On April 3, late on a Friday afternoon, the Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the National Security Administration for unlawfully spying on Americans’ telephone records. In its brief, the Justice Department made two arguments:
First, it claimed that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would result in the disclosure of […]

George W. Bush’s public statements have been absurd for so long, that it’s almost poor sport to continue to skewer them. Nevertheless, because I haven’t done so on BTC News in quite a while, and because this may be my last opportunity, I can’t resist one last shot. For auld lang syne, as it were.
When […]

On Monday at the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino declined to answer when I asked her whether the White House would apologize for last Friday’s raid by U.S. forces in Iraq that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The slain man, Ali Abdul Hussein al-Maliki, was described as the […]

BTC News contributor Eric Brewer, now reporting from the White House for online magazine Raw story, challenged Bush press secretary Dana Perino on the president’s claim that al Qaeda in Iraq might one day appropriate Iraq’s oil and use the funds for their own purposes.
This isn’t a new claim—Bush has made it before, as […]

Today at the White House press briefing, I got into a somewhat heated (on my part) dispute with John Gizzi, political editor of the right wing web magazine HumanEvents.com. It happened like this…
Earlier in the briefing, the press was asking Tony Snow some pretty good questions about Bush’s commutation yesterday of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. […]

In which Tony dodges questions about the U.S. Attorney firings…

Tony Snow laughed at me today in the White House briefing room after I asked him a question inspired by John Yoo’s vigorous defense, in an op-ed in last Sunday’s NY Times, of the Supreme Leader style of government that Mr. Yoo helped fashion when he worked in Bush’s Justice Department in the two years after the 9/11 attacks.

Tony Snow does his best to control the damage after Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, speaking to reporters on Thursday, denounced coalition troops’ treatment of Iraqi civilians.

Today during the White House briefing I asked Tony Snow this question: There have been news reports this week that the FBI is using the Patriot Act to obtain phone records of journalists without their knowledge and without judicial oversight. As a former journalist, are you at all concerned about this sort of intrusion on press freedom? Tony denied the allegation…

The White House press corps gave Tony Snow rock star treatment for his first televised press conference today. It was standing room only.