Obama's Neigh-Sayer

Last week we learned that, according to the new head of NASA, who said he had it from the Horse's mouth (so to speak), the agency's "foremost" task was to reach out to Muslims and make them "feel good" about themselves. No so, claims the, er, Horse's mouth's mouthpiece:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoke when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.

"That was not his task and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

The White House also backed up Bolden last week when his remarks first stirred controversy. A White House spokesman last Tuesday said Obama wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and that to meet that challenge, NASA must "partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries."

NASA last week walked back Bolden's claim that Muslim outreach was the "perhaps foremost" plank of his mission, saying that Bolden was merely talking about his "outreach" responsibilities and that space exploration is still NASA's No. 1 job...

So you mean Muslim outreach is one of the space agency's "responsibilites," just not its "foremost" one?

Well, no. Since even that failed to fly

on Monday [Gibbs] appeared to deny that Bolden was asked to focus on Muslim outreach at all.


Asked whether Bolden misspoke, Gibbs said: "I think so."...

Oh, Robert, such flagrant lying ill-becomes you. It's obvious Bolden got the message loud and clear, and spoke it just fine. If I were him, I'm be mega-P.O.'d about having to take the fall for the Horse's ass mouth and the team.