Monday, April 18, 2005
You Were Expecting Something Else?
This is typical.
Look, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not an expert on the finer points of the law, but I've got a pretty good idea about right and wrong and this was just plain wrong.
Let's say I've got a buddy who just got married. He loves his wife dearly and is spending a lot of time with her. Feeling slighted and a little jealous, I pay an acquaintance from work to call my buddy's house periodically asking for his wife. In these phone calls, my acquaintance drops hints that he and the new wife are romantically involved. My buddy gets pissed and ends up divorcing his new wife and now has more time to go fishing and watch ballgames with me.
Did I do anything illegal? Of course not, there's no law against lying. Did I do something wrong and unethical, damn right I did. Just because I hired someone else to do the dirty work doesn't exonnerate me. This is wrong. What the Education Department did was also wrong. They hired someone to drop hints in an attempt to influence the public's opinion. It's sleezy, underhanded and dishonest. Bad management? Yep! Poor judgement? Boy howdy!
And what about Bush's statement concerning this issue? He said "We didn't know about this in the White House." Oh really?
I thought Bush was going to "restore integrity to the White House." Apparently that was only the first of his lies.
You know, Clinton didn't technically break any laws when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky but the Republicans sure prosecuted the shit out of it, didn't they? Too bad there wasn't someone around at the time to call it what it was: "poor judgement."
- A report by the Education Department's inspector general has cleared the agency of ethical breaches in hiring a commentator to promote President Bush's top education initiative but did not address whether the deal amounted to illegal propaganda.
[...]
Higgins concluded that top Education Department officials, including then-Secretary Rod Paige, were guilty of "bad management" and "poor judgment" but did not violate contract law.
Look, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not an expert on the finer points of the law, but I've got a pretty good idea about right and wrong and this was just plain wrong.
Let's say I've got a buddy who just got married. He loves his wife dearly and is spending a lot of time with her. Feeling slighted and a little jealous, I pay an acquaintance from work to call my buddy's house periodically asking for his wife. In these phone calls, my acquaintance drops hints that he and the new wife are romantically involved. My buddy gets pissed and ends up divorcing his new wife and now has more time to go fishing and watch ballgames with me.
Did I do anything illegal? Of course not, there's no law against lying. Did I do something wrong and unethical, damn right I did. Just because I hired someone else to do the dirty work doesn't exonnerate me. This is wrong. What the Education Department did was also wrong. They hired someone to drop hints in an attempt to influence the public's opinion. It's sleezy, underhanded and dishonest. Bad management? Yep! Poor judgement? Boy howdy!
And what about Bush's statement concerning this issue? He said "We didn't know about this in the White House." Oh really?
- Higgins also found that David Dunn, a special assistant to President Bush, participated in at least four conversations about the Williams contract with Education Department officials last summer.
The conversations, the report says, took place around the time the department renewed a deal that called for Williams to use his syndicated TV show and newspaper column to promote Bush's education policy, No Child Left Behind.
I thought Bush was going to "restore integrity to the White House." Apparently that was only the first of his lies.
You know, Clinton didn't technically break any laws when he had his affair with Monica Lewinsky but the Republicans sure prosecuted the shit out of it, didn't they? Too bad there wasn't someone around at the time to call it what it was: "poor judgement."
