Wicked Witch of the West Roundup

by Smitty

The Pelosi schadenfreude is something to behold. Here is a roundup of reactions and highlights:

• Common Cents:
  Not since Bill Clinton has a politician been more blatantly caught in a lie that Nancy Pelosi in the last weeks. Her ongoing story explaining what she knew about CIA enhanced terrorism techniques have at least five different endings. Her Thursday press conference was painful to watch but we have it here for you.
• Monique Stewart seems to crave a thing rarely seen inside the beltway:
  I’m not trying to help the Democrats. It just seems to me, they would gain a lot more respect, and a lot more support, if they would just admit that they knew what was going on, and in light of what had happened (that being the greatest terrorist attack on American soil) they supported it. They did, or supported, what most of us would have done, or supported.
• Gary Graham at Big Hollywood Big Irony: Waterboard Pelosi — Let’s Get to the Truth!. Gary offers a less than impressed review of the today's press conference. I would come up with some rejoinder using the words "wench" and "quench", but that would hardly be respectful of the Office of the Speaker of the House.
• Larry Johnson at No Quarter: Nancy Pelosi, A Lying C******n:
  That’s right. She’s a lying Congresswoman. Good God! How brazen and how stupid can the leader of congressional Democrats be? Are they going to tolerate this kind of smear of the CIA?
• John at PowerLine inquires Can Pelosi Survive?. Following some choice quotes concerning the press conference, we get:
  As the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza notes, Pelosi "would not have held this sort of press conference unless she and her inner circle believed that she was losing altitude -- politically -- on the issue." But it seems clear that she has now gone too far. The matter cannot be left to rest with her assertion that the CIA "lied" to her and "misled the Congress of the United States." The Agency will have to respond. And already, Republicans Pete Hoekstra and John Boehner have called on the CIA to release the Agency's detailed notes on its briefings of Congress to Hoekstra as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
  
  I don't suppose anyone imagines that the CIA was foolish enough to lie to Pelosi and others about the use of waterboarding. On the contrary, it seems obvious that everyone in the chain of command was covering himself or herself by disseminating information about the harsh interrogations of three al Qaeda leaders. Pelosi has now opened the lid on a box that she will not be able to close. The CIA has no choice but to defend itself by demonstrating that she, not the Agency, is lying. Possibly Leon Panetta can save her, but at the moment, it is hard to see how this affair can end with Pelosi remaining as Speaker of the House.
• Moving leftward, we have Alan Colmes:
  And, not surprisingly, the right wing has taken the blame for torture and placed it squarely on Nancy Pelosi, removing themselves from the equation.

No, Alan. No one is coming out in favor of torture, or denying events. The attack on Pelosi has everything to do with her non-command of basic things like facts and integrity with respect to her involvment. Stephen Green, he of the Stoli glass and steely nerve, managed to diagram the trajectory of Pelosi's prevarications as only a professional blogger can:

Oh, the Huffington Post offers the same aplogies: "I wasn't briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it," she said.
Yeah, yeah.
Recalls a movie line: "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris get briefed at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious."

Related to Madame Speaker's gyrations is the disintegration of the Rule of Law:

It is bad enough that the administration is selectively mining the Freedom of Information Act, the procedures for declassifying national-defense information (Mandatory Declassification Review, or “MDR”), and the rule of law. What is worse is the objective of this sleight of hand: to present the American people with a skewed perspective of a CIA interrogation program that saved lives and helped keep our citizens safe from additional terrorist attacks after 9/11 — a fact attested to by top intelligence officials from administrations of both parties. President Obama is manipulating the law in a way that reveals — to our enemies and everyone else — sensitive details of the interrogation tactics that were used by the CIA, while at the same time denying the American people a chance to assess the vital information produced by those tactics.

Hm. No *cough*Chrysler*cough* pattern at work here...
Sad state of affairs. Listen, CA-8: please, as a personal favor, vote for any other legal candidate besides the Wicked Witch

Have some decency and regard for the rest of the country. Cindy Sheehan is relatively palatable. While I might not agree with Cindy on much of anything, her integrity is relatively stellar compared to this piece of work Pelosi.

Update:
Sooner than 2010? We should be so fortunate.