Anyone besides me wondering why Joel Kaplan's face looks a little familiar? It seems he was one of those phony Brooks Brothers "rioters" shouting and beating their fists to try to stop the Florida recount.

TPM has the goods:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000416.php

It appears that in item 5, "April 12, 2003" and "April 13, 2003" should read as dates in 2006.

I can only hope McClellan is resigning now because a future indictment or released testimony will make it blatently obvious he knowingly lied to the press.

It wouldn't be the first time but these days the press might actually notice.

Then again, perhaps Scott McClellan was never completely comfortable telling blatent lies to the press. If this is the case there's always Tony Snow from Fox News.

Call me an ingenue, but I don't understand why Scott McClellan is put on the spot so much. Granted, he lies and evades constantly, but so what? He's just a mouthpiece, and as such pretty much every word that passes his lips has to pass Bush's approval first. He obviously has to be a staunch Bush supporter to have gotten the job in the first place, and I'm willing to join the crucifixion party on that basis alone, but let's not lose our focus here. McClellan is little more than George "Edgar Bergen" Bush's Charlie McCarthy (or, more appropriately, Mortimer Snerd) and anyone who replaces him will have the same wooden head and hinged mouth.

I mean, what can we really expect from the White House Press Secretary? Independence? Criticism of the President? Did we really think that Scott was going to read a few paragraphs of War Room, realize how wrong he'd been and start answering questions truthfully and fully about the administration's misdeeds? If Bush tells his press secretary to shuck and jive I suspect that, whoever he/she is, those feet will get to shuffling right smartly.

What we really need to do is to acknowledge and accept that we're never, ever going to get substantive information (read anything true) out of the White House Press Office during the Bush presidency. Maybe then our supposedly best and brightest journalistic talents can start blowing off these useless, bogus "briefings", haul out those rusty reporting skills and start doing the hard work of tracking down some actual facts. I've read far, far too many "news" stories these last five years whining about how first Ari Fleischer and now Scott McClellan have stonewalled the White House press corps; that news is as old and tired as an "I Love Lucy" rerun.

Figure it out, guys and gals: the White House briefing room is a news-free zone for the duration, regardless of which puppet is on the end of Bush's arm. It's time to get out there and find the path to the truth; the road to the White House is a dead end.

Did Ari Fleischer resign because even he wouldn't be party to the Plame affair, and were you given the job because you would?

Exactly who or what agency would or could take away Rove's security clearance? These guys make their own rules, and change them to fit the situation.

JRR

I actually feel a little sorry for the guy, since he was obviously in way over his head, the people calling the shots had no respect for him or for the press, and they were content to use his bland, nice-guy demeanor and make him the punching-bag for their misbehavior. Let's let him off the hook, OK? It wasn't his fault.

i'd like to see an article like this about the vice president; i saw a similar presentation on washington week in review where videos of cheney asserting connection between sadaam and al qaida were shown, and then a video where he denied such a connection and previous statements.

all gwen did was make a face. i was very disappointed.

Those guys at Fox made their bones on shouting, correcting and being intentional assholes. They're never going to simply mouth the same bland words over and over. I can just picture some Brit Hume robot pointing at Helen Thomas and telling her to shut the fuck up.

Scott was an inoffensive nothing who's claim to fame is that he made being a thought-sucking void into an artform. You could ask him what time it was or what's the weather and you'd get some baffling bullshit answer not even HE fully understood. But the agitclowns at Fox e.g. Tony Snow or whomever is on the WH payroll this month would never stand for that. They'd start shouting to go bomb Michigan or round up all the black people for concentration camps or start laughing at rape victims, call for Martial Law, that sort of thing.

So clearly what the WH will do is get the next spokesperson for the underdeputy assistant secretary of some department you've never heard of and prop that fat bastard up to mutter the same inanities as the last Iraqi Information Minister. Everyone knows at this point that when these fuckwits tell you the sky is blue, you should still check it with an astronomer first.

On point 2: I may not have heard or read all McClellan claimed on this matter, but as I recall he did not actually say that Rove and Libby "assured" him "they were not involved" in the Plame leak; though what he did say could have been carefully parsed to give that impression.

His actual statement was that he specifically went to Rove and Libby so that they COULD assure him they were not involved; but I have never seen or read a statement from McClellan that Rove and/or Libby, once asked, in fact gave that assurance. McCellan's statement would thus be technically true in this scenario: McClellan went to R&L in the expectation - or at least hope - they would deny involvement, but they did not; whether they admitted it to McClellan or declined to answer is irrelevant to this scenario. Unable to truthfully report that R&L denied involvement, McClellan then described his own actions designed to confirm denial, and was mute on the actual result - but in a way that suggests he got the result he wanted.

Speculation, of course, but to borrow a line from El Rushbo: "It could be true!"