WHEN A STUPID MAN IS DOING SOMETHNG HE IS ASHAMED OF, HE ALWAYS DECLARES THAT IT IS HIS DUTY...sound familiar...the words George Bernard Shaw

Mark Twain might as well have been talking about THE BUSH THE LESSER administration when he said: TRUTH IS MORE A STRANGER THAN FICTION. Whether it’s the war, or WMD’s, or the environment, or the findings of reports such as the one commissioned by the Bush White House a year ago and released last month on diversity at the Ashcroft Justice Department; it apparently seems to them that the public can’t handle the truth. So they simply lie or delete the facts.

If you recall it was that Republican sage Ronald Reagan who set the standard when he said: FACTS ARE STUPID THINGS! Using that Reagan-esque reasoning the Ashcroft Justice Department just deleted all the studies conclusions and recommendations when it was released to the public last month. But of course Justice Department officials defended decisions to delete critical passages from the consultant’s report on the hiring and promotion of minority and female attorneys after the original leaked out.

One deleted passage says that improving diversity “will take extraordinarily strong leadership” among top Justice officials. Another says that the agency “does face significant diversity issues” and that “minorities are significantly more likely than whites to cite stereotyping, harassment and racial tensions” in the workplace.

Okay, EVERYONE IS ENTITILED TO BE STUPID, BUT SOME PEOPLE {ashcroft) JUST ABUSE THE PRIVLEDGE. Why the extreme sensitivity to the realities of the workplace everywhere and just stating a desire to work to improve things? Or, is this just another of those things Winston Churchill was talking about: MEN OCCASINALLY STUMBLE OVER THE TRUTH, BUT MOST OF THEM PICK THEMSELVES UP HURRY OFF AS IF NOTHING EVER HAPPENED.