i believe the national enquirer

even if it's the tiniest part of the story that is true, to get something like this out of fantasy, well, just isn't possible.

bush is back on the bottle. so what. he lies about everything else, so why would we want to believe him when he says he's not boozin again.

The National Enquirer is reporting that the president's troubles have literally driven him to drink. "Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again," the Enquirer says.

As you might expect, the sourcing for the story is a little vague. In an odd sort of grammatical construction, the Enquirer says that "family sources have told" -- to whom, it doesn't say -- that the president was "caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze" in Crawford, Texas, when "he learned of the hurricane disaster." "One insider" says that Bush "apparently" reached for a "Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey" when water flooded into New Orleans. Another "Washington source" says: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him -- but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months."

--salon

so there ya have it. the national enquirer, backed up by salon, makes for an interesting case, especially against a proven liar.

wonder why tuition is so high?

take a look at American University. a fine read into the backsides of what the leaders of our learning institutions do for themselves at the expense of others. a horrifying tale of utter ego-maniac-ness.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Benjamin Ladner, the president of American University, who has been suspended pending an investigation of expenses that he charged to the college, has agreed to accept a more modest contract if the board votes to return him to office, his lawyer and several board members said on Friday.

--nytimes

does that mean rummy is a confirmed liar now?

caught this in today's papers:

Off-lead in the NYT, there's a new report of prisoner abuse in Iraq. This time it's a confession by three former soldiers in the legendary 82^nd Airborne to Human Rights Watch that detainees were routinely beaten in 2003 and 2004. According to the LAT, one sergeant says the troops were acting on orders form military intelligence. He decided to come forward after he heard Donald Rumsfeld say the military had changed its procedures after Abu Ghraib.

Letters Of The Day

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown has resigned. It would be very wrong to let Brown be the scapegoat for FEMA's sins. The real scandal is that somewhere along the line FEMA became a dumping ground for the president's political cronies with little experience in disaster relief.

The agency's previous director was Joe Albaugh, who was President Bush's 2000 campaign chairman. Albaugh brought in the current failure, whose previous work was with Arabian horses.

The No. 2 guy, Patrick Rhode, worked for the 2000 election campaign. The No. 3 guy is Brooks Altshuler, who used to plan presidential trips. FEMA's long-term recovery director is a guy named Scott Morris, who produced television and radio commercials for the Bush campaign.

None of these guys is qualified to head an emergency-management agency.

How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? Call me naive, but it's a real blow to learn that political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal government.

-William C. Stosine, Iowa City.

George Bush said, "I as president am responsible for the problem and for the solution." So why did he fire FEMA Director Michael Brown? Brown claims before and during the storm he called the White House repeatedly and received absolutely no response.

-Steve Stanley, Earlham.

--attribution

if this aint corruption, i dont know what is

The Post and NYT front the indictment of the White House's just-resigned top procurement official, David Safavian, for allegedly giving under-the-table help to uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and then lying to investigators about it. Safavian as Post puts it, "set purchasing policy for the entire government," he resigned last week, with the indictments were written up. According to a piece in Government Executive magazine last year, he came to the gig with little procurement experience. Before his time in the administration, he worked as a lobbyist with Jack Abramoff. (And final bit of fun: Safavian's wife is the top lawyer on the House committee that oversees government procurement.)