What Did the President Know?

Bush's America

USA Today's Judy Keen assesses Bush's tenure based on how things are going in Lexington, Ky.

"The changes that have occurred here mirror the effects of Bush's tenure in communities everywhere," she said. So what is Bush's imprint?

"His impact is evident in Bill Langley's living room, where there's a shrine to the son who died in Iraq.

"It's in the sagging public-housing projects whose redevelopment was recently delayed by the rejection of a $20 million federal grant request.

"Money from his budget will soon be used to help clean up a stagnant pond at Gainesway Park so kids in a low-income neighborhood can get fishing lessons from senior citizens.

"Police cruisers have new computers thanks to homeland security funds, but community development director Paula King has seen four years of 'decreases in federal funding for social service programs . . . and really stiff competition' for everything else."

Thom Shanker writes in the New York Times: "The Bush administration's rallying call that America is a nation at war is increasingly ringing hollow to men and women in uniform, who argue in frustration that America is not a nation at war, but a nation with only its military at war."

Cheney and the Treatment of Detainees

Josh White and R. Jeffrey Smith write in The Washington Post that the Bush administration is "lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual."

The chief lobbyist? "Vice President Cheney met Thursday evening with three senior Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee to press the administration's case that legislation on these matters would usurp the president's authority and -- in the words of a White House official -- interfere with his ability 'to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack.'"

Mother and Son Reunion

Jim VandeHei writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush and his 80-year-old mother implored low-income seniors Friday to sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug plan and renewed the White House campaign to restructure Social Security."

David E. Rosenbaum writes in the New York Times: "Speaking to several hundred carefully screened supporters, Mr. Bush made essentially the same points he has been making for months. . . .

"The new twist this time was that he was accompanied by his mother, Barbara, who turned 80 last month and whom he described as his favorite senior citizen.

" 'I'm here because I'm worried about our 17 grandchildren, and so is my husband,' Mrs. Bush said. 'They will get no Social Security.' "

Rosenbaum quoted that statement without comment, a far cry from Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press, who was there when Mrs. Bush first used that line in March. Loven at the time called Mrs. Bush's appearance a gimmick: "After all, the grandchildren in the wealthy Bush family are unlikely to depend on Social Security in their sunset years and the monthly Social Security check collected by Mrs. Bush's husband, the former President Bush, is undoubtedly only a minuscule portion of their retirement income."

The Path to the Supreme Court Nomination

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "Much of Bush's selection process remains opaque, guarded jealously by aides who refuse to disclose many details even now that it is over. But interviews with dozens of administration officials, outside White House advisers, Republican strategists and others close to the process peel back at least some of the shroud and reveal a process that took several unexpected twists and turns for a White House that prides itself on order and discipline."

Among the delicious details: Cheney interviewed all of the finalists. And: "At a black-tie dinner for the visiting prime minister of India in the White House State Dining Room [the night before Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s nomination was announced], Card ran into Justice Clarence Thomas. 'You're going to love who the president picks,' Card assured him."

Charles Lane writes in The Washington Post, "Last week, the White House told news organizations that had reported [Roberts's] membership in the [Federalist Society] that he had no memory of belonging." But now it turns out that Roberts's name appears in the influential, conservative legal organization's 1997-1998 leadership directory.

Rick Klein writes in the Boston Globe: "The White House signaled yesterday that it does not intend to release documents produced by Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. during his service in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, setting up a clash with Democrats who are insisting that internal memos prepared by Roberts be released for lawmakers to review."

Timothy Noah asks on Slate: "What belittling nickname will President Bush give his new Supreme Court nominee?" Noah's taking nominations.

The Administration and the Fury

Emily Wagster Pettus writes for the Associated Press: "A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the 'idiot' in William Faulkner's novel 'The Sound and the Fury' has won this year's Faulkner write-alike contest -- and touched off a literary spat.

"Organizers of the Faux Faulkner competition are accusing Hemispheres, the United Airlines magazine that has sponsored the contest for six years, of playing politics by not putting Sam Apple's 'The Administration and the Fury' in its print edition -- only on its Web site. . . .

"The story portrays President Bush in the role of Benjy, the mentally challenged son -- or, as Faulkner himself said, the 'idiot' -- in his 1929 novel about the wreckage of a Southern family."

Here's the parody, as published in Slate in February, and in which Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepare Bush for a news conference.

An excerpt:

" 'Go and get him Saddam's gun,' Condi said. 'You know how he likes to hold it.'

"Dick went to my desk drawer and took out Saddam s gun. He gave it to me, and it was hot in my hands. Rummy pulled the gun away.

" 'Do you want him carrying a gun into the press conference?' Rummy said. " 'Can't you think any better than he can?' "

Brilliant!

So was the Roberts nomination moved up in an attempt to distract from the CIA leak scandal? And did it fail?

Howard Kurtz asked the National Review's Byron York for his thoughts.

York: "Just shows you the president's brilliance, that Roberts is not taking the heat off Rove; Rove is taking the heat off Roberts. And now we don't have the Supreme Court controversy which we thought we were going to have."

Angry Bush Jokes

Matt Alexander puts forth some new Bush jokes in McSweeney's -- although he acknowledges that some of them "seem gratuitous and mean-spirited."