New York Times: You go, girl!

The New York Times editorial page has been getting a bit mouthy against the Bush administration of late (though whether anyone outside of the cultural and political elites is paying attention is another matter. Last Wednesday, for example, saw an editorial condemning the Bush administration's media propaganda efforts.

As documented this week in an article in The Times by David Barstow and Robin Stein, more than 20 federal agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department, now create fake news clips. The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first four years on contracts with public relations firms, more than double the amount spent by the Clinton administration. Most of these tapes are very skillfully done, including "interviews" that seem genuine and "reporters" who look much like the real thing. Only sophisticated viewers would easily recognize that these videos are actually unpaid commercial announcements for the White House or some other part of the government. Some of the videos clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of propaganda, and the Government Accountability Office says at least two were illegally distributed.

(The GAO, by the way, condemns this whole practice as "propaganda." The Bush administration is ignoring the GAO.)

Sunday's Times turned to the "fiscal meltdown" looming in Washington, as ballooning government spending and continuing tax cuts for the wealthy (yes, the rich are still lining uo for even more tax cuts) threaten to really damage the U.S. economy - and leave millions more in poverty

When you step back and look at it, the collective tax-cutting psyche of Mr. Bush and his partisans appears to border dangerously on the grandiose. How else to explain their relentless profligacy in the face of the unprecedented Bush-era swing from budget surplus to deficit, the unmistakable long-term trend of a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer income distribution, the ballooning costs of war, the weaker dollar, rising oil prices and record deficits in trade and investment - which now require the United States to borrow $2.1 billion a day from abroad? It's time for the people, the ultimate referees in a democracy, to call a timeout.

Today's target for the Times is the Republican government's somewhat opportunistic role in the Terri Schiavo saga.

The Bush administration and the current Congressional leadership like to wax eloquent about states' rights. But they dropped those principles in their rush to stampede over the Florida courts and Legislature. The new law doesn't miss a chance to trample on the state's autonomy and dignity. There are a variety of technical legal doctrines the federal courts use to show deference to state courts, like "abstention" and "exhaustion of remedies." The new law decrees that in Ms. Schiavo's case, these well-established doctrines simply will not apply.

Republicans have traditionally championed respect for the delicate balance the founders created. But in the Schiavo case, and in the battle to stop the Democratic filibusters of judicial nominations, President Bush and his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if they produce the result we want. It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic.

All good stuff, I'm sure. But, again, who's listening?