With approval ratings mired in the low 30’s, and support for the war (and most of the rest of his agenda) in collapse, the president has embarked on a new initiative for American renewal. He is wooing the press.

This is a somewhat surprising development from an administration that consistently blames its problems on the press. This White House has never been able to admit a mistake, only that the media fails present a properly glowing image of its achievments.

However, in the past week the president has been inviting reporters to engage in “off-the-record” trysts where he hopes to seduce them into painting more flattering portraits of his adventures. The media, whores that they are, are lapping it up. With few exceptions, they have accepted the invitations and revelled in the attention showered on them.

Most journalists agree that conversations with the president constitute news and should never be off the record. But some of them just can’t help themselves when granted access to the corridors of power. Meetings like this are worrisome because the public doesn’t know what took place. We don’t know if there were promises made or favors agreed to. The risk that reporters can be influenced to color their reporting by the prospect of scoring future exclusives or leaks is too great to ignore. And even if that never takes place, the secrecy surrounding it chews off a chunk of their credibility because we’ll never know what went on.

Putting aside all suspicion and possibility of ethics breaches, there is another very simple reason to decline such meetings: They have no journalistic purpose. If the reporter cannot disclose what was said (and the White House wanted to keep secret the fact the the meetings even took place), then the only benefit to any party is to the president who is free to spin and/or bribe his guests. That alone makes it shameful for anyone in the media to accept such a tainted invitation.

The Dayton Daily News is rolling around in it with barnyard bully, Bill O’Reilly. DDN’s editor, Jeff Bruce, wrote an opinion column making the outrageous suggestion that a formal investigation should take place before removing a judge from the bench. The judge in question, John Connor, has been the target of O’Reilly’s wrath for imposing an admittedly too lenient sentence on a convicted child molester. But when O’Reilly turned his wrath on Bruce for believing in due process, he went completely off the cliff. O’Reilly accused Bruce and the paper of being friendly to child rapists and having sympathy for child rapists.

Bruce resisted to urge to respond saying, “They say only two things happen when you wrestle a pig: You get muddy and the pig enjoys it.” But he did respond, revealing that O’Reilly’s true motives may have had nothing to do with the Conner affair at all. Instead it was his own affair, wherein he was sued by his ex-producer for sexual harrassment, that he he was concerned about. The DDN made mention of it in their editorial and O’Reilly vowed to get revenge. He’s still at it. On today’s show he whined that the despicable Dayton Daily News had called him a pig.

That’s not exactly what happened, but to expect the truth from O’Reilly may be a bit much. I’d like to thank Billy for speaking out, though. Had he not done so, I would not have known about this farce.

The Washington Post says that they hired Ben Domenech to write the new blog, Red America, to provide balance to their editorial profile. Domenech is the co-founder of RedState.com and was a writer for the National Review Online. He also worked in Bush’s White House and for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). While at uber-conservative publisher, Regnery Publishing, he worked with the likes of Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin.

If the Post is shooting for balance, they must already have blogs by comparable liberals like, say, Al Franken, Robert Scheer, Michael Moore, or David Brock. Not surprisingly, that isn’t the case.

The Post just plunged ahead with a right-wing bomb thrower who lives up to his reputation in his first installment: Pachyderms in the Mist. This screed posits that the Red America of his imagination is actually in the majority, despite the fact that Bush is a miserably unpopular president:

“Yet even in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist.”

Do the views to which he is referring include that two thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of Iraq and nearly half say Democrats would do better? Or that his personal approval ratings remain mired in the low 30’s? Or that 53% say they would prefer Democrats to handle the economy? Or that he has hit a new low of 28% approval for both healthcare and energy policy? Or that the word most often associated with him is “incompetent”?

For this miscreant to complain that the media, which is dominated by right-wing pundits and corporate masters, is mistreating redstaters is as laughable as his assertion that his views are in the majority. And save a couple of guffaws for the Post’s assertion that they actually care about balance.

In the wake of numerous Washington influence scandals (DeLay, Cunningham, Abramoff, etc.), Congress has busied itself debating, drafting, and ultimately neutering, legislative proposals to restore fairness and ethics to the troubled institution. However, the targets of these measures have had a rather benign reaction to them. In fact, they don’t seem to think that the new regulations will have any impact whatsoever on their activities.

An article in the Washington Post reports that…..lobbyists say they have already found scores of new ways to buy the attention of lawmakers through fundraising, charitable activities and industry-sponsored seminars. Indeed, the lobbyists themselves tell us as much.

• “Between charitable events and fundraising events, there will still be lots of ways to get in front of members [of Congress].” – Dan Danner, executive vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business (National FIB?)
• “Even if all lunches and sporting tickets are banned, legislation and regulations are so complex that the need for professional lobbyists will not diminish,”- Frederick H. Graefe, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist.
• “If meals are heavily restricted, we’re likely to see executives from the home office picking up checks because they’re not lobbyists,” – J. Steven Hart of Williams & Jensen, a major lobbying firm.

Of particular concern to the netroots is the Post’s revelation that…Lobbyists are increasing their campaign contributions, widening their use of the Internet to stir voter activism, and donating large sums to think tanks and charities…..The Business Roundtable, which represents big-business chieftains, has embraced a new technique of advertising on Web sites for grass-roots advocates. There are those who have belittled the threat of corporations, and other deep-pocketed special interests, using the Internet in deceptive ways to enrich themselves at the people’s expense. But, clearly, the community of professional persuaders has not overlooked this potential goldmine for propaganda.

Did anyone really expect Congress to deal seriously with the 10 billion dollar industry that lines their pockets and campaign treasuries? When the best reform ideas they can muster include banning former members from the House gym, it should be apparent that their efforts are less than sincere. And the fact that lobbyists are greeting these efforts with a yawn tells us everything we need to know about the resolve of Congress to stem abuse and corruption.