This White House Will Lie About Anything

And the media will cover for them.

Letterman poked fun at Bush by showing a video of a kid falling asleep during a speech Bush made in Florida. The White House called CNN, which was replaying the story, and said the tape was doctored. Letterman proved it wasn't and denounced them for saying it was. CNN says they misspoke, it wasn't the White House that called. Letterman says he knows it was.

Story here and here.

The White House -- any White House -- dodging questions is nothing new. More disturbing is CNN's apparent disregard in this case for the public's right to the true story. For a news organization, that obligation ought to trump everything else -- including any internal embarrassment over missing the bucket completely on what should have been a slam dunk.

Daryl Kagan offered yet another elaboration, stating that the White House did not ever call CNN to allege the tape was faked and served up an apology -- not to viewers, but to Letterman. But an apology is not an explanation, and there have to be a few hundreds of thousands of baffled CNN devotees still wondering how you get something like that wrong twice in two hours.