning point for policy on global warming.
Try reading into it first before giving him a sainthood.
He emphasized the talks with other nations, indeed he named India and China, as those with growing emissions. So are we to take that he's going to say to them, 'do as I say, not as I do'?
He says he wants to reverse global warming by 2008, which will be just as he's picking a renta van to move out the White House and away to somewhere we will glad to see him, away from government, indeed most would be pleased to just see Laura baby-proof the White House, keep him causing more damage.
Tell The Truthiness ; He doesn't care about global warming, he's made that clear since 2000, why should he change his tune now? He's basically saying, 'I haven't really done anything, don't remember I had scientists papers altered to not include the words global and warming and the next person will have to do the difficult things to halt this, but if I do what my advisors have said, I won't look quite as bad as some think. If I look busy, I'll fool some of the folk.'
Those polar bears know where you live Mr Bush and they could be armed.
