I’ve marveled, on more than one occasion, about the series of scandals tied the Bush administration. But we’ve reached an interesting point in Bush’s presidency in which serious controversies, some of which point to possible crimes, have become so common, they hardly cause any excitement at all. It’s become routine<\/i> to see a half-dozen stories or more in any given week, each pointing to significant improprieties, that hardly raise an eyebrow anymore.<\/p>\n
Following up on an observation<\/a> TNR’s Franklin Foer raised earlier this week, consider these news items from the last seven days:<\/p>\n * The Justice Department overruled<\/a> career civil rights attorneys who unanimously concluded that Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n * The Bush administration skewed the data<\/a> of a pollution study to help advance the president’s “Clear Skies” initiative.<\/p>\n * The FBI has reopened an inquiry<\/a> into how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion.<\/p>\n * The State Department has been using political litmus tests<\/a> to screen private American citizens — creating a de fact blacklist of banned scholars — before they can be sent overseas to represent the United States, weeding out critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy<\/p>\n * More documents were released further revealing the administration’s failure<\/a> to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n * Congressional investigators found “serious lapses<\/a>” in the way in which HUD responds (or in this case, doesn’t) to complaints about housing discrimination.<\/p>\n