Facing a wave of critics warning of the risks of putting Mr. Mohammed on trial, Mr. Holder bluntly asserted that “failure isn’t a option” when asked during a Congressional hearing whether Mr. Mohammed and other key terrorist suspects will be convicted. Acquittals, claims of asylum and even judicial orders freeing them won’t result in releases, he asserted.

“If there is not a successful conclusion to this trial, that would not mean that this person would be released,” Mr. Holder bluntly told the Congressional hearing, referring to Mr. Mohammed – the self-proclaimed planner of the Sept 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.

“What if a federal judge orders the Department of Justice to release Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?” Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn asked. “Will you defy that order?”

Mr. Holder made it clear that by moving Mr. Mohammed to a prison offshore – such as Bagram in Afghanistan, where hundreds of detainees are held – a release order could be circumvented.

“We have taken the view that the judiciary does not have the ability necessarily to certainly require us to, with people who are held overseas, to release them,” he said. “It’s hard for me to imagine a set of circumstances, given the other things that we could do with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” that would result in him being freed,” the Attorney-General said.

“Under the regime we are contemplating … the ability to detain under laws of war, we would retain that ability,” Mr. Holder added, meaning anyone freed by the courts could simply be returned as an enemy combatant to indefinite military detention.

Mr. Obama, a former law professor, denied he was interfering with Mr. Mohammed’s right to a fair trial. “I’m not prejudging it,” he said in a televised NBC interview. “I’m not going to be in that courtroom. That’s the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” he said.

Like I said this morning, this so-called “trial for justice for the 9-11 victims” is a pretense for this administration. If their whole point in this trial is to demonstrate to the world that we have a “fair and just” system, then proclaiming KSM guilty and deciding his punishment before he’s had a trial – and suggesting that even if he isn’t found guilty that he will still be held and possibly sent to Bagram is certainly unlike any “fair and just” system I’ve ever heard of. Essentially, Holder is saying, “If we don’t like the verdict, we still have options for keeping him in custody.” Huh??

All the options he put on the table in the event of a not guilty verdict for KSM are options he should have taken advantage of instead of going the route he’s chosen to with this farcical show trial.

Really. Wake me up when amateur hour is over in this WH!

Speaking of military tribunals, we went back into the video archives and found this C-SPAN tape below. Holder might want to watch it.

It contains his boss, Barack Obama, a brief member of that same Senate, in 2006 stating that a military tribunal was a perfectly fine way of handling such dangerous individuals as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Obama said the fight against terrorism was “an extraordinarily difficult war” where terrorists could plot undetected from within our own borders.

The freshman Illinois senator was defending a legislative amendment and pointed out that a military tribunal for Mohammed seemed just fine to him.

“The irony of the underlying bill as it’s written is that someone like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is going to get basically a full military trial with all the bells and whistles. He’s gonna have counsel. He’s gonna be able to present evidence to rebut the government’s case…. I think we will convict him. And I think justice will be carried out.”

Here’s the video:

Apparently, now that he has more “experience,” he believes otherwise.

(via GayPatriot)

Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.

In its first reevaluation of breast cancer screening since 2002, the independent government-appointed panel recommended the changes, citing evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit.

Coming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy.

“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully.”

Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.

“Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it,” said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. “It’s crazy — unethical, really.”

The new guidelines also recommend against teaching women to do regular self-exams and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to recommend that doctors do the exams or to continue routine mammograms beyond age 74.

Polipundit reax:

But it’s not about rationing! It’s about saving women from temporary anxiety over false positives. And if other women have to die of breast cancer to prevent that anxiety, well, that’s a small price to pay.

[...]

On the bright side, the more women who die in their 40’s and 50’s, the less underfunded Social Security and Medicare will be.

Change we can believe in!

And so it begins.

Hat tip to Tom Maguire, where a commenter quipped:

It shows how the government run health care will cut costs. “Experts” will periodically issue new findings…”Hold off on that Mammogram”, “Prenatal care Overrated”, “Broken Bones, No Problem: How I Learned To Live With My Arm Askew”, ” Jaundiced and Lovin It”.

Sounds about right.

Update: Ed Morrissey points out that just a few short months ago “experts” were sounding off alarm bells about the ’slight annual decrease’ being reported among women getting mammograms in their 40s, and that the same “independent panel” now pushing for women to stop having them done in their 40s still at that time pushed for mammograms every 1 to 2 years for women at that age. What’s changed? Hmmmm….

NEW YORK (CBS) – Gov. David Paterson openly criticized the White House on Monday, saying he thought it was a terrible idea to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists to New York for trial.

“This is not a decision that I would have made. I think terrorism isn’t just attack, it’s anxiety and I think you feel the anxiety and frustration of New Yorkers who took the bullet for the rest of the country,” he said.

Paterson’s comments break with Democrats, who generally support the President’s decision.

“Our country was attacked on its own soil on September 11, 2001 and New York was very much the epicenter of that attack. Over 2,700 lives were lost,” he said. “It’s very painful. We’re still having trouble getting over it. We still have been unable to rebuild that site and having those terrorists so close to the attack is gonna be an encumbrance on all New Yorkers.”

Paterson also said that the White House warned him six months ago this very situation would happen. He said while he disagrees with the decision, he will do everything in his power to make sure that the state’s Department of Homeland Security will keep New Yorkers as safe as possible.

While I have no doubt that Paterson feels like he can more freely speak out against this administration since they’ve been privately pushing him not to run for re-election, I do wonder if his comments today regarding the upcoming KSM trial in NYC is either an attempt to pander to New York voters who have been giving him low ratings for close to a year now, or if it’s genuine. A recent CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans are against a civilian trial for KSM and instead prefer a military trial – but still think it should be in the US. Maybe he’s seen similar numbers for NY?

Think again. Both Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit dug up a 1994 New York Times piece back when the first Obama bow controversy emerged, and Ed reposted the link to the article again today. In it, the liberal NYT talks about a tradition among American Presidents that does not involve bowing:

It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.

Canadians still bow to England’s Queen; so do Australians. Americans shake hands. If not to stand eye-to-eye with royalty, what else were 1776 and all that about?

[...]

Guests invited to a white-tie state dinner at the White House (a Clinton Administration first) were instructed to address the Emperor as “Your Majesty,” not “Your Highness” or, worse, “King.” And in what one Administration aide called “some emperor thing,” an Army general was cautioned that he should not address the Emperor Akihito at all as he escorted him to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.

To emphasize, it is NOT a “cultural custom” of any kind for any POTUS to bow as Obama did to a head of state. But apparently this State Department – and this President – think differently.

So, “Moderate” Voice’s Kathy Kattenburg, does this make the NYT a group of “yokels” as well? Newsflash: When even the nation’s most liberal newspaper backs up a point conservatives are making, that usually means the left is flat out wrong. Sometimes, lefties, President Obama does make mistakes, and clearly this was one of those times -as was the outrageous bow he made to the Saudi King.

If you’re ok with American Presidents bowing like he has to other heads of state, then perhaps you were disappointed with the outcome of the Revolutionary War, too.

Next?

Update – 12:17 PM: Check out these photos of other world leaders meeting with the Emperor of Japan. How culturally insensitive of them not to bow. Yokels!

(via ST reader 2Hotel9)

Cross-posted to Right Wing News, where I am helping guestblog for John Hawkins on Sundays.

How low will the new American president go for the world’s royalty?

This photo will get Democrat President Obama a lot of approving nods in Japan this weekend, especially among the older generation of Japanese who still pay attention to the royal family living in its downtown castle. Very low bows like this are a sign of great respect and deference for a superior.

To some in the United States, however, an upright handshake might have looked better. Remember Michelle Obama casually patting Britain’s Queen Elizabeth on the back during their Buckingham Palace visit? America’s royalty tends to make movies and get bad reviews and lots of money as a sign of respect.

Obama could receive some frowns back home as he did for his not-quite-this-low-or-maybe-about-the-same-bow to the Saudi king not so long ago.

Here is the photo in question.

U.S. President Barack Obama bows as he is greeted by Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko as he arrives at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Wonder what kind of lame spin we’ll get from the WH on this one?

Melody Barnes, the head of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, told students at Boston College Law School on Nov. 9 that she disagrees with her boss on the issue of same-sex marriage.

“I really appreciate your frustration and your disappointment with the President’s position on this issue,” said Barnes when asked by a student if she supported equal civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians. “[W]ith regard to my own views, those are my own views, and I come to my experience based on what I’ve learned, based on the relationships I’ve had with friends, and they’re relationships that I respect, and the children that they are raising, and that is something that I support.”

[...]

Barnes made her remarks in response to a Boston College Law School student who said that he was an Obama primary and general election voter who was deeply disappointed in the religion-based rationale that the president has offered to explain his opposition to civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

(Video here)

In reality, even though “on the record” Barnes and Obama disagree on gay marriage – she’s for and he’s against, in reality I think it’s safe to say that Obama supports gay marriage, too. He just trying to take a “middle ground” approach on the issue similar to Bill Clinton’s so as not to alienate mainstream voters who still oppose gay marriage.

What caught my eye in the article, though, was not the disagreement between Barnes and Obama. It was what was reported midway through it:

Boston College Law School shot video of Barnes’ speech and Q&A that followed but initially held off on releasing it to the press because it wanted to “give the White House staffers a chance to view the video and give us their thumbs up on making it public.”

A spokesman for Boston College Law School says that he has now received the “thumbs up” from the White House, and the school is planning to post the video — which was first shared with ABC News — on Friday afternoon.

Er, um – excuse me, but why would this school see the need to request permission to post the video from the WH? There were no super top secret discussions taking place on that video. The woman just opposes President Obama’s official position on gay marriage. Big deal!

Oh, that’s right. It’s a law school, and lawyers typically support Democrats, so maybe they just didn’t want to portray the administration in any light that might be seen as even remotely unflattering. So they wanted them to “review” the footage first. Now – can you imagine a law school giving the same courtesy to the Bush administration? We all know the answer to that one, and frankly, I wouldn’t want any school to suppress a video of an administration official politely disagreeing with the WH’s official position on any given issue, whether that WH was Republican or Democrat.

Asking the WH for permission to post a video of an admin official taking a different side on an issue than the POTUS. What’s next? Another Obama-friendly institution cutting his waffle for him?

As has been rumored for months, White House counsel Greg Craig will announce his resignation today, effective at the end of the year, senior administration officials tell ABC News. Craig will be replaced by attorney Bob Bauer, who has served as President Obama’s private attorney. Bauer will start work in December, so as to help create a seamless transition.

Senior administration sources confirmed last night what Craig was denying vehemently as recently as a few weeks ago.

“I have no plans to leave whatsoever,” Craig told the National Law Journal in October. “The rumors that I’m about to leave are false. The reports that I’m about to leave are wrong. I have no plans to leave.”

Bauer, the husband of outgoing White House communications director Anita Dunn, was an aggressive campaign counsel for then-Sen. Obama, crashing a conference call held by the campaign of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and dismissing complaints by Sen. John McCain’s campaign counsel. He is currently the chair of the Political Law Group of Perkins Coie LLP.

Craig originally headed up White House efforts to close the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay and was one of the driving forces recommending that President Obama sign the executive order in January ordering it shuttered within a year, a deadline that almost certainly will not be met. Inside and outside of the White House Craig has been criticized for this failure, and for not necessarily meshing well with other White House players.

What else do we know about Bob Bauer? Michelle Malkin provides a timely – and troubling – reminder:

I’ll remind you again of Bauer’s handiwork during the 2008 campaign:

*It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obama’s ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

*It was Bauer who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad.

*It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country to compel them to pull the spot. All on Barack Obama’s behalf.

Bauer’s specialty is stifling dissent. He’s married to the woman Obama entrusted to lead the campaign to de-legitimize critics in the media.

Disturbing, yes – but shocking? Absolutely not.

(CBS) Even before President Obama sets foot on Air Force One tomorrow [today- ST] to begin a 9-day trip to Asia, he has traveled to more countries in his first year in office than any of his predecessors.

Since taking office, he has made 7 foreign trips and visited 16 countries, 3 of them twice.

The Asia trip – which takes him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea – will bring his total to 8 foreign trips and 20 countries.

The only other president to come close to Mr. Obama’s first-year-in-office globe-trotting numbers is President George H. W. Bush, who took 7 foreign trips to 14 countries.

His son traveled abroad five times to 11 countries during his first year. President Clinton only did 2 foreign trips to 3 nations in 1993.

[...]

This Asia trip is not Mr. Obama’s last foreign foray of the year. He’s scheduled to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in October. And he may stay or head back to Scandinavia to attend the United Nations Conference on Climate Change a few days later.

It will further secure his record as having done more foreign travel than any U.S. president to date.

Gee, with a foreign travels track record like that, it’s no wonder he hasn’t made a decision on Afghanistan yet. He’s a busy guy! As Think Progress liberal Matthew Yglesias has said before in a huffy response to the criticism that the President is dithering on Afghanistan, hey – it’s all about the priorities. Maybe he’s using all that foreign relations “experience” he got as a child in an effort to try and “repair” so-called “damaged” alliances abroad (well, some of them, anyway).

Oh well. I guess the foreign trips record is a better achievement than, say, having racked up more golf outings in your first year in office than your evil predecessor had in nearly three.

Just sayin’.

The Environmental Protection Agency has directed two of its lawyers to makes changes to a YouTube video they posted that is critical of the Obama administration’s climate change policy.

The agency, citing federal policies, told the two lawyers, Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, who are married and based in San Francisco, that they could mention their E.P.A. affiliation only once; must remove language specifying Mr. Zabel’s expertise and their years of employment with the agency; and must remove an image of the agency’s office in San Francisco.

They have been told that if they do not edit the video to comply with the policy, they could face disciplinary action.

The video, titled “The Huge Mistake,” was produced and posted in September. But the agency did not issue its warning until The Washington Post published a widely cited opinion article by the couple on Oct. 31 that raised concerns, echoing those in the video, about cap-and-trade legislation that the Obama administration supports.

Ms. Williams and Mr. Zabel say cap and trade, in which the government sets a limit on gases that contribute to global warming and then lets companies trade permits to meet it, can be easily gamed by industry and fail to reduce the emissions linked to global warming.

On Thursday, Mr. Zabel said, regional ethics officers with the agency met with him to express concerns about the video and to demand that it be taken down by the next day. Ms. Williams was traveling and did not take part in the meeting.

E.P.A. officials said the agency did not object to the content of the video or the op-ed article or challenge the couple’s right to express their opinions. But they said that government ethics rules required them to state that the opinions were their own and not those of the agency.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this story in the NYT, but was not so surprised to read at the bottom of it that in the print version it was published on page A22. Contrast that with a very critical piece on Bush’s EPA, published July 12, 2008 – on page A1.

Here’s the evil video in question:

Ed Morrissey’s take:

The EPA and the administration claims that they have no problem with people speaking their minds. However, their experience at EPA forms an important basis of their argument, at least in establishing their expertise in the field. The image of the EPA facility depicts public property, which should hardly require permission to use in any political speech. It’s an obvious attempt to harass and intimidate the couple.

I disagree with their position on this, of course. We don’t need a “carbon tax” that will drive up the costs of production in the US while our unemployment rate is 10.2% and climbing. We need cheap energy produced domestically that both employs a lot more Americans and creates an incentive for broad-based investment in American production overall. But it’s worth watching to see how big a failure cap-and-trade has been wherever it’s been tried, and how this White House likes to silence those who depart from the party line. And as Michelle notes, it’s not the first time the EPA’s been caught doing just that.

It’s understandable that any administration wants some level of “message control” over those associated closely with the administration who speak openly about the respective administration’s policy(ies). But this administration has proven time and time again that it will go through extraordinary – chilling, in fact – measures to clamp down on dissent both within its ranks and outside of them – and on Mainstreet USA . Interestingly enough, the left dogged Bush for years over his alleged “silencing of dissent” within his own EPA, yet we have heard hardly a peep out of them this time around. Gee, I wonder why?

Oh – and speaking of clamping down: Remember Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General who the administration targeted and and subsequently fired because he wasn’t giving any special treatment to Obama donor and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who was under investigation on suspicion of “misuse of federal grants” to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars? He was cleared today of all charges, and wants his job back. Not sure why, considering what they put him through – and how they insultingly tried to claim their rationale for letting him go was due to “senility” issues, but maybe it has to do with the fact that the admin wants the Johnson case dismissed, and he’s trying to stop that from happening.

Stay tuned.

White House communications director Anita Dunn will step down from her post at the end of the month and Dan Pfeiffer, her deputy, will take over, according to sources familiar with the move.

Dunn, a longtime Democratic media consultant, took over the job on an interim basis earlier this year when Ellen Moran abruptly left the post to take a job at the Commerce Department. Dunn will return to Squier Knapp Dunn, the consulting firm where she is a partner, but will remain as a consultant to the White House on the communications and strategic matters.

The move will be formally announced later today.

Pfeiffer began working for Obama in 2007 following Sen. Evan Bayh’s (Ind.) decision not to pursue the presidency. He served a stint as the traveling press secretary for Obama’s presidential bid but eventually took a slot overseeing the campaign’s communications operation.

Prior to Obama, Pfeiffer worked for Sen. Tim Johnson’s (S.D.) re-election race in 2002 and on then Sen. Tom Daschle’s (S.D.) unsuccessful bid in 2004.

The passing of the baton from Dunn to Pfeiffer had long been expected within White House circles as she had made clear when she took the job that the “interim” in her title was meant to be taken literally.

While she’s not being thrown under the bus like so many other embarassing Obama associates, I suspect with all the heat she’s taken over her recent comments about Fox News – and her praise for Chairman Mao, it’s a bit of welcome news for the WH.   Considering the reported “truce” allegedly reached between them and the popular cable news network, they’re no longer interested in being overtly anti-Fox, as Dunn was and is.  Now they’re interested in keeping it “behind the scenes” – hush-hush, if you will, via threatening Democrat analysts/commentators/consultants who appear on the network via warning them to stay off of it – or else.

Hopenchange you can believe in.

The president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he’s ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.

President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week, he sets out on a weeklong tour of Asia.

But the president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he’s ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.

“A tragedy,” is how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Obama’s absence.

Some question whether the decision not to go was a nod to Russia, with which the Obama administration is trying to mend relations, or just another attempt to play down the perception of the United States as an exceptional superpower.

For its part, the administration is citing a scheduling conflict. The White House says the president simply does not have the time to go, with the trip to Asia starting Wednesday.

“Obviously we have a lot to work on here and we have commitments for an upcoming Asia trip,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that a “very senior delegation” of U.S. officials would attend.

That delegation is led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Berlin Sunday ahead of the festivities — the first stop for the secretary on a trip through Europe and Asia.

National Review’s Rich Lowry was right on in his reaction to the news that Obama would be absent from the anniversary festivities:

“John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ On the 20th anniversary of the last century’s most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, ‘Ich bin beschaftigt’ — i.e., I’m busy,” he wrote. “Obama’s failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. It’s hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion.”

Well, hey – this is what I call a “Me” Presidency. It’s all about O, not the country that elected him President. The fall of the Berlin Wall wasn’t his accomplishment, after all, and at this stage in his presidency there’s nothing to be gained from a visit anywhere near the Berlin Wall – unlike the last time – so why bother?

Cross-posted to Right Wing News, where I am helping guestblog for John Hawkins on Sundays.

Michelle Malkin is liveblogging the latest developments taking place during this rare Saturday session. You can watch the goings on as they take place here.

The vote is scheduled to take place around 6 tonight Eastern time. Stay tuned …

Update 1 – 6:22 PM: Per Jake Tapper, the vote is now supposed to take place sometime around 9:30 ET.

Update 2 – 11:11 PM: The House has just passed their version of “health care reform” with 220 votes to 215. 39 Democrats voted against the bill, while 1 Republican voted for it (Joseph Cao – LA). Great – now our dishonest President can claim the House version was “bipartisan.”

Politico reports that CNN’s David Gergen, WaPo’s Chris Cillizza, Newsweek’s Jon Meacham and Howard Fineman, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker, Politico’s Mike Allen, NPR/Fox’s Mara Liasson, TPM’s Josh Marshall and NYT’s David Brooks, Andy Rosenthal, and Gail Collins joined the President, David Axelrod, Anita Dunn, Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs for an off-the-record lunch today.

Lunch apparently lasted two hours and green salad, halibut and pear tart were served.

No word yet on how the sour grapes tasted.

This is becoming a regular occurrence, isn’t it? What’s happening with this WH? Are they so concerned now about MSM journalists like Jake Tapper asking them tough questions that they’ve taken to meeting “off-the-record” with liberal talking heads (and David Brooks – I know, same thing) in an effort to get “the real truth” out? Answer: Most likely. Hell, that’s why they’re pretty much boycotting Fox News at this point, and demanding that other liberals follow suit or else, because they can’t stand the heat and prefer “friendlier” news outlets, so it only stands to reason that the same rule applies here with these “off-the-record” chit chats where no one outside of the “inner circle” knows what was said. But of course, the “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back” rule applies here. Write a favorable column, or say favorable things about the administration on either your show or a show where you’re a guest, and you’ll continue to get invited to “off-the-record” WH get togethers.

So much for “open government, accountable only to the people.”