This Time Hannity & Co. Will Take The High Road... Right?

by Steve Young

This is going to turn the presidential election upside down. Regenry Publishing will have the printing presses running 24/7 to keep up with the righteous indignation of veterans and patriots alike. Sean Hannity and the rest of the boys will have no need to book any other guests. Their indignant callers, especially those who lost sons, husbands and fathers in Viet Nam because they had no elbow-rubbing relationship with political power brokers to keep them out of harm's way, will be calling impeachment even though the there's only a couple days left till the election. And man oh man, wait till Zell Miller finds out. There'll be fire and brimstone to pay. It's gonna be one hell of a noisy next two months and President Bush may not be able to recover from the Washington Times and New York Post editorials against the disingenuous son of a former President. Former Swift Boat Teller of the Truth, John O'Neill is already shooting the commercials. Brit Hume just won't sit for this, I tellya.

And just what is the big brouhaha? Well, it's BIG, brother.

Seems that former Texas lieutenant governor and speaker of the Texas state legislature, Ben Barnes, admitted to pulling strings to get George W. Bush, son of former Texas Congressman, George H. Bush, into the National Guard unit known as the "Champagne Unit" because it included so many sons of prominent Texans. Barnes admits to have called the head of the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 to slot the young Bush ahead of thousands of others who should have been admitted to the Guard first. The fact that Barnes' original sworn statement that said as much was taken in February, but not spread through Fox News like wildfire until now, has got to gall the hell out of Rush Limbaugh, who was honorably draft-deferred because of what was deemed a catastrophic cyst in his derriere area. That Rush was forced to willingly show up at his draft board before being turned away from defending the country, has left an emotional scar in his heart in place of the one that would have emerged about a foot lower had he chose to have the painful zit removed. He'll never let W get away with this.

Bill O'Reilly has already booked a couple or three hours on his radio and TV shows as well as offering premium members at O'Reilly.com stop-the-presses rants against those anarchists at the Los Angeles Times and its New York comrade for suppressing what should be a page one indictment of power over the people. Thank God for the likes of the no-spinmeister for nipping into Karl Rove's likely twist before the brains behind the President even attempts to mobilize his political dreidel.

Oh, Rove will try. He'll claimed that, even if Barnes did "help," the Georges have no knowledge of the assistance. That Barnes must have made the fix without input from the Bush family. That Barnes chose on his own to do a little favor for the Bush family without desiring any political or financial gain. That it was an abundance of rarified coincidence that seems to have been organic in Texas politics.

But O'Reilly won't let him get away with it. I mean why would Barnes lie? Just to unseat Bush? That's like saying John O'Neill has an insatiable thirty-five year hatred of John Kerry.

Somehow, you know someone in the White House had to be covering up this one good. If not, Robert Novak would have revealed this a long time ago.