Tag: prevarigate

Democrats, GOP both want Pelosi out of DC.

The former is claiming that having a Speaker with a 39% approval rating will only help the Democrats in swing districts:

The vice chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm says Speaker Nancy Pelosi could play a critical role in the 2010 elections, and not the one that Republicans have in mind.

GOP strategists have been signaling that they intend to make the San Francisco liberal an issue in the coming mid-term elections, particularly her claims that the CIA misled her during a 2002 briefing about harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.

But Bruce Braley , D-Iowa, said he believes that rather than lying low, Pelosi should travel to competitive districts to counter GOP attacks.

NRCC Chair Pete Sessions endorsed this idea fully; no word if drooling was involved. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Boehner is still waiting to see that evidence the Speaker has that the CIA lied about her… Continue reading Democrats, GOP both want Pelosi out of DC.

NRCC targets Democrats using Speaker Pelosi.

I was originally going to go with something from Coleridge, but an albatross necklace is not exactly the image that either I or the GOP was trying to invoke, here.

The NRCC will be launching a barrage of television, radio, phone, and physical advertisements today at specific Democratic-controlled House Districts. The theme of the message: Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attacks on the CIA, the implications of those attacks, and the curious disinterest in selected House Democrats in facing up to those implications. The television ad for MD-01’s Frank Kratovil sums it up:

If the CIA deceived the Speaker of the House, then the CIA is committing a crime. The GOP has been saying for a couple of weeks now that Speaker Pelosi needs to provide either evidence or an apology; and when she provided neither, the GOP called for a bipartisan investigation of the CIA. Speaker Pelosi and her cronies in the House had it squashed.  So the NRCC is going to ask selected voters how they feel about the idea that their legislators may be supporting a slanderer and liar.

Specific breakdown of names/type of advertisements below the fold: I’ll be updating with the scripts once I get them.

Moe Lane Continue reading NRCC targets Democrats using Speaker Pelosi.

‘Boehner to Pelosi: Put Up, or Shut Up.’

Whoops! I was channeling Maureen Dowd there, for a moment*.

Anyway, the title is of course from Hot Air Headlines, and it refers to this story:

GOP leader: Pelosi should show proof or apologize

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A key Republican leader demanded Sunday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi produce evidence to back up her assertion that she was misled by the CIA on the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

[snip]

“Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“If the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they be prosecuted. And if that’s not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.”

Continue reading ‘Boehner to Pelosi: Put Up, or Shut Up.’

Current Speaker of the House declines Sunday show circuit.

Come out to play.

Pelosi turns down Sunday show invitations

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned down invitations to be on several Sunday morning talk shows and is instead spending the weekend with her family.

The Speaker was invited to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to sources at the networks.


The Warriors, because I like AofSHQ.

Crossposted to RedState.

You can almost *smell* the relief coming from this Salon Prevarigate piece…

[UPDATE]: And welcome, Protein Wisdom readers.  You may be amused by Morgan Freeman doing a Barenaked Ladies cover.

…because now they have an acceptable devil figure to blame it all on. Via @vermontaigne (and Protein Wisdom):

Cheney’s torture trap for Democrats

[Note: Salon defines ‘waterboarding’ as ‘torture’ throughout this article. Please calibrate your semantic filters accordingly. – ML]

You might have thought getting torture back in the news would be a bad move for any Republican; after all, it was the Bush administration that authorized the torturing. But the last few days have shown Dick Cheney knew exactly what he was doing when he went on TV last week and started talking about “enhanced interrogation”: It was a masterstroke of bureaucratic warfare.

[snip multiple paragraphs that dance around the fact that Pelosi Knew All Along.]

Cheney, safely ensconced in his McLean, Va., mansion, must be chortling all the way to his cave every night. After three decades in the top levels of U.S. government, he knows better than most how to set his opponents against themselves.

You have to understand that this sort of thing is the product of a certain kind of mindset. Let’s say that you’re a person who has adopted a particular set of beliefs – for whatever reason – that you have come to depend on as being an integral part of why you consider yourself to be a good person. And let’s say that these beliefs have been reinforced and validated by certain outside individuals, through a series of deliberately provocative statements and actions. And let’s finally say that it becomes clear that those people have been lying to you with those statements and actions – and without them, the set of beliefs that you’re relying on now come into serious question. You have two options at this point. The first is to critically examine your beliefs, and be prepared to change them; the second is to find something else that would validate them.
Continue reading You can almost *smell* the relief coming from this Salon Prevarigate piece…

Latest on Prevarigate*.

It’s like a demented tennis match:

CIA director says Pelosi received the truth

CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.

[snip]

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

(Via Riehl World View, via AoSHQ)

…and that last statement translates to, as near as I can tell, “Go ahead and hit her again.” Add that to the apparent dismissive attitude of Panetta towards Speaker Pelosi’s allegations (I think that he referred to it as ‘noise’), and you get the feeling that the CIA is prepared to be the brick wall that the Speaker is pounding her head against for as long as the Speaker feels like pounding. That suggests that there’s a lot of paperwork still out there that can accidentally-on purpose show up when the time is right.
Continue reading Latest on Prevarigate*.