Fascist tendencies: It isn’t surprising that the Bush Administration conducted a secret propaganda campaign out of the Education Dept. But why did they buy milk when they could have gotten the cow for free? Armstrong Williams would have gladly disinformed the public for them for nothing but the glory:

The Bush Administration violated laws prohibiting the use of covert propaganda when it secretly paid broadcaster/ columnist Armstrong Williams to promote its education policies, and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said Friday…

The New York Times said the report “provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities….In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated ‘covert propaganda’ in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.”

In the course of investigating the other matters, the GAO uncovered another infraction:

The GAO’s report also uncovered a previously undisclosed case in which the Education Department had commissioned a newspaper article. The article, on the “declining science literacy of students,” was distributed by the North American Precis Syndicate and appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country, according to the report in the Times. The government’s role in the writing of the article, which praised the department’s role in promoting science education, was never disclosed.