Even though it's far from a new story, the Bush administration's brazenly untruthful string of defenses of last year's tax cuts continues to evolve. The New Republic has a brief piece covering the latest deception here. This whole, sorry episode is emblematic of the administration's fantasy that they have ushered in a post-discursive political environment, where meaningful debate is simply beside the point. I have to begrudgingly admit the skill and savvy (not to mention cynicism) required to sell a piece of logic which is so self-evidently shoddy and internally inconsistent to the American public. But "I didn't mind the $300", that's what we all say, right? I personally feel that putting the US government deep into deficit territory was a specific (though unacknowledged) goal of the tax cuts. A government that doesn't have any money can't very well spend it, or so the logic goes, thus rendering any big (activist) vs. small (conservative) government debates entirely moot. How deeply depressing that public civic discourse now owes more to marketing and public relations than ideas and debate.

More recent coverage of the ongoing tax cut rationalization by economist Paul Krugman (free registration required, or use username: cypher_punks, password: cypher_punks), who's written a book-length expose of the faulty accounting and logic undergirding the Bush tax plan.