Pants on Fire

[[P O L L S]] * Here’s some great ammunition for those holiday confrontations with your right-wing relatives. Should any of them suggest that George W. Bush has an ounce of trustworthiness left to his name, pull out the results of the latest Harris Interactive poll. It shows that a whopping 64 percent of U.S. residents now believe the present administration “generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends.” Sure, Republicans are less prone to doubt Bush’s honesty (68 percent still do, while 28 percent don’t), but that’s more than made up in this nationwide survey by Democrats who have lost all faith in the prez (91 percent) and independents who, by a 73 percent to 25 percent margin, are convinced that the Republican White House is misleading them more often than not.

READ MORE: “Obama Calls on Bush to Admit Iraq Errors,” by Peter Slevin (The Washington Post); “Muffing Murtha: How Bush’s Rapid Response Went Wrong,” by John Dickerson (Slate); “The Bottom Falls a Little Further,” by Steve Benen (The Carpetbagger Report).