The Sunshine Empire

I and many others have written about it before, but the move of Republicans to try to ensnare House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into being complicit in torture to change the debate is fascinating diabolical politics. I saw Richard Wolfe on MSNBC state that this was the plan all along. Brief Democrats about the program when they would be powerless to affect it and would violate law in disclosing due to classification, then when it comes to life claim that the other side was just as into it. I don’t doubt that Pelosi did not raise any objections regardless, but that doesn’t remove the fact that the program was Bush and Cheney’s baby. Yet can anyone see the contradiction in Republicans saying that there is no need for a truth commission because it is just Democrats are just trying to look backward while the country is looking forward, but that we need to look backward and find out exactly when the Speaker new about the program we shouldn’t be looking into and when did she know it about a program that we shouldn’t be looking back into? Matthew Yglesias makes the great point that pushing too hard for an investigation of Pelosi will bring you to the point of basically demanding the torture investigation that you claim you don’t want. Democrats may be playing political jujitsu and have the Republicans basically arguing for a truth commission.