I read the White House press briefings differently than
Karateexplosions
He does great work looking at what Scotty has to say and translating it for the rest of us.
I, on the other hand, think that what Scotty says is just noise. It's never the truth and in any event Scotty's job is to talk without really saying anything. Instead, I'm mostly interested in what the reporters have to say, because the questions show something about the way they think and that may influence the news everybody gets.
That's why I thought today's question was a bombshell. It comes after the break.
I don't know who asked the question and don't think it really matters. The point is it's being asked in the press room:
Q Scott, a few days ago, conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts had a column where he compared the administration's use of September 11th with Hitler and the Reichstag fire as a blanket cover for extraordinary measures. Now, this is coming from a conservative columnist; this is not Nancy Pelosi. Doesn't this concern you that these kind of reactions have come up especially with all the revelations about the NSA and spying?
Imagine if a Democrat had mentioned the administration and Hitler in the same paragraph? No matter what the context was the right would be calling for his head like when Durban talked about the FBI reports of torture and mentioned Stalin. To have a right wing columnist make the comparison, and to have anybody in the press corps ask about it in the White House, wouldn't have happened a year ago. To me it's the latest turning of the tide in the popular media. They are catching on.
The rest of the briefing can be found here, if you don't mind getting White House cookies on your computer. Helen Thomas is great as usual.