Democratic Senators Respond to Bribery of Journalist

Seems President Bush got caught Friday bribing a journalist to say good things, ostensiby as "news," about Mr. Bush and his programs. The journalist admits it, so "allegedly" is a moot term. Conservative African-American broadcaster Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 in taxpayer funds to promote the "No Child Left Behind" proposal before it was law. Mr. Williams did so by "interviewing" Education Secretary Rod Paige during TV and radio shows, and by passing favorable comments off as facts.

Leading pundit and blogger Eschaton did an exceptional job of capturing the story as it broke yesterday. He obtained a copy of the soup du jour in this controversy..... a blatant "cease and desist" letter dated January 7 from Senators Kennedy, Lautenberg and Reid. Definitely take time to read the six paragraph letter here.

Here are a few excerpts from the US Senators' letter to President George Bush, " We are writing to urge you to immediately terminate---and recover funds from---the contract between your administration and the journalist Armstrong Williams....

In addition to recovering these funds, we would urge you to disclose if any other journalists have been paid by your Administration to skew their media reports in favor of your initiatives, proposals or political messages. For example, have any journalists...been paid by your Administration to promote your Social Security privatization plan or otherwise promote the idea of a 'crisis' in Social Security?

...In addition to the illegality of these actions taken by your Administration, we believe that the act of bribing journaists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy....

Good government means that our citizens can trust that government policies put the public's interest first. We don't need 'payola' and public relations to educate our kids. We need good teachers, good schools and good standards."