Capt Ed jumps back on Bush's sinking ship

By Libby
Updated below

Well this is it. I'm formally delinking Capt Ed -- again. The first time was in 04 after he reported on his starry eyed awe at being given a tour of the White House basement by Karl Rove. Oh he and the 101st were riding high on themselves in those glory days when they ambushed Dan Rather and managed the torpedo the debate on Bush's lies about his service record by focusing the discussion on typing fonts. Ed provided some of the White House's best hackery.

I reinstated him to the roll, in the last year or so, when he seemed to come to his senses and started offering more reasoned arguments again. I figured anybody could be seduced by power and he had perhaps seen the light. Now it appears, he was just waiting to worm his way back into the administration's good graces. He organized a blogger conference call with an anonymous White House source, who gave an anonymous group of bloggers the official White House talking points on unitary executive privilege, which he fully intends to pitch. He's quite pleased with his newly restored importance.

He knows it's wrong. He's pretty defensive about it and his cute little update doesn't really absolve him. Leahy was talking about ordinary assertions of privilege, not an all encompassing, unbreachable privilege that allows absolutely no oversight for wrongdoing. Once again Ed is willing to sell out the national interest for an invitation to the basement at 1600 Penn Ave.

That's his right, but I can't in good conscience send readers to a propaganda mill so he's off the roll. I doubt I'll bother to read him again myself. If I want White House talking points, I'll just go to Tony Snow. No offense to Ed, but Tony is much better looking.

Meanwhile, speaking of White House propaganda, this would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious.

The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now.

In other words, he didn't lie but we can't tell you what exact illegal surveillance program he was really talking about because it's a secret covered by executive privilege. This is the kind of double-speak you're intending to defend Capt. Ed. It's really too sad.

Update: I was pretty tired by the time I got to this last night and couldn't really fully articulate my disgust. In the interim, John Cole weighed in and summed it up perfectly.

Before the stupid gets too far out of hand, let us note one thing. There is a substantive difference between bloggers working with parties in regards to advocacy and pursuing electoral issues, and an administration issuing talking points to bloggers to assist in blocking investigations into alleged criminal wrongdoings.

Do you have a problem with President Hillary Clinton, in the spring of 2010, calling bloggers and issuing talking points to subvert the investigations by a Republican Congress into alleged misdeeds and lies by her Attorney General, Pat Leahy? Of course you would.

Granted, that is a far-out fictional hypothetical, since there is no chance in hell Republicans will control Congress again for the next ten years, but you get the point.

Read the whole post and all the comments. Cole really is on fire this week.