Ambidextrous posts this from KOS

Quite simply, the White House has tampered with the transcript of the Oct. 31 press briefing conducted by l'il Scott McClellan. David Gregory of MSNBC argued to McClellan that notwithstanding McClellan's assurances two years ago that Rove and Libby had not been involved in the leak, both Rove and Libby have admitted to taking part in conversations with journalists regarding Valerie Plame. In response, Scottie said "That's accurate." But the official White House transcript of the briefing available at whitehouse.gov has Scottie saying "I don't think that's accurate."

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Well Nixon found out that the Unblinking Eye of God looked a lot like a Xerox machine and a tape recorder.

Times have changed.

Google and blogs are keeping their eye on the sparrow --

Google has the almost total recall, and bloggers are obsessive enough to look for the "AHA!" inconsistencies. (The Bushwahs say, disaparagingly, that we're looking for the 'Gotcha' stuff, as if, when there has been a coup of process, all rights to be involved in the political dialogue stifled and threatened, this isn't a proper avenue to pursue.

Much better than the same frustration -- being frozen out of having input to your country's decision-making processes -- the same frustration that motivates a suicide bomber.

The internet (1) allows people to pursue outrage and opposition in a civilized manner, have a voice rather than apoplexy -- hell, a much more civilized manner than is generally used by those who have taken the seats of power, and (2) makes it increasingly more difficult for politicians to lie and get away with it.

No wonder it scares the crap out of them, makes them dream up threats to the kiddies and national security as a wedge to try to control the world-wide free speech going on.

("The last refuge of scoundrels is "We're protecting the children." Ente Grillenhaft)

The other thing that terrifies the politicians -- there is so much crap on the internet it forces people to think for themselves, to try to analyze what they've read and determine if it makes sense or not (or so we can hope, the whole advantage of allowing comments on our own postings).

THAT -- a population actually thinking about what is being said -- THAT is poiticians' worst fear, late at night, under the covers, trembling, wondering "Omigod, what if they actually try to figure out if what I'm saying makes sense?"

It's one reason 'talking points' are so obviously lame -- we can see them repeated verbatim 1000 times -- beyond any probability of coincidence.

Charles Olson, the poet, once pointed out that history is driven by mythology, and the true original meaning of that word is "that which is said about that which is said."

Doesn't matter what actually happened. Doesn't matter what the spinners say. What moves the forces is what WE say about what THEY say, i.e, whatever the underlying 'horror stories' that led to the Watergate fiasco were, we had Nixon saying "I am not a crook." What took him down was what people said about that "I am not a crook" statement. I remember a young mother and her daughter I overheard on a city bus (when the headlines talked about Nixon being sick with phlebitus), and the daughter asked mom "What's flea-bite-us?"And mom said, immediately, "It's what you get when you lie."

'Internet Gotcha' -- the most civilized way there is to deal with the Scum that Rose to the Top.

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