The Daily Background

Earlier today, I exclusively reported that the White House had altered the President’s Weekly Radio Address to get rid of a portion accusing Democrats of hurting national security. I wrote:

Today, President Bush made his customary weekly radio address. In it, he accused Democrats of endangering the nation delaying a bill which would rubber stamp the Administration’s warrantless wiretapping. Here’s part of a press release sent out this morning by the White House, which included a transcript of Bush’s address:

Apparently the White House thought better, and decided to remove the sentence which accused Democratically-controlled Congress of playing politics with Americans’ lives. Hours later the White House sent out a new, “corrected” press release which did not contain the accusation. Here is the relevant part of the new version of the same official press release, missing the critical sentence:

Now it turns out that CNN was on the story too, and a little after my report, they published an article, with more details of exactly what happened:

One sentence in President Bush’s weekly radio address was deleted overnight after some Democrats privately complained that it was overly partisan on the explosive subject of reforming the administration’s warrantless wiretap program, White House officials confirmed Saturday.

In the initial radio address, which was taped Friday, Bush charged that the country is less safe because of Democratic delays in passing legislation that would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Every day that Congress puts off these reforms increases the danger to our nation,” the president originally said.

White House officials say that line of audio was deleted after Democrats saw a transcript of the remarks distributed Friday afternoon.

CNN called the White House’s rhetorical backup was “extremely rare.”

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