You Can Run...

I'm glad to see the White House Press Corps has begun to find it's backbone. Helen Thomas can breathe a little easier as journalists have rallied to continue putting pressure on President Bush and the questions swirling around his administration's indictments and the CIA leak case. Karl Rove is in the sights of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and as the press fires questions to our fearless leader about his senior advisor, the President seems content with aloof replies like, "This is a serious investigation and I have a job to do, an agenda to stick to." Yes, Mr. President, it is a serious investigation, one that involves national security, which is why we're asking you to comment on it.

As Bush travels to Argentina this week for the Fourth Summit of the Americas he's been given anything but a respite from attacks and questions about his job as leader of the free world. Populist Venezulean President Hugo Chavez rallied 25,000 protestors in the region's largest soccer stadium declaring the free trade accord being proposed by Bush as "dead" and accused the Pentagon of having a secret plan to invade his oil-rich country. Well, the first one is probably true, but the second claim...yeah I wouldn't put it past us. If it did happen it would be under the guise of "saving Venezuela" for their own national security.

Polls show Mr. Bush to be the most unpopular American president ever among Latin Americans, and thousands of demonstrators, led by the soccer idol Diego Maradona, are flocking to the Argentine beach resort of Mar del Plata to protest his presence at a summit meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders. The greeting from his fellow heads of state, who have been complaining of his administration's neglect of and indifference to the region for five years, does not promise to be especially warm, either. "He doesn't have any money to offer, so the president doesn't really have any cards to play," said Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American studies program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "Nobody among the crop of fiscally conservative but socially progressive presidents that we now have around the region is going to go to his defense."

Yikes. Diego Maradona, in case folks didn't know, is a rather large popular figure to this region of the world. That'd be like...oh I don't know...Michael Jordan coming out publicly against President Bush. Add to the mix today's 1,200 protestors marching only blocks from where the President met with Argentinian leader Nestor Kirchener and we've got quite a little riot party going on in South America. Somehow I think the President is going to have to really push to sell his new FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) proposal, espeically if all of South America is questioning it. Mr. President, you can run from all the questions left unanswered by and your cronies...but you can't hide from them.