As we discussed last night, the President is prepared, subject to the conditions set forth below, to agree to the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States for public testimony, under oath, by the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
...
The necessary conditions are as follows. First, the Commission must agree in writing that Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice's testimony before die Commission does not set any precedent for future Commission requests, or requests in any other context, for testimony by a National Security Advisor or any other White House official.
So, let me see if I have this straight. They're going to let her testify as long as they all agree it's not setting a precedent. Does anyone in the Bush adminstration understand the
term "precedent"? Somewhere down the road a judge can say "Well, they let Condi do it," no matter what Bush and the Commission scribbled down in their notes.
I also love the way the Bush folks keep using the phrase "unprecedented and extraordinary access," as if repeating it over and over again will help people ignore their being one of the most insular and secretive administrations in decades.
I stumbled across the
Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia while I was surfing around last night. They have 1,800 public-domain texts formatted for Microsoft Reader.
I went on a downloading spree:
Pride and Prejudice,
Sense and Sensibility,
The Marvelous Land of Oz,
Wuthering Heights,
Heart of Darkness,
The Red Badge of Courage,
Hound of the Baskervilles, Livius'
The History of Rome,
The Communist Manifesto,
Dracula,
Moby Dick, and a bunch of others... and that was by surfing through 250 of the available titles. I'll be checking out that entire list over the next few weeks, I think.
