Pinocchio Jay Carney

The drama over the president's speech to a joint session of Congress has not abated. When asked earlier this week why the President had set the date for Sept. 7 when that was also the eveing of a nationally-televised debate between the Republican presidential candidates, the president's chief spokesman, Jay Carney, said it was "coincidental."

But now Politico says that White House sources say the choice of Sept. 7 was not coincidental at all.

The White House was well aware the president’s speech would conflict with a planned Republican debate sponsored by POLITICO and NBC to be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The debate would be broadcast live by MSNBC and live-streamed by POLITICO. CNBC and Telemundo will re-air the broadcast.

Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle.

Since Politico is generally friendly toward the administration, this is a solid sourcing that Obama & Co. were entirely aware of the conflicting events. Which means that, to put it clearly, Jay Carney simply lied through his teeth to the White House press corps and to the country. And so the trust level between White House correspondents and Carney, never very high to begin with, drops yet again.

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Doug Mataconis gets to the nub of the matter: "White House Officials Upset That Republicans Playing Politics Interfered With Their Attempt To Play Politics."

James Joyner chimes in, "We Have a President, Not a King," and therefore Speaker Boehner was well within his rights to deny the Sept. 7 request.

Nor is the Speaker in any way obligated to jump through hoops to accommodate the president’s political schedule. An address to a Joint Session of Congress is a rare event, usually reserved for the annual State of the Union address and the occasional breaking emergency. Given a week’s notice and an obviously-politically-motivated ploy to hold the speech precisely when the Republican debate was long scheduled–not to mention only a few hours after Congress returns from a scheduled recess– it’s hardly unreasonable to insist the president push off a day.

Frankly, given that the incredible likelihood that there will be nothing new here, with the president using the Congress as a background prop for what amounts to a political stump speech, Boehner would have been well within his rights to decline the request altogether. The television networks have quite often made that decision in recent years.

Exactly.