Check out this hilarious, Onion-esque lede from Saturday’s Washington Post article about the official White House response to the Fitzgerald indictments and investigations:

President Bush has ordered White House staff to attend mandatory briefings next week on ethical behavior and the handling of classified material after the indictment last week of a senior administration official in the CIA leak probe.According to a memo sent to aides yesterday…. “[T]he White House counsel’s office will conduct a series of presentations next week that will provide refresher courses on general ethics rules, including the rules governing the protection of classified materials.”

That’s just great. Nearly five years after Bush was elected president on a pledge of “restoring honor and dignity to the White House,” the Bushies are going to get some On-the-Job Training on how to obey the law.But why stop there? Why not order up a “refresher course” on military strategy and post-war reconstruction for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his staff? Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could use a briefing on the evolution of the Western tradition against torturing prisoners. Surely there is a middle-school math teacher in the D.C. area willing to volunteer a few hours to instruct the staff of the Office of Management and Budget in the mysteries of Basic Arithmetic. And everybody in the White House, especially the president, could benefit from a few hours listening to a clinical psychologist discuss the value of Getting Out of Denial and Recognizing Painful Truths.Bring on the flip-charts, the Power-Points, and if necessary, the hand puppets. It’s time to school the White House.