Unbelievable:

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how … this opposition to the mosque is being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community, as we go forward to an election about the future of our country and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City?”

It doesn’t matter, Nancy – its not for you, as Speaker, to ask in to the background or motivations of those who are asking questions…you job, as servant of the people, is to just answer the dratted question.

But that is how they view us – servants of the Ruling Class; people who are not to dare question the Rulers.

November can’t come fast enough.

There might be more danger between November and January than we can suspect – from Neo-Neocon at Pajamas Media:

Think cap and trade is dead? Think again: Politico’s Mike Allen reports that Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership have a plan, a continuation and deepening of the disregard for the American public they so amply demonstrated through the process by which they passed the despised HCR bill:

Phil Schiliro, the White House congressional liaison, has told the Senate to aim to take up an energy bill the week of July 12, after the July 4 break (and after the scheduled final passage of Wall Street reform). Kagan confirmation will follow, ahead of the summer break, scheduled to begin Aug. 9. The plan is to conference the new Senate bill with the already-passed House bill IN A LAME-DUCK SESSION AFTER THE ELECTION, so House members don’t have to take another tough vote ahead of midterms.

I’ll bet they’ll try – but I also bet it won’t be as easy as they think. If 2010 is a debacle, the very large class of Senate Democrats up in 2012 will be looking over their shoulders and trying to figure the best means of survival. Passing an unpopular legislative agenda at the behest of an ousted Congressional leadership might not appeal to them.

But the fact that they are thinking along these lines tells us two things:

1. They know things are looking increasingly grim for them. The polls don’t even offer a glimmer of hope. While there is still happy talk on the economy, it is beginning to come home to people that the second half of 2010 will be, at best, flat in economic activity and may see a return to outright recession by the 4th quarter. The campaign in Afghanistan goes badly and plenty of other foreign and military problems are coming up – while the Gulf spill just erodes Obama’s credibility as a leader day by day. While they’ll keep up brave talk of winning in November and they’ll try their best to make it happen, they know they teeter on brink of defeat.

2. They don’t care about the American people or what we think. They’re primary goal, now, is just to cement as much power and money in their hands as possible so that no matter what the despised people do, they still hold the levers of power. Congressmen facing defeat might be convinced to go along with the depredations against the Constitution in return for a sinecure in the government organizations to be created for ObamaCare, Cap and Trade and other boondoggles.

Our task, should we win and should the Democrats go through with this, is to use every legislative trick in the book to force Obama to sign off on 100% repeal of everything enacted between November and January. The people will back us on this, and as 2012 comes closer, we’ll gain great leverage over an Obama trying to triangulate himself back to the center for the election.

Guess they got tired of draining the swamp:

The Office of Congressional Ethics, a powerful symbol of Democrats’ promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is in danger of having its power stripped after the midterm elections.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have led the charge, airing complaints about the aggressive, independent panel in a private session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, and they’ve drafted a resolution that, if approved, would severely curtail the panel’s power…

There are a few Republicans who are making noises against the Office – and I’d like to see them booted out of office, tarred and feathered for sheer stupidity. Democrats created this thing, it is causing them no end of headaches and all Republicans should just stand silent and allow the Democrats to screw themselves over by attacking their own creation.

The Democrat party is hopelessly mired in corruption – this is because, as Matt and I pointed out in Caucus of Corruption, Democrats are never punished for corruption. They created this new Office as window dressing for their alleged campaign against the “culture of corruption” in DC, never thinking that anything would come of it. Trouble is, corruption is so endemic among Democrat ranks that the New Media was bound to find some, and thus force action. Now that they realize the Office is causing trouble, they want it to go away.

Of course, in addition to being corrupt, they are also cowards – so they won’t move on it until after the mid-terms.

The Speaker, via Hot Air:

They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word. And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word.

And that Word is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.

Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.

Fill it in with anything you want? Nancy Pelosi is no spring chicken. She was, I understand, educated in Catholic schools. While I hold that in a lot of ways Catholic instruction today is superior in explaining the faith, even waaaaay back when little Nancy was sitting in rapt attention in school, you really can’t miss something like this. You don’t fill in the Word with anything you want…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:1-5

One wonders just what Nancy Pelosi thinks she’s saying? Or is she just running off words? Half remembered dogmas imparted decades ago; all of which long since cast aside in a greedy and base pursuit of power? The Word is not something, I think, to call to witness for whatever particular enthusiasms you might have – the Word is God.

The darkness shall not over come the Word – but I wonder if the Word can yet overcome the dark places of Nancy Pelosi’s mind? That place where legalized abortion exists even while she calls upon the Saints for aid in passing a narrow, bigoted and partisan agenda?

The Anchoress has it right – just pray for her.

From The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a message for Republicans this fall: Bring it on…

…Despite some predictions of a huge GOP wave this fall, Pelosi says it’s not going to happen: “One thing I know for sure is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives.”

When one realizes that Critz ran against ObamaCare and in favor of gun rights and against DC – ie, against Pelosi – then the message one takes away is that Pelos is simply hoping to duplicate her efforts of 2006 and 2008: she wants to run in GOP and conservative districts with centrist, “blue dog” types who, once elected, will be slavishly devoted to Pelosi and the liberal agenda.

To be sure, she must expect that a lot of Democrats will lose in November – but she’s expecting to moderate the losses to the point where 218 people have “D” after their names on November 3rd. And, truth be told, she can do that – entirely within the realm of possibility. If – and its a big if - the voters in various districts can be essentially fooled as badly as they were in 2006 and 2008.

I don’t think, however, she’ll be as successful as the hopes. The peculiarities of the PA-12 special won’t carry over even in to the PA-12 general in November. There’s at least an even money chance that in the re-match, Burns will come out on top (a lot of that will be determined by how well Toomey does at the top of the PA ticket…if he wins, he might carry a few over the finish line with him). The impending Djou win in the Hawaii special is probably more indicative of November.

Good to keep in mind that Democrats in the special elections leading up to 2006 lost and lost and lost…and then won. It can work like that – and I think it will.

Like this – back in PA, Sestak is riding high from his amazing, come-from-behind win over entrenched, establishment-backed Arlen Specter. And yet Rasmussen has him, in that blue State, only up by 4 over Toomey who has been off the public radar while Specter and Sestak battled it out. That is the sort of bounce which vanishes – and Toomey’s first post-primary ad will, I think, be highly effective in starting to define Sestak as too liberal for Pennsylvania.

I still make no public predictions beyond my 30-35 House seat gain of earlier. Pelosi would be happy with that – and so would I: she’d be happy she gets to continue to be boss, I’d be happy that she and her Democrats would get full blame for the upcoming double-dip heading in to the 2012 cycle. But the ultimate outcome of November will be defined by two things:

1. Public anger about government as an entity.

2. The GOP’s ability to craft a message appealing to this.

The first is a given, the second is up to the GOP. Right message properly presented and the results in November will be astounding. Absent that, the GOP will still score gains, but not of any historical significance. We’ll see how it comes out.

UPDATE: Either convinced they can win or composing a political suicide note, Democrats look for big tax and spend bill before Memorial Day.

Bring it on, Nancy!

Wow:

…speaking of Congress, the new Gallup Poll also finds that barely 16% of Americans approve of its job while 80% (as in eight out of every ten Americans) now disapprove of the work being done by both bodies and their Democratic leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Both of whom are up for re-election in November.

Now even in Gallup, Obama is getting unpopular. After a while, as President Bush learned, you can’t climb out of the cellar.

The really important thing: if we Republicans win in November, we’d better just dazzle the American people with our ability. Our fellow Americans are in an unforgiving mood.

UPDATE: Sen. Boxer (D-CA) polls badly against all three possible GOP rivals. The GOP hasn’t elected a Senator in California since 1988.

UPDATE II: Could Congress’ ratings be down because they are pushing a health care plan opposed by 55%?

Makes me wonder just how long it has been since someone advised her of the difference between truth and lies:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted on Friday that the Senate health care bill does not allow tax-funding of abortion, and added that she had spoken with “Catholic bishops” about the issue. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told CNSNews.com that anyone who had spoken to the bishops about the legislation should know that it does fund abortion and that the bishops oppose the bill.

Dishonesty, thy name is Nancy.

Who is she trying to impress? The folks back home? I doubt that pleasing Catholics is high on the San Francisco agenda. I can only guess that she’s hoping to limit Catholic voter defections in November – as the Church has gotten ever more forthright on the moral duties of politicians who claim to be Catholic, it has become ever harder for such politicians to try and split the moral difference. The days of Ted Kennedy getting away with it for decades are over.

In addition to that, I do wonder why liberals are so determined to insert at least some sort of abortion funding in to ObamaCare? Is the bill not quite unpopular enough? I know the abortion industry lavishes money on the Democrats, but is pleasing them worth angering political moderates who are opposed to federal funding for abortion?

Or, is it that they are just insane? So convinced that they deserve their power and can’t lose it that they just don’t care? I guess time will tell on that.

I don’t know if you are watching the Health Care Reform Summit today…  But, just to show you how much of a sham it is, I’d like to bring up how Obama suggested he cut Republicans “some slack” by allowing  Senator Alexander to apparently go over his allotted time for his opening remarks. Obama said, “Both I and Lamar went a little bit over our original allocated time. I — not wanting to be a hypocrite — wanted to give you some slack.”

Let’s see just how much of a hypocrite Obama is…

Senator Alexander’s opening remarks lasted 13 mins, 10 seconds
Barack Obama’s lasted 14 mins, 36 seconds                        
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lasted 7 mins, 57 seconds
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s  lasted 8 mins, 13 seconds

So Democrats’ opening remarks lasted 30 mins, 46 seconds compared to the GOP’s 13 minutes, 10 seconds. Democrats needed more than double the time to grandstand about a bill that the American people don’t want.

For Lamar Alexander’s remarks, see the extended entry: Read the rest of this entry »

ConservativeGal explains:

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009

And, if you didn’t know this already, Obama was still a member of the Senate when Congress passed those spending bills… and ultimately signed the omnibus bill after taking office.

The truth hurts sometimes, and the truth is, Obama voted for and signed into law the current deficit, which he continuous to expand to this very day.

Which, for those of you who are not Catholic, is a recognition that Pelosi has excommunicated herself from the Church – and do note that: its not her being excommunicated, but an acknowledgment of her self-excommunication:

Speaking with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) after the Vigil for Life Mass last week, Lexington Bishop Ronald Gainer said that the Church has been “patient enough” with outspokenly pro-abortion Catholic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

LSN questioned Bishop Gainer on whether Pelosi should be denied communion due to her public stance as a ‘pro-choice’ Catholic. While acknowledging that it was up to her local bishop, the Lexington prelate did say that “something should be done.”

Pelosi’s latest salvo claiming to support abortion and yet be a faithful Catholic came in a December Newsweek interview. “I am a practicing Catholic,” she said, while suggesting that this made the U.S. bishops uncomfortable. “I practically mourn this difference of opinion,” she said regarding her conflict with the Church over abortion, “because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions.” She added: “And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”

Reacting to Pelosi’s stance, Bishop Gainer said, “to make these public statements is a betrayal of our Catholic faith and discipline.” The bishop noted that her position was a “contradiction” and stressed that “our Church is clear on what the teachings are regarding the sanctity of life, on the inviolability of human life.”

On the question of denying Pelosi communion for her betrayals, Bishop Gainer said he understood that such actions on the part of the Church are often spun to make a martyr of those denied communion, by falsely painting the Church as being heavy-handed.

Nevertheless, he said, “the bishops have an obligation to stand up for the Church’s teaching and when we have such a broad and public consistent denial of our Church’s moral position it would seem to indicate that we’ve been patient enough and something should be done.”

Everyone should also note that it is, indeed, up to Pelosi’s Bishop to make the call – it must be understood that in spite of what critics believe, the Catholic Church is neither monolithic nor dictatorial. The reason it is left up to the local Bishop in these matters is because it is felt – correctly – that the man on the ground (as it were) will have the best understanding of the totality of the issue. The weakness of the system, of course, is that we some times get Bishops who are unwilling to challenge people who persistently violate Church teaching and yet claim to be Catholic.

If Pelosi is ever denied communion by her Bishop it will, naturally, be spun as her being persecuted by a hidebound Church – but the reality is that just as one doesn’t really get damned by God, one doesn’t really get excommunicated by the Church. Its all in the personal choice – people decide to refuse salvation, people decide to reject the Church. All that anyone else does is recognize the choice having been made.

Pelosi is perfectly free to believe as she wishes – but to be a Catholic requires acceptance of certain, basic beliefs. Its not hard – we are pro-life. From conception until natural death, no one has just cause for taking an innocent life…and even a guilty life should only be taken at extreme need. Pelosi is flat wrong when she claims her views are consistent with Church teaching – and she’s either a bald faced liar, or a complete fool for making such a claim.

We all have our choices to make in life – Pelosi has made hers. We should recognize it.

UPDATE: Pro-lifers massively outnumber pro-abortion people in San Francisco demonstration. Come on, liberals, you can do this – you can reject abortion. I promise that if you do so you can still be in favor of massive spending and you may even continue to think of President Bush as Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler…you’ll only be giving up despair and death.

And his name is John Dennis:

John Dennis, an accomplished businessman and entrepreneur, has been a pro-liberty Republican for a quarter century.

Born in Jersey City, the son of a longshoreman and a city hall clerk, he grew up in one of the city’s toughest public housing projects.

After graduating from Fordham University with a degree in business administration, John co-founded Humanscale, which became one of the world’s top 10 design firms, specializing in office ergonomics.

After a varied career in global development and marketing, John created Foundation Real Estate, a San Francisco-based investment company with domestic and international holdings.

He is the founder of the San Francisco chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus and currently the head of the Campaign for Liberty San Francisco.

John is a board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus California, has served as an alternate on the San Francisco Republican Central Committee and is a member of the National Rifle Association.

This is certainly the man with the biggest uphill battle in 2010 – just getting the people of San Francisco to even consider a Republican is going to be hard…getting a majority of them to vote GOP…well, all things are possible. The important point: Pelosi will not go unchallenged.

It is up to us GOPers to do what we can for Mr. Dennis – though, of course, if there are other GOPers out there vying for Nancy’s seat, we’d like to hear from them. Any challenge we can mount in these bastions of liberalism means that the liberals will have to spend that much effort and money defending rather than attacking and that, in and of itself, is a good thing.

But, also, you never can tell. Who of us ever thought that Brown would even have a chance in Massachusetts? The people are furious with government – and its not just conservatives and Republicans…its independents and even that part of the left which is actually in favor of liberty (this is a small percentage of the whole – but it is there, and we should reach for it). These are revolutionary times and we should not lock ourselves in to the political boxes of the past.

I wish Mr. Dennis all the luck in the world and if anyone out there had ever thought of running – this is the year to do it. Pick your entrenched Democrat and have at him – it just might work.

As usual:

While Nancy Pelosi is now dodging a request from C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb to open up House-Senate negotiations over the final version of the health-care bill so C-SPAN’s cameras can show them to the public, back in July she pledged she would give the public an “ample amount of time” to read the final bill before brining it to a vote.

At a July 9 press briefing, CNSNews.com’s Nicholas Ballasy asked Pelosi: “Minority Leader Boehner has taken a pledge that he will not vote for a health care bill that he hasn’t read, that he hasn’t had a chance to read in its entirety or until it’s available to the public online for 72 hours. Will you take that pledge–a similar pledge and encourage other members to take it?”

In response, Pelosi did not pledge to post the bill online for 72 hours, but did pledge to give the public “ample time” to get to know the legislation.

Of course, our liberals will find new definitions for “ample” as required. But this is just like Pelosi’s pledge to have the most honest Congress, ever: just another lie, designed to sound good for a news cycle and then on to leftist policy and plundering the people.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was demonstrably a racist eugenicist:

The aim of the program was to restrict—many believe exterminate—the black population. Under the pretense of “better health” and “family planning,” Sanger cleverly implemented her plan. What’s more shocking is Sanger’s beguilement of black America’s crème de la crème—those prominent, well educated and well-to-do—into executing her scheme. Some within the black elite saw birth control as a means to attain economic empowerment, elevate the race and garner the respect of whites.

Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of the Malthusian Eugenics movement, thought it a wonderful idea to “do away” with the “undesirables” of society. Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King, who dreamt of the day when little black children and little white children could walk hand in hand, Margaret Sanger (did I mention she was the founder of Planned Parenthood?) dreamed of the day when little white children would be walking hand in hand with each other–with no black children to be found.

And the story in today’s AP looks like Margaret Sanger’s “dream” (to others, a nightmare) is coming ever closer to fruition:

LONDON (AP) – Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.

More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don’t have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.

Sounds eerily like…

(Magaret Sanger and fellow eugenicists)… espoused racial supremacy and “purity,” particularly of the “Aryan” race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the “fit” to reproduce and the “unfit” to restrict their reproduction.

Which, when you think of it, is the liberal elitists’ position on everything. In their mind, their status of being the “enlightened” ones makes them uniquely entitled to the spoils of the world, while the unwashed masses should be happy to live in squalor. While Nancy Pelosi and Algore can have their personal jetliners to jet themselves and their families to points unknown, the rest of the plebian masses can take public transportation. While Rosie O’Donnell can travel with an armed body guard, she seeks to deny the 2nd Amendment right of self-protection to the plebiscite. While Margaret Sanger and her ideological descendants think that they, the enlightened, are entitled to live, the great ‘unwashed masses’ beneath them are a waste of resources and thus are not only expendible, but actually have a duty to curb their numbers.

At any rate, you get the picture.

And the more you look at it, the more the picture begins to look like Dorian Gray.

First, some quotes from the old gal:

“Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he’s not a leader. He’s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.”

“He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops…”

“They’ll take food out of the mouths of children in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.”

And now:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Nancy – go jump in a lake.

For giving us this visual:

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee haff vays of making you tokk less casually, dummkopf!”

Of course, I’m pretty lousy, myself, for bringing it to more peoples attention. Ah well, the truth must come out about these creeps in government.

And they’ll be sure to buy it:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday ramped up her criticism of insurance companies, accusing them of unethical behavior and working to kill a plan to create a new government-run health plan.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters…

Meanwhile, Her Majesty has taken – over her career – $311,250.00 from the insurance industry, $176,450.00 from the pharmaceuticals industry, $542,250.00 from “health professionals” (which ain’t all selfless docs and nurses, ya know? A phrase like that covers a multitude of job descriptions…and sins) and $324,369.00 from lobbyists, some substantial part of which is sure to be insurance lobbyists.

She won’t be giving any of this money back.

Liberals will not put two and two together.

She’ll be thumpingly re-elected in 2010.

This is good advice for Nancy Pelosi, who has  changed her story regarding what she knew and was told about “enhanced interrogation” techniques several times. 

Her most recent outrageous claim was that she was misled by the CIA – a claim that CIA director and Obama appointee Leon Panetta outright refuted. 

Well, she has changed her story again, and is now blaming Bush.

 Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded Friday to CIA Director Leon Panetta’s public disagreement with her charge that she was misled by the agency on the use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques.

“We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people,” she said in a statement issued by her office. “My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe.

Pathetic. How can someone keep changing their story and expect to be taken seriously?

Newsbusters usefully notes that long before it became the contentious issue of May of 2009, news reports were indicating – quite calmly and with no heated Pelosian denials – that Pelosi and others were, indeed, briefed on the CIA’s interrogations:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”

That was from December of 2007. So, why are we talking about it, now? Because the left was trying to gin up war crimes trials against President Bush and his Administration – our side fought back by pointing out the rank hypocrisy of people like Pelosi on the issue and then Pelosi went and lied about what she knew and when she knew it. The whole fracas is the fault of the left and Pelosi’s routine dishonesty in her political actions. Had the left not been determined to “keep hate alive” vis a vis the Bush Administration had not Pelosi’s default position been to be dishonest, none of this would have ever been an issue.

Ah, what tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive…

The story:

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.

Panetta said that “ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”

Pelosi (D-Calif.) infuriated Republicans this week when she said in a news conference that she was “misled” by CIA officials during a briefing in 2002 about whether the U.S. was waterboarding alleged terrorist detainees.

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.”

I’m glad that Panetta came to the defense of his troops on this – as I said when his appointment was announced, he is one of the few adults in the ranks of the Democrat leadership and he’s earned the gratitude of all Americans. It becomes ever more clear that Pelosi is caught in a trap of her own making – had she just told the truth from the beginning (ie, “I was ok with it back then, but I’ve changed my mind) then she wouldn’t have any trouble. But hatred of President Bush and pandering to the kook left outweighed any sense of honor on Pelosi’s part – Pelosi and Co wanted some sort of war crimes tribunal for President Bush and they could only sustain such insanity by pretending they weren’t living in America in 2002 and 2003 (you know, back when Democrats were attempting to out war-hawk the GOP).

It is clear that Pelosi must resign for the good of the nation – much as I’d like her to stick around as a millstone ’round the necks of Democrats it doesn’t serve America’s interests to have someone like Pelosi in charge of the people’s House.

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection asserts, correctly, that seeing as Pelosi has accused the CIA of criminal acts, its time for her to put up, or shut up.

And hopes that if she piles up the poop high enough, people will pay attention to the pile of poop rather than the lie at the bottom of it:

Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in the method’s use.

“To the contrary … we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used,” she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

Everyone else in the room remembers being advised about the waterboarding…Nancy says she was advised that waterboarding wasn’t happening. Ok, Nance – lets declassify the briefing and see what was said. If you are to accuse President Bush and the CIA of deliberately misleading a second-rank backbencher presumptively so that they could play “gotcha” 7 years later, then lets see the proof.