Bush on the ropes?

Here's a good summary of a bunch of bad news for the White House. Bush was finally asked about the Downing Street memo at a joint press conference with Blair. Deny and lie has worked so far, but perhaps the latest poll numbers show it's starting to unravel?

White House Briefing  News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration:

"It remains unclear how big of a blowup the memo represents for the White House. Bush partisans consider it either old news, or flatly wrong, or both. (Bush partisans? Why should we care or give any credibility to what they think? VL)

And the American press still demonstrates no intention of aggressively following it up. (How can we pressure the press to agressively follow it up? VL)

But even if the memo doesn't detonate, there are suddenly several other potential scandals sputtering away in the press today to cause the White House worry.

• The New York Times is reporting that a White House official with ties to the oil industry repeatedly edited government climate reports to play down global warming issues.

• The Guardian reports on new State Department documents suggesting that Bush's decision not to sign the Kyoto global warming treaty was partly a result of pressure from ExxonMobil.

• The Texas Observer and the Associated Press are reporting that two Indian tribes working with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist now under criminal and congressional investigation, paid $25,000 each to a conservative tax-exempt group to underwrite an event that got tribal leaders a private meeting with President Bush.

• And The Washington Post reports that senators are asking for more information about the involvement of White House officials in pushing for a $30 billion air-tanker deal now considered the most significant military contracting abuses in several decades.

All this comes as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows a slew of sinking numbers for Bush, including a dramatic loss of support on his ace-in-the-hole issue, the war on terror. And the public has apparently concluded that the war in Iraq was not worth it and has not made the United States safer."