Froomkin's Back...

...and there's gonna be trouble

WaPo columnist/blogger got into some hot water back in December because, it seems, the White House didn't cotton to some of his comments, which made the WaPo go a bit wobbly, enough to note that he wasn't a part of the newspaper, per se (though he is a regular writer/blogger on the paper's web site). Well, we haven't heard much from Mr. Froomkin since then, but that's due to a new baby entering the picture. But it looks like he's back to stirring things up again (though I'm not sure how regular he'll be, what with the new kidling and all):

But by and large, the press conference was a frustrating experience for journalists whose specific questions were largely answered with imprecise comments related to their general topic. Bush's discountenance of follow-up questions means he fully controls the discourse.

One journalist asked: "Your explanation on the monitoring program seems to say that when the nation is at war, the president, by definition, can order measures that might not be acceptable or even perhaps legal in peacetime. And this seems to sound like something President Nixon once said, which was, 'When the president does it, then that means that it's not illegal in areas involving national security.' So how do the two differ?"

Bush wouldn't address that comparison.

And some of the questions were very incremental and small-bore.

I wonder if reporters shouldn't ask him some more basic questions that might be of interest to the American people. For instance, why not ask Bush what he considers the limits of executive power? Why not ask him about the competence of his administration, in the wake of the response to Hurricane Katrina and the rollout of the Medicare prescription plan? Why not ask about his credibility gap, in light of all his false statements and predictions about Iraq?

And -- one of my pet peeves -- why not ask him about these unspecified people he and his aides refer to all the time? For instance, who precisely does he think Karl Rove was talking about when Rove said last week that "some important Democrats" don't want to know who al Qaeda is calling in America? And precisely who was Bush himself talking about when he said yesterday: "I understand there's some in America who say, well, this can't be true there are still people willing to attack"?