corrente

Following up on Lambert's post about the Bush sleepovers (which, according to Google, seems to have garnered little attention), I was struck by the following odd lede:

President Bush opened the White House and Camp David to dozens of overnight guests last year, including foreign dignitaries, family friends and at least nine of his biggest campaign fund-raisers, documents show.

In all, Bush and first lady Laura Bush have invited at least 270 people to stay at the White House and at least the same number to overnight at the Camp David retreat since moving to Washington in January 2001, according to lists the White House provided The Associated Press.

So now we know: 270 = "dozens." No wonder the story isn't getting more traction. I guess that means that Bush deficits will soon be summarized as in the "dozens of billions."

You can view a list of the "dirty dozens" here. The list is noteworthy for its airy documentation of the donations involved; all donation figures are capped at "at least $200,000" but many aren't specified at all. (And how cutesy poo is this? "Peter and Laura English: Bush friends, also birdwatchers.") Still based on obviously incomplete data, we have a bare minimum of $1.2M in donations involved here.

Also, can anyone decode the logic behind this sentence?

That [Clinton] scandal and Bush's criticism of it is one of the reasons the White House identifies guests.

Really. The whole brouhaha wasn't about the sleepovers, it was simply that we weren't told about them. And impeachment wasn't about sex. Got it.
Finally, insert your own snark here:

Los Angeles attorney Donald Etra stayed at the Bush White House several times and at Camp David once. Etra, a Yale classmate of President Bush, said he and his wife were invited as friends, not because they each gave Bush $1,000 in 2000.

"Friendship comes first, donations come second," Etra said.

And payoffs bring up the rear. A trifecta!