The report shows, for example, that when Tomlinson attempted to tap Patricia Harrison, a former Republican Party co-chairwoman, for president of the corporation, he was acting in violation of the Federal Broadcasting Act — which prohibits “political tests” for employment. Tomlinson also apparently broke federal law when “he promoted the development of ‘The Journal Editorial Report,’” urging “PBS to air the program even as he offered editorial page editor Paul Gigot advice about the program’s format.” Tomlinson is also charged with circumventing contract procedures and threatening to withhold funding from PBS — something that only Congress can officially do.

We wish we could say that this was an unfortunate, isolated incident — an anomaly amid an otherwise unblemished and propaganda-free record for the Bush administration. But it was only a few months ago that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) rebuked the Bush administration for violating laws prohibiting “covert propaganda” by secretly paying broadcaster Armstrong Williams to shill for Bush’s educational policies. And back in January of this year the GAO found that the administration violated even more laws by “producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.” The failure to identify the government’s role in the “news segments” constituted — let’s all say it together now — PROPAGANDA!

Click here, here and here to read some of Salon’s past coverage of Tomlinson and his crusade against public television.

The unnamed official apparently had alerted special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald on Nov. 3 — a week after I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted in the CIA leak investigation — of the mid-June 2003 conversation with Woodward in which the two discussed Valerie Plame and her position at the CIA.

In his statement, Woodward says that he testified about conversations with “three current or former Bush administration officials” he had been interviewing for an upcoming book he’s working on. Although Woodward is keeping mum on the details of his conversation with the unnamed official who had notified Fitzgerald about the conversation, Woodward did say that he met with Libby at the end of June where they discussed Iraq policy. In his statement, Woodward said that he talked to Libby on June 23, 2003, with notes about Wilson’s wife, but can’t recall if the subject was ever discussed, and that it was possible that he told Libby that “Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA” — but had no recollection of doing so. So does this clear up or muddle even more so Libby’s involvement in the leak case?

The Post notes that Woodward’s testimony is significant because the unnamed official would be the first person to have discussed Plame — not Libby. And it would make Woodward the “first reporter to have learned about Plame from a government source.”

So many questions. For starters, who are the three officials Woodward talked to on background for his book, and who is the mysterious figure who suddenly, for reasons we can only speculate, decided to notify Fitzgerald about this only recently? Karl Rove’s spokesman says that Turd Blossom was definitely not the source. Is there still some elusive figure in all this that we don’t know about? Is it the same person who was the second yet-to-be named source for that Novak column back in the middle of July 2003? What more does Woodward, a critic of the investigation, know? And how much, if anything, does this have to do with Libby’s defense strategy wherein his lawyers apparently are planning to try to compel as many journalists as they can to testify about any notes or records they might have relating to his case.

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby’s lawyers, seized on Woodward’s testimony, citing it as evidence that the focus on Libby may not be as accurate as once thought, and that there may be other things that Fitzgerald doesn’t know about. “Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson’s wife?” Good question. Anyone think we’ll get the answer?

The only reason we bring it up is because some of the recent news out of Iraq reveals that a secret prison was discovered in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, with reports that the 173 captives — apparently mostly Sunni Arabs — held there were subjected to torture. The Interior Ministry’s undersecretary for security, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, told CNN flat out that the detainees were being abused and that “I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralyzed and some had skin peeling off various parts of their bodies.”

So apparently Bush’s “do as we say and not as we do” policy regarding the use of torture in the handling of terror suspects may not be as effective as he had hoped, as it looks as if the Iraqi government could be taking its cues from this president’s insouciant attitude toward Geneva Convention principles.

One would think that after the disastrous toll the Abu Ghraib scandal took on America’s image abroad, policymakers would be doing everything they can to eliminate this sort of abuse — by our government and the proxies we work with around the world. But, sadly, this isn’t this case. So as Vice President Dick Cheney fights to exempt CIA employees from a torture ban, and news has emerged of secret “black sites” used by American intelligence operatives to “interrogate” terror suspects overseas, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., attempts to deny the rights of habeas corpus to detainees the U.S. has in custody, it seems all too likely that Bush’s latest phrase may take the top prize of infamy.

As we noted back in September, even though Frist’s stock was held in a blind trust, it was conveniently sold off before the stock plummeted back in July. Frist’s spokeswoman said then that the senator had directed the trust to sell off the stock so as to avoid any appearance of impropriety, as Frist works on health-related issues and is apparently contemplating a presidential run in 2008.

Not to be outdone, Texas district attorney Ronnie Earle, the prosecutor who is overseeing the corruption investigation of Rep. Tom DeLay, has subpoenaed the former House majority leader’s home and political campaign phone records. “Earle appear[s] to be trying to find out what kind of contact DeLay had with James W. Ellis and John D. Colyandro, two associates who were also indicted in the case.”