The bonfire of the inanities, continued Seriously, could it get any worse?

THE EVER-HELPFUL PRESS

Bush-Cheney’s cynicism and contempt for the media, and their administration’s repeatedly exposed practice of fabricating and/or planting stories became so blatant in 2005 that newscasts should have begun with the disclaimer "I’m George W. Bush and I approved of this message."

In January, we learned that neo-con columnist Armstrong Williams was on the federal dole to tout Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. In February, "Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert" the "Washington Bureau Chief" of "Talon News," who had been given media access to the White House more than 100 times, was exposed as a male prostitute by bloggers who decided to investigate the "reporter" whose Nerf-ball questions made him White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s go-to guy when things got sticky. (It’s simply impossible to write this without cheap jokes.)

The bloggers no doubt figured the guy to be an escaped mental patient but soon learned that he was the driving force behind several pornographic gay-escort sites that promoted his patriotic desire to continue the rigid discipline of military service to America long after he’d been . . . um, discharged. (Simply impossible.)

He even asked a question of W from the fourth row of a rare presidential press conference. As I recall it was "Who do I have to blow to get in the first row?"

WHO’S TO PLAME?

Perhaps the answer was whomever it was on Bush’s staff assigned to disclose to "Jimmy-Jeff" the identity of the soon-to-be world’s most famous secret agent, Valerie Plame. Plame was a CIA WMD expert working undercover for the "brass plate" front firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates. Blowing her cover was meant as revenge against her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, after he went to Niger in 2002 and established that the Saddam Hussein/yellowcake-uranium story was nonsense and then wrote about it later in the New York Times. Within days, Robert Novak, a man with a voice so shrill only dogs can hear it and a column so odious only rodents read it, outed Plame. And then, in a follow-up piece, he disclosed Brewster Jennings and its true purpose, endangering not only Plame but dozens of other operatives as well.

I’m no fan of the CIA, but treason is treason, and although betraying our nation is nothing new for this administration, this time the charge just might stick. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is still preparing the case, but if justice is served, presidential puppeteer-in-chief Karl Rove, clearly up to his splotchy pink neck in Traitorgate, could be back in Texas for good by the new year.

Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was indicted for obstruction of justice and perjury in the case. Cheney, a man who makes Donald Trump look like a hands-off guy, would have us believe that he was shocked to learn that his top aide had become a rogue operative in this criminal conspiracy.

Traitorgate was the epicenter of the snarl in the Bush-Cheney web of deceit, combining as it did the administration’s media manipulation, its phony case for war, and its low-blow tactics. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was the gray lady down on the administration for exclusive access to every falsehood it wanted planted in the paper of record to make its phony case for war in Iraq. Miller, a viciously ambitious, narcissistic journalist made up of equal parts tenacity and wrong-headedness, had been informed of Plame’s identity by Scooter Libby.

This was a cynically wise move considering how furious she had become with Wilson’s Times op-ed piece that refuted some very specific lies she had run above the fold in the mislead-up to war. Miller spent several weeks in jail for contempt of court rather than reveal Libby as her source in the Plame leak. But really all she was covering was her own complicit ass, which eventually was booted out on the street by the paper that allowed her to so compromise it.

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward also traded ethics for access and got caught in the swirl of Traitorgate. As the story was exploding, Woodward went on Larry King and matter-of-factly implied the whole affair was a tempest in a teapot. He failed to disclose his own involvement, but we soon learned that he was just another rat in the sewer that ran between the White House and the corporate media. Richard Nixon would be so proud of him!

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD/RAP SHEET

The Republican Congress was a disgrace throughout the year. Low points included the ethics scandals that embroiled both the House and Senate majority leaders. Congressman Tom DeLay was indicted for money laundering, the only known connection to anything clean in his sordid career. A primary player in DeLay’s K Street (soon to be renamed Shakedown Street) Project was lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who funneled funds, goods, and junkets to DeLay and others in exchange for right of first refusal on all legislation. The scandal is complicated and far-reaching and, as such, is my pick to click in 2006 — an ideal year for all Americans to take a good look at just how bought and paid-for their legislators really are.

Dr. Bill Frist, the Senate’s majority leader, was plagued by vision problems that actually caused him to see too much — like the contents of his blind trust, which now has him under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. His super vision also allowed him to use a home video to pronounce that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state. Of course he was wrong — she was in Florida.