Lowering the standard

As we know, talk left has uncovered evidence that when President Bush said,

And I know he's thinking about his late father. Samuel Alito Sr. came to this country as a immigrant from Italy in 1914.

he was wrong. Alito senior was apparently born in New Jersey.

Now, this in itself is a tempest in a teapot, but what it points out is yet another situation where the 'shoot from the hip' Bush administration has failed to do their homework, and jumped into action without proper preparation.

It seems that this administration doesn't feel they need to look at all the information that is available, instead they make a decision and then only look as far as they feel they need to in order to support their decision. Research? For the birds.

These instances of jump in, then test the water have ranged from the minor embarrassment (this) to the major embarrassment (Bernard Kerik) to the tragic (cutting New Orleans flood control levee funding), to the 'pay the price in the future' (ignoring more and more evidence about global warming) and of course the granddaddy of them all, ignoring evidence that ran contrary to the administration claims about Iraq before invading.

Now say what you want about past Presidents, but Clinton, Bush Sr. and even Reagan made sure that they had done their homework before they did something, so that these kinds of embarrassments were rare in their administrations.

But we have now reached a lower standard.