Thursday, July 07, 2005

The amazing 100-foot American president.


In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken describes a Saturday Night Live skit in which there is a rumour that the American president was exposed to radiation and was now 100 feet tall.

Responding to this, a (fictional) White House spokesman emphatically and categorically denied the rumour. When asked, however, whether the president was more than 90 feet tall, that same spokesman suddenly refused comment. At this point, Franken suggests, one can safely conclude that the president is somewhere between 90 and 100 feet tall.

So what can we conclude from this excerpt from Dan Froomkin's recent WaPo column:

Carol Leonnig reports in The Washington Post that Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, in an interview yesterday, "said Rove was not the source who called Cooper yesterday morning and personally waived the confidentiality agreement."

But Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball suggest on Newsweek.com that maybe it was Rove after all -- just not by phone.

"Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Newsweek today that Rove 'did not call Cooper' prior to today's court hearing, nor had the two of them 'spoken' about the subject of waiving confidentiality.

"But Luskin would make no other comments, including whether there had been any other form of communications between Cooper and Rove."

In other words:

Q: Did Karl Rove make a phone call and personally waive confidentiality?

A: Absolutely not. That was emphatically not my client who made that call. No way.

Q: Did he perhaps communicate in some other way?

A: Um ... no comment.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

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