More wool over our eyes...

Not unethical, but not smart : An internal investigation has concluded that the Education Department did nothing unethical but did use “poor judgment,” when it hired commentator Armstrong Williams to promote President Bush’s education policy. Williams insisted he had always supported Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” law, but he didn’t mention it once until he started getting paid. Then he praised it in five columns over five months. President Bush said in January that the White House knew nothing about the Williams contract, but the report revealed that one Bush aide discussed the arrangement four times with education officials last summer, when the contract was renewed.

CIA purge underway: The White House has ordered the new CIA director to get rid of agents disloyal to President Bush, Newsday reported this week. A former intelligence official said Bush aides considered the Central Intelligence Agency a “hotbed of liberals” out to thwart Bush’s agenda with damaging leaks on Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Several top CIA operatives have resigned, including two this week, since former Florida congressman Porter Goss became director, in September. Bush spokesmen denied the president ordered a purge. Goss told employees there was nothing political about the personnel changes, saying they were needed to make the CIA more efficient.

FOX fakes it: Fox News apologized last week for posting a phony report on its Web site based on made-up quotes from former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The article quoted Kerry gloating that he was a “metrosexual,” and that he looked terrific in his first presidential debate thanks to an excellent manicure. “Didn’t my nails and cuticles look great?” said one of the bogus quotes. A Fox spokesman said the item was simply intended as a “poor attempt at humor” by the network’s top political correspondent, Carl Cameron, and that it never should have been posted. Fox executives, whom liberals have long accused of having a Republican bias, said that "it was really no big deal" but that nonetheless, "Cameron would be told that what he did was wrong."