The Pathetic Comedy of Dana Perino

Each week, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino seems to claim a new “personal best” in unintended irony. Today, however, she set a new world record. (One can almost hear the partisan fans chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”)

Here is a verbatim exchange from this afternoon’s press conference, in which Ms. Perino answered questions concerning the “state of emergency” declared by Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on his political opponents:

QUESTION: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?
MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.

In Ms. Perino’s defense, she may have dispensed with the concluding caveat, “…unless we do it,” because she thought it so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning.

Advertisement

The Quiet American and the Cost of Civic Disengagement since 9/11

George W. Bush likes to say the world changed on September 11, 2001. He’s absolutely right, of course. But then, he should know. He and his administration were the chief architects of that change.

Six years later, it is fascinating and horrible to trace the course of those transformations, and to assess our culpability as citizens of a democracy. We have looked-on like a herd of docile sheep as the Bush administration emasculated Congress, radically altered our conceptions of life in a free society, and embarked on a war contrary to nearly every national value or policy objective one might have otherwise articulated.