AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: White House credibility took a knock this week, having to admit that it was economical with the truth over President George Bush's decision to fly onto an aircraft carrier to deliver his "war is over" speech on May 1st.
The dramatic tailhook landing was necessary because the ship was out of helicopter range, spokesman Ari Fleischer first said. The USS Abraham Lincoln was in fact just 30 miles off the coast of California at the end of its voyage from the Gulf, not hundreds of miles away, as Mr Fleischer was forced to concede on Tuesday.
The President wanted to experience a landing the way carrier pilots did, he stated. Sceptics believe this isn't the full reason either. Mr Bush's emergence on the deck from an S3B Viking jet in full flight suit with helmet under his arm provided a spectacular photo-op and was, say Democrats, a political stunt that demeaned the military as it used the carrier as a campaign prop.
"I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," said anti-war Senator Robert Byrd of Virginia. A Pentagon official also revealed that the carrier, returning with a crew of 5,000 who had been 10 months at sea to their waiting families in San Diego, had circled lazily off the coast for some 18 hours while Mr Bush slept on board.
Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin calculated that the delay cost $1 million in extra fuel costs and $100,000 in additional sea duty pay. The US Navy told reporters that the Lincoln in the end reached the dock at the scheduled time and it would not have done the families any favours to have arrived earlier.
Mr Bush defended his decision, calling the flight "an unbelievably positive experience". The Democratic assault was clearly designed to embarrass Republicans who want to use the pictures as campaign ads. However, every time they complained, TV channels again showed the pictures of the President as heroic commander-in-chief. And Republicans pointed out that as president, Bill Clinton made three photo-op trips to aircraft carriers in semi-military bomber jackets.
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William Bennet, a former education secretary and one-time White House drug czar, is probably best known in the United States as the country's premier moralist. He is the author of several books on morality, including the best-selling The Book of Virtues, a treasury of stories to aid the moral education of the young.
In it he writes of the need "to set definite boundaries on our appetites". He was seen as a possible presidential candidate but recently dismissed the suggestion, saying he was more likely to win the World Series of Poker. It was taken as a good joke.
But on Monday Bennett was outed by Newsweek and the Washington Monthly as an inveterate gambler who had financed his habit with sermonising, and had lost $8 million at casinos during the last decade. Bennett was a "preferred customer" in Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos and got the high-roller treatment of limos and hotel rooms, the accounts said, and in one two-month period, he wired more than $1.4 million to cover losses at a single casino.
The anti-drug crusader admitted he had gambled large sums of money, mainly on slot machines, but protested, "I don't play the 'milk money'. I don't put my family at risk, and I don't owe anyone anything."
The image of the nation's moraliser spending long compulsive hours in front of video poker machines embarrassed Bennett's long-times conservative allies in the morality business, who link heavy gambling with divorce, domestic abuse and bankruptcy.
Among them was Dr James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family, who called gambling a "cancer on the soul of the nation".
"Concerned Women for America" scolded Mr Bennett, saying families were crumbling under the weight of irresponsible gambling.
Bennett, who commands $50,000 a speech, protested that he did not break the law but would gamble no more because "this is not the example I want to set". Delighted ethics commentators had a field day, calling the morals arbiter a smug hypocrite who conveniently skipped over his own vice in his books.
Bennett found an unlikely defender in former Democratic New York governor Mario Cuomo, an opponent of gambling, who said it was not a sin, was not illegal, no one got hurt and that Bennett didn't lie about it when caught - the big sin in American politics.
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One of the non-virtues at the top of Bill Bennett's list is pot- smoking. He would like to have marijuana-users put in jail. The issue has become a new source of friction between the US and Canada, already at odds over Ottawa's decision not to support the Iraq war.
Canada wants to liberalise its marijuana laws but Bennett's successor as US drug czar, John Walters, has warned that looser marijuana laws in Canada would require the US to further restrict cross-border freedoms. This would threaten the $1 billion-a-day trade between the two countries. The Canadian proposal, which will be voted on this week, replaces prison sentences with fines for personal pot-smoking.
Twelve US states and most EU countries have already eased penalties on first-time offenders but the US federal government is waging war on reefers at every level.
Walters visited Canadian cities to warn that increased hash-smuggling from Canada was likely and would make US enforcement more difficult, but Canadian newspapers accused him of being paranoid.
Smoking joints is already common in the US. An official survey in 2001 showed that one in two American high school seniors had smoked pot, up from on in three a decade ago.
North of the border, authorities say that fewer than one in three Canadians aged 12 to 64 has ever used marijuana.
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The British satirist Ali G has become a cult figure among young viewers in the US for his unique method of deflating establishment figures whom he lures in front of the camera with the prospect of doing a serious interview for British TV.
When a spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Administration told him marijuana costs up to $1,000 an ounce, Ali G offered to set him up with a less expensive supplier. And he got former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to admit the US would never nuke Canada because "we don't want what they have". Which will be a relief north of the border.