Flotsam and Jetsam
By Jennifer Rubin on Contentions
Unions provide fodder for anti-card check forces: it seems unions don't like arbitration or card check when it applies to them.
Via Andy McCarthy, some sharp congressmen extract a key point from Eric Holder: under the Justice Department's own legal reasoning the waterboarding wasn't "torture" unless those administering it had the specific intent to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. Well, in that case all of this is much to do about nothing, right?
From Politico: Pelosi's back-peddling isn't likely to put the CIA mess behind her.
Slate observes: "The escalating mess is exactly why President Obama didn't want a thorough look into the question of torture. Fights like these distract from his effort to get politicians to focus on other matters, and the arguments potentially weaken his party by either undermining its high-road position on torture or making leading Democrats look unsteady, as Pelosi looked during her halting and jittery press conference."
All the Washington Posteditors can muster at this point: "Ms. Pelosi's shifting accounts and faltering performance at her news conference were far from reassuring. . . If Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Graham are mistaken, then the CIA is being done a disservice." That's quite a mild way of saying that if Pelosi's story is as shaky as her performance she has defamed government officials and lied to the Congress and country. Really, if Panetta with the president's obvious approval called Pelosi a liar I'm not sure why the editors feel compelled to walk on eggshells.
To her credit, Kathleen Parker gets it right on the witch hunt to get the Bush administration lawyers: "Even if [Jay]Bybee and [John]Yoo were wrong, their error doesn't rise to the level of an ethical offense, much less a war crime. Under the Justice Department's own standards, an ethical issue would arise only if their opinion was so obviously wrong that no reasonable lawyer could possibly reach the same conclusion. By that standard, the only obvious wrong is the continued persecution of Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The effect sanctions might have on future lawyering, meanwhile, could be chilling." She cites the testimony of Professor Michael Paulsen which is summarized here.
And Victoria Toensing explains what the memos actually say, making the same case that Paulsen did: the lawyers not only believed that their analysis was correct. It was correct under the legal standard then in place.
Fred Barnes thinks if Meg Whitman wins the governorship in California she'll be seen as "a brainy, conservative, accomplished woman at the top of the Republican ladder with precisely the experience that Sarah Palin lacks." Yeah, but then she'll have to run California. (Being head of a company that sells junk is good experience, I think.)
Jon Huntsman takes the job as ambassador to China and, I suspect, ends his presidential prospects. |
