1115.org

In their piece this morning for the Washington Post, Dan Eggen and Michael Abramowitz blow it right out of the gate:

President Bush on Saturday issued a new declaration of confidence in embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, affirming his support a day after new disclosures showed that Gonzales was more closely involved in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys than he had previously acknowledged.

Bush used his weekly radio address, taped before the latest documents were released Friday night, to back Gonzales, his loyal aide of a dozen years, and the decision to install “new leadership” in some U.S. attorney offices.

Eggen and Abramowitz go out of their way to let their readers in on the fact that Bush pre-tapes his radio addresses. They set the story up as if something substantial changed between taping and broadcast. Nothing changed. Bush knows full well what Gonzales did, and what was in the documents released. Eggen and Abramowitz knew that the lag between when Bush taped the address and when it went out over the airways is totally irrelevant. Not because I flagged Bush counselor Dan Bartlett’s statement on Saturday doubling down on defending Gonzo. They knew because, in their very own piece, they included a statement from the White House specifically addressing the issue:

Spokeswoman Dana Perino said Saturday that the administration does not view the latest documents as being in conflict with Gonzales’ previous remarks.

Eggen and Abramowitz either can’t read their own writing, or they set out to make it look like Bush was just the victim of poor timing. In the version of reality not written by morons or stooges, the real story is that the White House made the distinction of when the address was taped completely beside the point when they A) Allowed the tape to play when they could have re-recorded or made a best-of mash-up, B) Trotted out Bartlett to express Bush’s continued support of Gonzo, and C) Directed Perino to specifically comment on their view that the most recent document release didn’t change a damn thing.

So, Dan, Michael…which is it? Morons or stooges?