“I Don’t Work For You, I Work For the American People”

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The last time I checked, singer Sheryl Crow and environmental activist Laurie David were Americans, just like me. But according to Karl Rove, he does not have to answer to them because he “works for the American people.” Rove was approached on Saturday night by the stars and asked to discuss the president’s environmental policy (or lack thereof).

Citizenship issues aside, Deputy White House Press Secretary Dana Perino scolded Crow and David for not showing respect to George W. Bush.

(Here is where I take a break so I can recover from Perino’s statement. Why on Earth would anyone who has been paying attention for the last six years want to show respect for Bush? And, as Think Progress says, “…the last time we checked, Karl Rove is not the president.”)

But I digress. Perino’s next zinger was even better: “The president’s record on climate change is very strong.”

Right. It is so strong that he has all but demolished the Environmental Protection Agency, encouraged falsification of scientific reports on global warming, removed reports that indicate the seriousness of global warming and the harm being done by pollutors, backed out of the Kyoto agreement, and lied about reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Perino decribes herself as “a strong environmentalist.”

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Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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