Bush finally asked the tough questions

Mikaela says:
Of course it's gotta be STUDENTS!!!!

From the L.A. Times:
During Bush's latest trip to Russia, he apparently stopped in to say hi to the Netherlands, where a quick PR session for students was okayed by the President's advisors. Surely FOREIGN kids won't be as disrespectful and revolutionary as our own college kids here in America, right?

So of course, not knowing that Bush NEVER gets asked tough questions, for his own safety, they launched right in: "You made many laws after 9/11, many — many laws and many measures. And I’m wondering, will there be a time when you drop those laws and when you decrease the measures?”

Bush's slimy and scary response: "“Look a free society such as ours, obviously, must balance the government’s most important duty, which is to protect the American people from harm, with the civil liberties of our citizens. And every law we passed that was aimed to protect us in this new era of threats from abroad and the willingness for people to kill without mercy has been scrutinized and, of course, balanced by our Constitution.”

Notice it was a yes or no question. And reading behind the lies, his answer: NO.

TheDutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, co-host of the event, asked the young woman questioner, "You're convinced by the president?"

The audience laughed, and Bush said (in what must have been a very strained joking voice -- you know the one!) "Don't put her on the spot."

The next question came from another woman, who had received a brochure seeking donations for poor people in the United States. She said since the US has been involved in "a lot of wars," she wonders about the impact on Americans at home. "What's the balance between the responsibility to the world and the responsibility to your own people?"

That's when Bush's bubble team asked the reporters to leave the room, even though the event went on for another half hour.

Way to show the world how we value the balance between freedom and government control! He's a class act, that one. To top it all off, he ended his trip to the Netherlands with this little douzy to the Dutch press:
"Holland is a free country," Bush said in an interview with a Dutch TV journalist last week. "If that's what the people of Holland want, that's what the government should reflect."

Didn't they brief him on the damn country's NAME? It hasn't been "Holland" for a while now.

(Thanks to Avedon for the tip to this news story. She had this to say: "Bush's little unscripted news conference with kids in a foreign country who asked Bush better questions than our Stepford Press ever does, and apparently freaked Team Bush all to pieces. And tricked him into a near-admission that he doesn't seem to have any plans to restore our Constitutional rights."