Remember those fake video news reports the Bush administration has been distributing to local television stations? Back in February, the Government Accountability Office warned federal agencies to stop pushing the phony news reports on the grounds that continuing to do so would amount to the distribution of domestic propaganda in violation of federal law.That might have been the end of the matter, but the Bush administration has other ideas. Last week, budget director Josh Bolten and a Justice Department lawyer named Steven Bradbury issued their own opinion about the fake news stories. Their conclusion: The GAO is wrong, and the fake news reports are perfectly legal. Moreover, as the Washington Post reports today, Bolten and Bradbury said that legal advice for the executive branch is supposed to come not from the Government Accountability Office but from the Justice's Office of Legal Counsel.
That would be the same Office of Legal Counsel that issued a legal memorandum in August 2002 defining torture out of existence and opining that the president's commander-in-chief power gives him authority to defy federal law in the name of national security -- and the same Office of Legal Counsel that retracted that memo in December 2004, just in time for Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearings.
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