Yes, we did mention this in passing in this morning’s Daily Briefing. But we’d be falling down on the job if we didn’t say a little more: MORE »

* White House waited over 14 hours before disclosing Cheney’s hunting accident; it’s “highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the White House to allow a private citizen serve as its de facto spokesman.” [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Scott McClellan faced “the media equivalent of birdshot.” NBC’s David Gregory during the gaggle: “Don’t accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras. Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.” [WP, NYT]
* Administration vows to reform FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent future failures. Michael Chertoff: “I am accountable and accept responsibility for the performance of the entire department, good and bad.” [WP, W$J]
* Draft United Nations report sharply criticizes treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: “The U.S. government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial. . . or release them without further delay.” [WP]
* Administration spent $1.6b on public relations contracts from 2003 to mid-2005. [WP]

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Michael Chertoff knows that children are our future. That why he wants to scare the shit out of them with the Department of Homeland Security’s new just-fer-kidz preparedness campaign “Ready Kids” (cute font, etc.). MORE »

We know know what Sally Quinn does in those hours when she’s not being the fabulous semi-employed spouse of Ben Bradlee: She’s about two Reynold’s Wrap-tubes short of being a member in the tin foil hat brigade, an ultra-prepared, paranoid (”Federal emergency authorities ‘not only lie, they don’t tell the truth.’”) urban survivalist who always carries a “N95 particle mask” and a jar of peanut butter. (Kinky.) On Monday, apparently between Chalabi-stalking appointments, she gave a talk to the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown, and she made it clear the lengths to which she’ll go to ensure her household is adequately prepared: “[S]he’d tried putting an N95 on Sparky, her now-deceased Shih Tzu, but it didn’t work.” We’re sure she’ll get right on a solution. Meanwhile, one quibble: Quinn has designated her laundry room as emergency shelter because it’s “easy to seal off.” However, “her food supply is heavy on the beans, ‘because they’re nutritious.’” No doubt, but sealing off a room full of people eating mostly beans? Maybe that’s what the masks are for. MORE »

We had thought that portraying al Qeada terrorists as ineffectual Dilberts, slogging away at jihad like it was just another TPS report, was a misguided sitcom premise. Now the strange case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali suggests that the world-wide terror network has both a real morale problem and employees possessed with all the enthusiasm of the graveyard shift at Kinko’s. Abu Ali, under arrest for a plot to assassinate the President, said that his plan was foiled not by the Department of Homeland Security but by his cohorts’ fondness for “sleeping and idle chit-chat.” Abu Ali was, by contrast, a real go-getter:

According to the court papers, Abu Ali was asked: “Were you tasked to assassinate the president?” MORE »

FEMA’s disastrous performance following Katrina has drawn into question both the hiring of failed horse-trader Michael Brown to head the agency and the decision to fold FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security. Well, with the news that Julie Meyers, the Bush administration’s nominee for head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (a part of the Department of Homeland Security), is also the niece of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the wife of the DHS’s chief of staff, we finally understand the White House’s promise that their contribution to architecture of federal government would be a bureaucracy-free model of efficiency. They got rid of a lot of paperwork by dispensing with resumes. MORE »