Bush, Intelligent Design, and Rafael Palmeiro: To hell with the kids

My latest article from RADAR:

When asked this week about the Valerie Plame scandal engulfing top adviser Karl Rove and an ever growing number of White House staffers, President Bush told Knight Ridder to “wait and see what the true facts are.” It was an odd answer, given that we already have the facts. Rove’s own lawyer has publicly admitted his client was the leaker (or, at least, one of the leakers), and Bush promised last year that he’d fire any staffer responsible for the leak. So what additional facts is the president waiting for?

The solution to the conundrum is simple. For President Bush there are two kinds of facts: regular facts and, as he put it, “true” facts. Regular facts are the inconvenient stuff of naysayers, such as expert advisers, scientists, courts of law, or one’s own eyes. True facts, on the other hand, are a pure reflection of desire, a kind of wishing makes it so—like when Peter Pan exhorts us to clap our hands and let our belief in fairies save the dying Tinkerbell. (Except in Bushworld it’s Rove wearing the fairy wings.) Chalk it up to a poor grasp of reality, incredible hubris, or even outright deception, but “true facts” always trump the truth when Bush is in charge....