"purely politics"

How a Department of Education spokeswoman responded to queries about the legality of this escapade where Rod Paige (the very same Secretary of Education who called teachers "terrorists" won a contest for puffing up Junior and the miseducation act.

The department paid $700,000 to Ketchum, a public relations and marketing firm, to rate newspaper coverage of the education law in 2003 and to produce two video press releases in the format of news articles. The videos were reminiscent of videos about Medicare that were sent to television stations around the country and criticized by federal budget monitors this year as violating the federal law barring the use of Congressional appropriations "in a general propaganda effort designed to aid a political party or candidate."

Our whole government has become a Bush campaign commercial. I expect they will be hiring bards and crooners to immortalize his grace any day now.