Tuesday, March 13, 2007

all lies all the time (updated)

More stories are coming out showing how the Bush Administration lies about just about everything they do.

Justice Department: Liars (liars!) about FBI abuse of power
Attorney General: Liar about politically-driven attorney purge
White House: Liars about Bush's history of undermining global warming science

Plus there was the whole Libby trial, illustrating how Cheney was obsessed with attacking the credibility of someone who dared dispute the lies about Iraq's non-existant WMD program.

UPDATE: Nice! My boy Greenwald comes through with a post on exactly this topic, and relates it to the extremist authoritarianism that characterizes this administration and the Republican Party in general:
Lying to Congress is what this administration generally -- and the DOJ specifically -- has done continuously....

None of these acts occur in isolation. They are all part of the broader view of the Bush administration that the President's power cannot be constrained by the law or by the Congress. They believe they have the right to lie to Congress about their behavior, even though lying to Congress is, as Atrios noted today, a felony...

It's so vital to note that this Republican belief in the right to lie to Congress has deep roots back in the Reagan administration and, even before that, in the Nixon administration...

Of course, the reason that lying to Congress is a felony is because Congress is composed of the representatives of the American people, and when executive branch officials lie to Congress, they are lying to the country. They subvert the entire constitutional order by preventing the American people from exercising overisight over the executive branch through their representatives in Congress, and it turns the President into an unchecked, unaccountable ruler.

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