CIA DIRECTOR TELLS PELOSI, C’MON, STFU: Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA yesterday of lying over what it claims to have told Senate leaders in a 2002 briefing on “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and today the CIA Director, arbitrary Bill Clinton political operative Leon Panetta, responded that no, the CIA did not lie. There is a MAJOR SCANDAL here: various high-profile political figures are making efforts to defend either themselves or their institutions! [NYT]

As this whole, “Who loved torture the most, the liberal leather queen Nancy Pelosi or the sadistic dungeon-masters at the CIA?” debate rages, we know we’re getting closer to the truth because both sides say the other is lying. And now this fellow “Newt,” who will not sue Twitter, will instead pick a fight with Nancy Pelosi because that is a fine way of keeping this very sensitive issue nonpartisan. MORE »

Nancy Pelosi reiterated during a press conference this morning that when she received a CIA briefing on “enhanced interrogations techniques” in the fall of 2002, she was not told about waterboarding, but she was told that everything else they were doing was LEGAL, backed by LEGAL OPINIONS. This contradicts a CIA memo released last week showing that Pelosi knew about waterboarding and loved it so much. Pelosi and the CIA are each calling each other terrible liars. They’re both right! MORE »

YOU SCOOPED US, WASHINGTON POST. We thought the same thing today! When Barack Obama reversed his decision to release photographic evidence of authorized-from-the-top, brutal, illegal detainee abuse that would have compelled the DoJ to prosecute people for crimes (MUST NEVER HAPPEN), we thought about how AWESOME this will be politically, just like that time Bill Clinton didn’t care for a black rapper during a campaign and a few conservative voters mused, “Okay, well, as long as he hates the blacks too…” MORE »

Wasn’t Lindsey “Grahamnesty” one of those Republicans who hated torture so much? It was “Grahamnesty” and John Warner and John McCain. “Waterboarding, under any circumstances, represents a clear violation of U.S. law,” they wrote in 2007. But Graham has since determined that hmm, nevermind, Dick Cheney says on the teevee that torture works, and it’s worked for “500 years,” so why do all of these liberals refuse to acknowledge Torquemada for keeping America safe these past eight years? [YouTube]

The worst writer in America, Richard Cohen — that thoughtless, valueless, condescending, sociopathic sexist poster-boy for the vapidity of the Washington Post’s opinion section — has written such inconsistent snot today that for once, we’re not the only blog making fun of him. He even opened with a smug little “Blogger alert” — “I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney” — as a holier-than-thou excuse to do no research for his barking, again. The blogs did not pay attention. Others have already pointed out that in his column two weeks ago he declared that torture “unequivocally” works and that any debate about such would be “silly,” while today he writes that despite his disdain (oh?) for Cheney, “I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth — i.e., torture works.” But we thought “wondering” was only something a gay Frenchman would do? MORE »

• FUCK OFF AND DIE: Ahh, looks like our old friends still care deeply about the integrity of the Justice Department: “Former Bush administration officials are lobbying behind the scenes to push Justice Department leaders to water down an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts. In recent days, attorneys for the subjects of the ethics probe have encouraged senior Bush administration appointees to write and phone Justice Department officials, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.” [Washington Post]

Hooray for VIDEO FRIDAY, yes? Now you will watch this video. Condi Rice teaches at Stanford again and recently attended this Dorm Reception to meet the rich liberal bastards, who decided to harass her, about torture. We encourage you to watch the whole clip, because she gets progressively snippier as it goes on. “Sorry, you’re wrong,” she tells this little douche, who suggests that the Nazis were a bigger threat than Al Qaeda and she’s like, “Uhh you’re retarded.” Finally she just says “Do your homework.” Also she does not think that waterboarding is torture, so that is kind of the “fundamental issue” here. [SFist]

• Obama is still draining all the stimulus recession dollars on his personal communist pet project: re-sodding the National Mall in such a way that one million red roses spring up in shape of Stalin’s silhouette. Terrible, just terrible. [RedState]
• Hillary Clinton isn’t sure whether she’d like America to have the opportunity to read the sequel to Dick Cheney’s torture fan fiction—Waterboarding Towards Bethlehem: A Nationbuildingsroman—and said some awkward thing about Cheney being weird, just to avoid the question! [Daily Intel]
• Nate Silver sees four (or, “4″) futures for the Republican Party. He thinks a drift towards libertarianism is the best way to go, so that should tell you something about the other three options. [FiveThirtyEight]
• Obama is making good on his pinkie swear to no one that he is so all about Service. [The Caucus]
• NRSC Chairman Jon Cornyn has given up on pretending that the Dems aren’t going to secure 60 Senate seats. So, do with that what you will Norm Coleman—you will anyway. [Matt Yglesias]

Former “Bushie” chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen has written another opinion piece in this morning’s Washington Post and, like most WP columns, it is terrible. But lopsidedly so! It starts on the standard torture defense notes — if torture was effective sometimes then how do you deal with THAT, libtards? Would you rather be dead? — but then just has to go a bit further: apparently the CIA knows very much about the Muslim religion, and it turns out that they, the Muslims, want to be tortured, and the interrogators are just trying to help them on their spiritual quest. MORE »

Well thanks for clearing that up, “administration officials”! On Sunday Rahm Emanuel suggested that “those who devised policy” around torture wouldn’t be prosecuted, but by yesterday other Obama people were rushing to walk that one back. What he meant, apparently, was that officials who ordered the torture shouldn’t be prosecuted, but the lawyers who devised the legal rationale maybe could. MORE »