16 December 2005

Today's quote

Guess who said this?
Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper.
I bet you got it in one, didn't you?

Recall, this is a man who stood up with his hand on a Bible held by the Cheif Justice of the United States Supreme Court and swore a brief oath that went like this:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States
Impeach Bush. Impeach him now.

Update: Digby has observations which illuminate how unsurprising this is.

Update: How credible is this anonymously-sourced story? The original publisher's defense of it sounds pretty credible to me.

We get tips about Bush’s temper and his comments all the time. Most of the tips don’t get used because we don’t go with information from just one source. The tip about "the goddamned piece of paper" seemed destined for the byte bin until a second aide, in casual conversation, mentioned the comment.

So I called a third source who has confirmed information in the past. At first he was defensive.

"Who told you about that?" I told him I’d picked it up from two other sources.

"Look, you know how the President is," he said. "He gets agitated when people challenge him."

All I wanted to know was did the President of the United States call the Constitution a "goddamned piece of paper."

"Yeah. He did."

Granted, that's not rock solid. But it's as good as you could hope to get in a story like this one; none of the staffers who were in the room could be expected to go on the record.

Update update: Digging further into Capitol Hill Blue produces epistemological distress. I've not been able to find a comprehensive analysis of CHB as a source. They do seem to have a rep for publishing rumors, and it seems that sometimes the rumors turn out to be true, including some big stories. I expect that on this one, we'll never know for sure.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Folks are questioning your first source, BTW. Did you check it out?