nytime.com | The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

"By my count, 'Jeff Gannon' is now at least the sixth 'journalist' (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. Of these six, two have been syndicated newspaper columnists paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the administration's 'marriage' initiatives."

The uncovering of the covert "Ministry of Information" is showing an operation even bigger than I had expected. Is anyone up in arms about this?

Add this to the recent findings that most high-school students in the US believe that newspapers should clear reports through the government and you have the makings of a full-flown totalitarian administration. At least the Russians knew that they were being lied to: Americans seem to prefer to say "lie to me, Bubba Bush, we feel better than way."

Later on, in the "things may be worse than they seem" department:

The money that paid for both the Ryan-Garcia news packages and the Armstrong Williams contract was siphoned through the same huge public relations firm, Ketchum Communications, which itself filtered the funds through subcontractors. A new report by Congressional Democrats finds that Ketchum has received $97 million of the administration's total $250 million P.R. kitty, of which the Williams and Ryan-Garcia scams would account for only a fraction. We have yet to learn precisely where the rest of it ended up.

Hoping that the NY Times will find out. Like going to war on false pretenses, this story is so much bigger than Watergate. We may not have to wait four more years after all. With Cheney as president, would things be better? At least no one would believe his lies, not like they do with the "village idiot".