Team Bush is absurd all right. Absurd like a fox.

John Dean (who, btw, is responsible for Fred Fielding - he hired him for Team Nixon) wrote a longish, but very interesting post in FindLaw's Writ back in March on executive privelege, the unitary executive theory, and this particular White House.

From the post: These issues strike at the heart of what post-Watergate conservative Republicans seek to create: an all-powerful presidency. Thus, for the same reason that Vice President Cheney went to extreme lengths to block Congress from getting information about the work of his National Energy Task Force, as I discussed in prior columns such as this one, I expect President Bush to take what will appear to be a similar irrational posture. For both Bush and Cheney, virtually any limit on presidential power is too great.

Is this really what modern conservatives are pining for? An executive branch with virtually unfettered power? It certainly appeared that way to me, at least during Bush's first term when the GOP majority in Congress acted like little more than a rubber stamp.

I'm not sure that picture gives an accurate lay of the GOP landscape though, at least judging by the props that Ron Paul appears to be getting. Is there a disconnect between establishment GOP in Washington and grassroots GOP on this?

At least with regard to the perch/bass issue, I would guess that we are dealing with a translation glitch. In Europe, "Bass" refers to a marine species related to the American striped bass. The European perch, Perca fluviatilis, is a popular freshwater game fish. European perch are larger than American yellow perch, and since they are superficially similar to largemouth bass, I think it is entirely possible that Bush said "bass" but the German weekly translated it into terms that his audience would understand. Then, the American newspapers referenced the German paper instead of the White house transcript.

What all this goes to show is that Bush should always say Micropterus salmoides when he is telling fish stories.

Followup to myself...

In German, perch = barsch, but barsch is a generaly term for a wide range of similar fish. Largemouth bass are apparently called Forellembarsch, grossmauliger forellembarsch, or Amerikanischer schwarzbarsch.

So this is pretty clearly a case of newspapers doing a thoughtless babelfish-type translation back from from German and assuming that "barsch" always means "perch." It's a dumbass media story, not a dumbass Bush story.

This post: why I love in the agora.

Great post, Zach.

Is this really what modern conservatives are pining for? An executive branch with virtually unfettered power?

Not this conservative. For me, "limited government" applies to the president as well. Though there are plenty of "modern conservatives" who'd love a big chief to boss them around. They're called Giuliani voters.

I am confused about the inclusion of the fish comment. I would be very surprised to learn that Bush did not actually intend for this to be a joke, unlike everything else in the post, for which your running joke is that it looks as though they are trying to entertain us, even though they are not.

Also, I agree with Nick about translation errors being likely. The structure of the sentences that the BBC attributed to Bush just doesn't sound like him.