Out With The Trash Watch

Washington traditionally waits until late Friday to release news it doesn't want people to freak out about, or even particularly notice, on the assumption that nobody pays attention to the news on Saturday. Which is a pretty good assumption. This isn's just a Bush or Republican thing, of course, but it's worth noting that the Bush White House relies heavily on the practice of Bad News Fridays.

Some examples:

In 2004, Bush released documents relating to his National Guard service (or lack thereof) five times. In each instance, he waited until late on a Friday afternoon.

When Bush circumvented the Senate to appoint Bill Pryor and Charles Pickering to the federal bench, he waited for late-Friday afternoons.

Bush agreed to testify before the 9/11 Commission, so long as Dick Cheney would be there by his side. He announced his intentions on a late-Friday afternoon.

When the administration said it wanted to remove Clean Water Act protections from up to one-fifth of the nation’s streams, ponds, lakes, mudflats, and wetlands, it said so late on a Friday afternoon.

More recently -- last Friday, in fact -- Bush's spokeswoman waited until early evening to announce that as many as 5 million emails were illegally deleted from a "secret server" at the White House, a server bought and paid for by the RNC. (Shades of Nixon's tapes, eh?)

Among the missing emails: all of Karl Rove's communications regarding the US Attorney Firing scandal.

So, I wonder what... or who... they might throw out with the trash tonight? Hmmmm... Could it be, the Attorney General?