WH Staffers To Go To School!

In an effort - one can presume - to purge his administration from any further improper handling of classified information, GW Bush has instructed his staffers to attend ethics classes. Reuters has the goods. A snippet:

White House officials will be required to attend briefings next week on ethics and the handling of classified information after the indictment last week of a senior official in the CIA leak probe, according to a memo released on Saturday.

The White House counsel's office will conduct a series of presentations on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for those aides with security clearances.

"Your attendance at one of these sessions is mandatory," said a memo to White House staff from White House counsel Harriet Miers.

The memo was released in Mar del Plata, where President George W. Bush was attending a 34-nation Summit of the Americas.

The briefings will provide a refresher course on general ethics rules, including "the rules governing the protection of classified information," the memo said.

How quaint. White House staffers, who may or may not be still under the microscope of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigatory team, need a little brushing up on how to properly out a CIA operative. Oops. That's clearly not what I meant.

Anyway, one session, and you get a gold star from the president. How did we ever get to this point?

Sources in the WH have told pure bs that the classes are to be called: Handling Intelligence - If it Ain't Illegal, it's cool with George.