Quote of the Day

As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush mocked Karla Faye Tucker, the woman he ordered executed.

"`Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me,'"

Tucker Carlson reported the incident and Bush's constant use of profanity in the defunct Talk. Bush communications director Karen Hughes went into damage control. She told reporters on the campaign bus that Carlson lied. Carlson called Hughes and later recounted the exchange.

"Then I heard that Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she'd heard — that I watched her hear — she in fact had never heard, and she'd never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane. I've obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness. They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they're really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That's all conventional. But on some level, you think, there's a hint of recognition that there is reality — even if they don't recognize reality exists — there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn't get that sense at all. A lot of people like her. A lot of people I know like her. I'm not one of them."

That incident is a classic example of how the Bushies behave. They lie when everyone else knows they are lying. They have forced the rest of the Republican Party totake on this behavior to cover for the White House and salvage the party.