Obviously I don't mind his "considering" the possibility. I'm just a little surprised that Bammy "The Brain" Obama didn't "consider" this might be necessary when running for president, and offered the public simple answers expressed with confidence and moral righteousness.

Um, a lot like Sarah Palin was alleged to have done.

Except in Obama's case, we actually have proof in hand his simplistic, base-pleasing answers were, what's the word?, wrong.

The Obama administration is weighing plans to detain some terror suspects on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without trial -- as part of a plan to retool military commission trials that were conducted for prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The proposal being floated with members of Congress is another indication of President Barack Obama's struggles to establish his counter-terrorism policies, balancing security concerns against attempts to alter Bush-administration practices he has harshly criticized.

WSJ's Justice Department reporter Evan Perez discusses the Obama administration's efforts to create a detainee policy in line with both national security concerns and the critiques Obama raised during his campaign.
On Wednesday, the president reversed a recent administration decision to release photos showing purported abuse of prisoners at U.S. military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama cited concern that releasing the pictures could endanger U.S. troops. Mr. Obama ordered government lawyers to pull back an earlier court filing promising to release hundreds of photos by month's end as part a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Isaac Asimov coined the expression (I think) "Ah, to be young enough to know everything."

Our young, untested, inexperienced president sure did know everything when he came riding into DC to rescue us. Now, not so much.

Well, he still knows everything about economics, so that's comforting.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 05:16 PM | Comments (43)
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Another one from Megan McArdle I've wanted to link for a bit.

The Chrysler deal...

...didn't just pay wages on a gamble that a reorganized firm would be worth more than a liquidation; it reaffirmed the union's pension obligations, and, [as far as I can tell], much of the rest of their current contract. This is unprecedented. Moreover, it was not necessary to keep the firm going. Detroit autoworkers do not have a lot of other exciting opportunities to make $40 an hour in compensation. Had the bankruptcy followed a more normal course, most of them would have kept going.

By which she means they would still be working, but for reduced (but still good) wages and benefits, and the company would have continued. In a more sound fashion, of course.

That makes it a pretty straightforward transfer from senior [bondholder] to junior creditors [employees]. And that's costly. The seniority rules have no particular moral priority; like traffic rules, they matter because they are the rules. People make decisions based on what the rules are, and if you change the rules without warning, you get nasty accidents.

Right now, senior debt is cheaper than junior debt; secured debt cheaper than unsecured. If you declare that there are no priority rules, because the government will step in and arrange things so its friends get to cut in line, then everyone will have to pay something close to what the most junior unsecured creditors get now. Not only will interest rates go up, but terms will shorten--no one wants to lend into a period when default risk can't be calculated. And companies that are particularly likely to have administration "friends"--union shops, when Democrats are in office; maybe oil companies or defense contractors for Republicans--are going to find it harder to do debt financing at all.

I do appreciate her attempt to be politically neutral here, but the idea that Republicans could -- even if they wanted -- privilege major oil companies or defense contractors over anyone, let alone their workers, is fanciful, to say the least.

Most people underestimate just how economically valuable the rule of law is. A roughly stable investment environment that doesn't maximize social justice is undoubtedly better than an unpredictible one that tries to--just as the billions of poor people who live in states that have tried to exchange the former for the latter. The winners were not the dispossessed.

Obama's too busy cutting the pie up into pieces he considers "fair" to even notice that he's losing a lot of pie on the floor due to his gleeful butchery.

And not really related, except in terms of the same villains being involved, but Sowell's piece is worth reading. Yes, we've been through this before; can't hurt to go through it again.

When the housing boom was going along merrily, Rep. Barney Frank was proud to be one of those who were pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into more adventurous financial practices, in the name of “affordable housing.”

In 2003 he said: “I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals.” He added: “I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.”

In other words, when things were looking good, he was happy to acknowledge the role of the federal government in pushing the housing market in a direction it would not have taken on its own. But, after the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Representative Frank changed his tune completely.

By 2007, his line was now that “the subprime crisis demonstrates the serious negative economic and social consequences that result from too little regulation.” By 2008, his line was that the financial crisis was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector.”

When television financial reporter Maria Bartiromo reminded Representative Frank of his statements in earlier years, he simply denied making the statements she quoted and blamed “right-wing Republicans who took the position that regulation was always bad.”

...

Although this is the biggest housing disaster the government has ever produced, it is by no means the first. Republicans intervened in the housing markets to promote more home ownership in the 1920s, Democrats in the 1930s, and both parties after World War II. All of these interventions led to massive foreclosures.

Thanks to JackStraw for that.

Posted by: Ace at 04:53 PM | Comments (42)
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(One free monthÂ’s membership to AoSHQ to the first person who can accurately answer which band sampled that statement on one of their tracks.)

Item #1: Now that weÂ’ve arrived on The New Frontier, Part Two, weÂ’ll probably all need to get a job or something. We canÂ’t just sit around gazing at the Skittle-hued sunsets every night. In the meantime, Popular Mechanics has conjured up a list of Future-Proof Jobs. With any luck, by next year, the HQ will be able to provide online courses in all of these fields, so now would be a good time to start considering which one youÂ’re best suited for.

Seems they left out one obvious profession that’s always future and recession-proof. It’s been around for awhile. In fact, some might say it’s actually the oldest profession. Dean O’-Spades has mentioned that we may offer an Associate degree in that field on something like a “work-study” basis.

Item #2: Got kids? Or more to the point, got lazy sacks oÂ’ shit kids who canÂ’t be bothered to do their homework? Gizmodo may have the perfect solution for you: The Study Ball. ItÂ’s a 20 pound ball, chain and shackle with a timer that can be set for up to four hours before it unlocks. Should provide just the right amount of motivation to get Junior to finish off his algebra homework before heÂ’s off to play with the Xbox and/or call Child Protective Services. If thatÂ’s insufficient, youÂ’ll be pleased to know that the company who makes this item, Curiosite, is also working on development of the Study Iron Maiden and the Study Rack.

Item #3: And we wrap up with a story from Scandi-land. From ABC (Australia) comes the grim tale of a hapless driver (they still have cars there?) who was fined $143,000 for driving drunk over the distance of 400 meters. Why such a hefty fine you ask?

”Due to the man's wealth, the court in the southern Norwegian county of Aust-Agder handed down a heavier-than-usual sentence, which would normally be equivalent to a month-and-a-half's gross salary for the accused. “The principle of proportionality implies that we should take into account the entire wealth of the person in cases where the defendant is more well off than most other people," a court spokesman said. The 49-year-old man is the heir of a rich shipping family. His wealth totalled 228 million kroner ($46 million) in 2008, when he had a gross annual income of around 752,000 kroner.”

Eh, why notÂ…serves the bastard right for daring to actually have money. However, IÂ’m going to actually shock most of you and say that there is an argument to be made there, though IÂ’m not totally convinced. In the case of a felony or whatnot where weÂ’re looking at some prison time, then the punishment should be exactly the same across social strata. With a monetary penalty though, it does affect people differently. A fine of, say, $5k is going to have a vastly larger effect on someone who makes $25k than on someone who makes $500k a year. I know, I know, thereÂ’s a lot of shitty Iceback ideology and money grabbery behind the whole thing. Argue it out in the thread.

Overnight critter below the fold for your viewing enjoyment.
more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:45 PM | Comments (190)
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Skip down to the clip or read here about anamorphic lenses and "lens flare."

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (69)
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Duh on me.

Nom de Blog:

When the budget is out of balance by the amount it currently is, the Social Security "trust fund" gets eroded more quickly. IOW, the government writes more IOUs to the baby boomers.

And you know what, that's happening right now and it's Obama's fault. Well, he had a lot of help from Harry Pelosi and Nancy Reid, of course.

Also markets are prospective. So there's a lot of pull back of investment right now because people look at the discounted cash flows of their investment under the new, higher tax regime and understand that what would have been prudent investment is no longer sound.

Right, right, right... Social Security money is (and has been for a long time*) diverted to general revenues, so the more we spend in general revenues, the more the "trust" (which is not a trust, but a stack of government IOUs in the form of bonds) is depleted.

And more debt equals higher payments equals greater costs in carrying the debt.

So, right, yes, this is largely Obama's fault. Not the long-standing trajectory of Social Security to insolvency -- but the sudden change of the insolvency date from 2041 to 2037.

Well, you can't say I tried to pin this on Obama. I specifically said I couldn't conceive of how this was even partly his fault.

But it is.

* Edited. A commenter says the diversion began happening under LBJ. I don't know if that's true, but it would make sense; the system would start producing excess revenues when the number of payors (the coming of the Boomers into the economy) began exceeding the number of payees (the previous, smaller generations).

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (79)
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How bad is the economy? Well, it's bad enough that economics become interesting. In a bad way.

No offense to Megan McArdle, of course. But economics are like a diet: Entirely unpleasant, and something you'd prefer not to think about. Until things get so out of hand you're forced to confront them.

McArdle on the "green shoots" in the economy (a.k.a. the "glimmers of hope" the media likes to push):

Retail sales fell again, despite confident proclamations that consumers had rethought their overreaction last fall. And foreclosures hit another record, which was oddly described as a "levelling off" by a lot of papers.

Want some cheer?

I don't want to push the Great Depression analogy too far, but what's surprising when you go back to primary sources from 1930 is the optimism. I don't mean to imply that everyone thinks things are just swell. But while you know that they are facing the worst economic decade of the twentieth century, they don't. They're expecting something more like the recession that followed World War I. People are cutting back, but they're still spending, particularly because companies are slashing prices to move inventory. It was the long grind of the years that followed, and the catastrophe of the second banking crisis, that scarred them permanently.

Wonderful.

Sorry to be Johnny One Note, but as the media continues to call record foreclosures a "levelling off" and trumpets the coming recovery, it's a good time to remember how the media played the Bush expansion, in which there was no such thing as good news. Only bad news, and stuff that seemed like good news, but in fact was a "worrisome sign" of a cataclysm to come.

As we face the actual cataclysm, suddenly the skies are bright and things just really couldn't be more swell.

Yup: Circa (Insert Year Here) writes:

One more time: Our fiscal house is such a wreck that the Congress is going to tax Coca-Cola.

I've said this before, but when, exactly, is the media going to alert the public that higher taxes are absolutely required by Obama's spending?

Isn't the public deserving of informed consent on this issue? Or does the media plan on covering up this most open of open secrets until the damage is such that there simply is no other conceivable alternative?

That's rhetorical, of course.

We know the left -- and people on JournoList, for example -- are busy, busy, busy inventing new "broad-based" taxes to make up for Obama's huge revenue shortfalls.

Ergo, regular media people know this. Certainly business and economics reporters know this.

But the media is pretending they don't know this, and that Obama's promise to not raise "a single dime" of new taxes on 95% of the public is not only provably false, but provably fantastical, as they make fun of Tea Partiers for "not "knowing that Obama's not raising taxes on them."

Um, he is. You know it and I know it. Many of us know it.

Obama's leftist supporters know it. They're counting on it, in fact.

There is one group that doesn't know it: The ill-informed, politically soft-headed group of voters called "centrists" or "swing voters," most of whom voted for Obama (and the Democratic Congress), and whose continued support is absolutely vital to the Democratic project.

But the media is not telling them, for the very reason that they are so vital to Obama and the Democrats. Obama can't afford to lose them, ergo the media cannot afford to break the bad news.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 PM | Comments (75)
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Obama's policies are poisoning the economy even faster than expected.

The basics of all the problems are, of course, that Obama is spending far, far more than he is taking in. And he will of course raise taxes, but that will only be a partial fix, because raising taxes never "pays off" the way the left wishes it would: Yes, everyone pays a higher percentage of their income to the government, but less income is generated, because higher taxes means that work is less rewarded. And, therefore, people do less of it.

The left is bewitched by the curious notion that people will work, and risk, and save, and invest just as hard for other people, and for the government, as they will on their own behalves.

Of course they won't. Time is money, and time cannot be taxed. (Yet.) Start clawing 50-60% or even more of every marginal dollar someone makes and they might just decide to not earn that marginal dollar, and instead take their "income" in the form of untaxed free time, free of work, free of risk, free of stress.

Let's take a look at the rubble and dust laying around Obama's feet:

Moody's issues a warning that the US may lose its AAA rating. Which means bonds are not considered as safe as they once were, and therefore must generate greater income to justify the increased risk of default. So we had been paying pretty low rates of returns on T-bills; now we'll have to pay more.

That warning from MoodyÂ’s focused on the exploding healthcare and Social Security costs that threaten to engulf the federal government in debt over coming decades. The facts show weÂ’re in even worse shape now, and there are signs that confidence in AmericaÂ’s ability to control its finances is eroding.

Prices have risen on credit default insurance on US government bonds, meaning it costs investors more to protect their investment in Treasury bonds against default than before the crisis hit. It even, briefly, cost more to buy protection on US government debt than on debt issued by McDonaldÂ’s. Another warning sign has come from across the Pacific, where the Chinese premier and the head of the PeopleÂ’s Bank of China have expressed concern about AmericaÂ’s longer-term credit worthiness and the value of the dollar.

Plus we're issuing debt like no one's business. So already there was a glut of the stuff; and now it's even riskier. We have to pay higher interest rates on more debt.

Not only will the deficits increase, the cost of deficits will increase, and eventually the debt service will become the biggest part of the federal budget — unless Washington massively increases taxes to close the gap.

So we can all look forward to Obama having increasing trouble selling debt to cover his massive spending, and therefore needing to increase the deficit even more (by offering higher rates of returns on his debt).

Look forward to? Whoops, no, it's already happening.

For a while now, I've been asking people at conferences, on and off the record, what America's sovereign debt risk is? That is, how long until people stop treating treasuries as the "risk free" securities, and start demanding a premium for the risk that we might default.

The answer from the right has been a nervous (perhaps hopeful) 2-3 years. The answer from the left, and professional Democratic wonks, is some unspecified time in the future. Probably, there will be a Republican in charge. Markets hate Republicans.

But last Thursday, the Treasury auction was . . . well, descriptions vary from "weak" to "horrible". This raises the unpleasant possibility that markets are, as my business school professors insisted, "forward looking".

Looking forward to this:

Ahhhh... remember the halcyon days of Bush's "runaway deficits"? We didn't know how good we'd had it.

I desperately want to copy all of McArdle's post, but I can't, so click.

It's unclear to me that the new projection showing Social Security going bust four years earlier than last projected is truly Obama's "fault." Maybe it is, but at the moment I have to imagine this is a problem he didn't really create, given that he has not changed Social Security payouts or tax rates.

Unless someone smarter than me can point out how it is his fault, of course.

But whether it's his fault or not, it's a fact, and one he blithely ignores. Even as the evidence grows that the nation simply can't afford its previous obligations, Obama is spending like a drunken sailor, heaping new and huge obligations upon the government, and fresh drains upon our rapidly-depleting revenues and reserves.

At some point, there will have to be either cuts in Social Security payments or increases in Social Security taxes. That's simply the way it is -- that's the math. If the increased-taxes option is chosen (or predominates -- it can of course be mixed with somewhat lower payouts), that's already imposing a big new cost on the working citizens, known to Obama as "revenue-creation units."

Hitting them with another big tax hike to cover his enormous new spending in general revenues will push them to the brink. They'll work less and also spend less, hitting the economy with a labor-strike double-whammy.

I had thought that Obama's speech where he reluctantly and sadly tells the middle class he might have to kinda break his campaign pledge and raise their taxes -- which will surely be hailed as "The Greatest Speech on Increasing Income and Payroll Taxes Since Lincoln's Gettysburg Budget Reconciliation Speech" -- would be put off, coincidentally enough, to just after Obama's second inauguration. But now, with his ability to borrow until that point now threatened, he may have to make it sooner.

Which of course raises the Big Question which no one in the media will ask him. He will explain, sadly, that Bush's recession and "runaway deficits" were/are much worse than he thought, and therefore he cannot both honor his promises to spend like the wind and his promise not to increase taxes on the middle class. (Actually the middle and upper middle class and lower upper class too, as he promised that no one making under $250,000 per year would see an additional "dime" in taxes.) And therefore, with greatest reluctance, you understand, he'll have to raise taxes.

And he'll say he has a mandate for that, because that's what the people voted for.

But they didn't. They voted, to the extent they voted for any specific plan, for the idea that Obama would spend more, but based on the predicate that he would not under any circumstances raise taxes on anyone except the top 5%. He had a mandate for A, but only if Not B. Well, if that "but only if" part of it fails, he has no mandate any longer for A, either.

The public gave him to mandate to spend, so long as he could do so without raising taxes; if he wants to spend and raise the middle class' taxes, he'll need an actual mandate for that proposition, won't he? As in: Put your spending plans on hold, and run for reelection on the platform of raising taxes to the hilt. And see if America votes for that Hope and Change.

There is some possibility that Obama will, thankfully, but his personal political fortunes ahead of his principles and begin to reverse himself on these matters.

But I doubt it. He's a True Believer, and his base is the furtherest left of any president's since... well, anyone's, really. He will gamble and gamble that this will all somehow work out for him.

Huge new spending for universal health care, and of course huge new taxes to pay for it. Huge new taxes on energy -- which is basically the same as taxing the air, as we all use it, for everything, in any endeavor.

This won't work for him. The math says so. Obama's sonorous voice and diamond-cut moobs can't charm the numbers into changing basic arithmetic principles.

He'll lose that gamble, and so will America.

And sure, Republicans will sweep into power... but they'll be taking over a fragile country on the edge of depression and hyperinflation, if not already experiencing such.

Vicious Cycle: The vicious cycle of economic doom has various currents, each of which reinforces and speeds the others.

1. Debt becomes much more expensive in times of stress and risk...

2. Dissuading people from taking risks and opening new businesses...

3. And making it more likely those which do will fail, as they have to clear more money just to keep afloat...

4. While taxes are raised to keep pace with declining revenues (less income) and increasing payouts (more food stamps and unemployment benefits)...

5 Which makes work and risk even more unappealing....

6. Which even further reduces revenues, and we therefore go back to..

1., all over again: Debt becomes even more expensive, and the cycle repeats, this time more forcefully.

How do you break the cycle? Well, pre-Obama, the consensus seemed to be that you interrupt or short-circuit one or more of the deadly feedbacks to keep the economic hurricane from forming, or make it dissipate once formed.

Like: Clinton increased taxes, but kept spending fairly low, which improved the nation's balance sheet a great deal, thus making debt pretty inexpensive, and also freeing up lots of money from soaking up federal debt, channeling it instead towards private investment -- short circuiting the cycle.

Or: Reagan and Bush cut taxes, even while spending went up. Thus putting more money into people's pockets, and growing the economy that way.

Obama seems to have a brilliant new idea, however: Rather than attacking and defeating one or more of the circuits causing the vicious cycle to spin faster and faster, he'll reinforce and enhance each and every circuit in the deadly cycle. Taxes too high? Raise 'em higher. Debt to expensive? Make it even more expensive.

This will stop the speeding cycle by... um... creating... I don't know, a hurricane of such massive and unprecedented force it... um... tears itself apart and blows itself up through its sheer destructive power?

I dunno. Gibbsy will have to explain it to us.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (123)
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Edit: Headline corrected and softened.

I'm sure Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress will get right on this. They really want those votes counted next time.

A new study suggested Wednesday that over 25 percent of ballots from voters living overseas, mostly members of the military, were not counted in the 2008 election.

"It is unacceptable that bureaucratic snafus could prevent our troops from exercising the very rights they are fighting to protect," Sen. Charles Schumer said in a statement.

The study, unveiled at a Wednesday hearing, surveyed election offices in the seven states with the highest number of troops serving overseas. According to the study, 98,633 of the 441,000 ballots sent to those military personnel and other eligible voters living abroad were never sent back to the election offices and declared "lost" and 13,504 were rejected for a missing signature or a failure to notarize.

Schumer is demanding, he says, that the Pentagon see to this. Well, I guess we'll see.

What is this crap about getting ballots notarized? Now, I understand the need for ballot security and all that -- but it seems very strange to me that these restrictions are placed on Republican-trending military voters, when, back in the US, they won't even ask for your identification when you vote.

What possible rationale can explain this? The military has the hardest time of any citizens voting, so we impose on them the biggest obstacles to exercising that vote? While back in the States ACORN can sign up Mickey Mouse, students can illegally move into a swing state for two weeks and declare themselves "residents" without any checking or any jail-time when caught, and thousands upon thousands of votes are cast by illegal aliens and the dead, because Democrats claim that any measures taken to clean up the voter rolls or ask for proof of identity constitute a "chilling" effect on the right to vote.

But military guys, often serving in hot wars? These guys, we need to be careful with. Who knows -- there could be all sorts of fraudulent voting going on.

Eleven Asks... what the "were never sent back" thing means.

Well, it seems it means that the ballots were never sent back -- they may have been lost, delayed, etc. Or, it could mean, easily, that the military voter simply did not vote.

The headline is a bit overstated. (I've changed the headline a bit to conform to what Political Ticker headlines it as, but that too is a little overstated.)

It appears unknown what fraction of mailed ballots were lost and what fraction were never sent. However, if someone's requesting a ballot, usually that indicates a high desire to vote. If 25% of these ballots are either being lost or are never sent, it indicates that we're making it too difficult to vote. The ballots may be arriving too late to vote, etc.

And I don't get the thing with the notary. I'm sure every major base has a notary -- several, of course -- but what guys out in FOBs and the like? Why are we imposing this requirement on soldiers? We don't impose it, as far as I know, on any stateside absentee voter.

Every Officer is a Notary, for These Purposes. That's what commenters tell me, and I believe them.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (72)
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Obama, Neocon In Chief

From extending and deepening the war in Afghanistan, to suppressing evidence of rampant and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners under Bush, to thuggishly threatening the British with intelligence cut-off if they reveal the brutal torture inflicted on Binyam Mohamed,

Has Andrew Sullivan officially come out against the War in Afghanistan? If not, what's this business about "extending and deepening" the war there? Did Obama not run on a platform promising the Great Overmountain Invasion of Pakistan, vowing to win whereas Bush had "taken his eye off the ball"?

As the right has long contended, the Democrats' claim that they wanted to "win" in Afghanistan, and only wanted to lose one of our two wars, was always a fig-leaf. The logic of surrender tends to demand losses in both wars, or in neither.

The left, collectively, has vowed for years that, while it wanted to abandon Iraq to the likes of Zarqawi's successors, it was all gung-ho to finally "get bin Ladin." But since Obama's election, they've felt increasingly comfortable urging retreat in Afghanistan too.

Bill Maher, for example did so expressly a month or two ago, suggesting, strongly, that we abandon Afghanistan. I don't remember hearing this line when The One was running for president. He was on better behavior, then, doing his part to convince the public that the left could be safely entrusted with the presidency.

Did Sullivan just let slip out a position he's secretly held for a while, but has been suppressing as part of the left's collective agreement to pretend they're interested in winning at least one war? I don't follow him much anymore, so I don't know. Was this a slip-up or has been making the case for surrender in Afghanistan, too?

Gif courtesy of McGurk.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (80)
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Pelosi fake-frowned, Zubaydah fake-drowned.

A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.

Source says Nancy Pelosi didn't object about waterboard usage because she wasn't personally briefed about it.

As I had supposed: She was playing a game of plausible deniability with the CIA. She offered her support, or at least silence, in exchange for which the CIA went along with the charade of pretending she didn't know.

Plausible deniability has a long and often honorable tradition in spycraft. It allows high-ranking people to order actions without much fear of being compromised or embarrassed if those actions are revealed.

There is a catch, though: You can't start prosecuting the very same people you just secretly authorized to undertake such actions. Because, get this, then they'll stop pretending you didn't know and tell the world you did.

This appears to contradict Pelosi's account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.

"Appears," yeah. And that's not her "account," actually. That's her "second account," to be precise. It differs from her first and third accounts, and will surely also depart from her fourth.

...

This source says Pelosi didn't object when she learned that waterboarding was being used because she had not been personally briefed about it -- only her aide had been told.

The source said Pelosi supported a letter that Harman sent to the administration at the time raising concerns. The source asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of matters discussed in classified intelligence briefings.

...

"At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not -- I repeat, we were not -- told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used, " Pelosi said on April 23.

In related news, somewhere a Mafia captain is testifying at a RICO prosecution, "Hey, I wasn't personally told my crew would be importing that heroin from Turkey. Sure, my lieutenant told me, but not actually the members of my crew doin' it. So, you know, I'm innocent 'n stuff."

Charles Schumer then:

And IÂ’d like to interject a note of balance here. There are times when we all get in high dudgeon. We ought to be reasonable about this. I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.

Take the hypothetical: If we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believed that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most senators, maybe all, would say, Do what you have to do.

So itÂ’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when youÂ’re in the foxhole, itÂ’s a very different deal.

And Charles Schumer now: Video from last month of Schumer agreeing to investigations and prosecutions.

Dianne Feinstein spins on behalf of Nancy Pelosi, and seems to advocate torture.... in the right circumstances:

“I don’t want to make an apology for anybody, but in 2002, it wasn’t 2006, 07, 08 or 09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks.”

Captain Ed asks if this defense of Pelosi is also a defense of Bush and Cheney. It's obviously not intended to be -- but it looks like a back-up defense is now in the works.

The Democrats' problem, of course, is that they want to prosecute Bush officials and CIA agents who performed EITs, but they have to distinguish those actions from the Democrats' own actions. They need to come up with some formulation that indicts Bush and the CIA, while absolving Rockefeller, Pelosi, et al.

It looks like Feinstein is groping at a time-based distinction. For reasons unfathomable, which I'm certain Democratic lawyers are trying to cobble together even as we speak, it turns out that "torture" was not illegal and not unconstitutional during the period of 2002 and 2003 (and possibly 2004), but suddenly became illegal and prosecutable in "2006, 2007, and 2008." Absolutely illegal, illegal under all circumstances. Except, of course, during the period when Democrats supported it. Sort of "absolutely illegal under all circumstances" but with some nuance in that "absolutely" and "under all circumstances."

They'll figure out the exact cut-off date for legal immunity later -- and this date will be the latest one upon which ranking Democrats provably supported the policy. The moment after that date of last provable Democoratic blessing of EITs, the actions became illegal and prosecutable.

But they'll be working with a narrow window -- waterboarding ended sometime, what, in 2004 or 2005? We might be looking at a five or six month window when 1) the technique was still be employed but 2) there is no record of Democrats contemporaneously supporting it. And for that short duration alone, waterboarding will have been absolutely illegal, and a gross violation of the Constitution, and repellent and deserving of highest punishment and so forth.

The Democrats will want to see all of the CIA minutes before the public does -- so they can determine the precise date upon which EITs became illegal, in advance of the public reading about it all first. This kind of argument is pretty sketchy, so they'll need a little lead-time in preparing the ground for it.

And I still don't think he's funny, even when he's beating up on Granny Rictus McBotoxImlants, but Jon Stewart gently breaks the news to his stupid and hyperliberal audience that Nancy Pelosi is lying to them.

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (85)
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