Tea Party loon and freshman Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has a Speaker candidate: Former congressman, Secretary of Defense, Vice President, and unindicted war criminal Dick Cheney. There’s nothing in the rules that specifically says that the Speaker has to be a House member. Or a human being, for that matter.
More:
“Tom Cotton wants Dick Cheney’s ‘steady hand’ as House speaker,” Chad Merda, Chicago Sun-Times
“GOP Senator Wants Dick Cheney To Be Speaker Of The House,” Tierney Sneed, TPM Livewire
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Chris Wallace: “You and President Bush, the Bush-Cheney administration, dealt with Iran for eight years. Iran went from zero known [nuclear] centrifuges in operation to more than 5,000. So in fairness, didn’t you leave — the Bush-Cheney administration — leave President Obama with a mess?”
Dick Cheney: “Well, I don’t think of it that way ….
Chris Wallace: “But the centrifuges went from zero to 5,000.”
Dick Cheney: “Well, they may well have gone but that happened on Obama’s watch, not on our watch.”
Chris Wallace: “No, no, no. By 2009, they were at 5,000.”
Dick Cheney: “Right, But I think we did a lot to deal with the arms control problem in the Middle East.”
More:
“Dick Cheney faces surprise accusation on his own foreign policy,” Tony Dokoupil, MSNBC
Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to a college TV audience about the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogation” program. “Some people call it torture,” he said. “It wasn’t torture. We were very careful in all respects to abide by the law.”
“If he doesn’t think that was torture,” Senator Angus King said on Sunday, “I would invite him … to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through.”
— “Sen. Angus King: If Cheney doesn’t think waterboarding is torture, I invite him to try it,” Lindsey Abrams, Salon
Was it just last year that Papa Dick Cheney blessed the same-sex marriage of younger daughter Mary? It was a touching moment, love overcoming Republican dogma.
Then ambitious older daughter Liz Cheney decided to base her carpetbagger Wyoming senate campaign on opposition to same-sex marriage. “I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage,” she told Fox News. Sister Mary noted that Liz is “on the wrong side of History” in denying equality to all families.
And Papa Dick Chaney, a man who bucked the 2000 GOP platform and endorsed marriage equality? A man whose grandchildren have two mommies? Certainly he stayed out of a fight between his daughters, since he loves them both equally, right?
Wrong. He’s backing Liz. Expect an uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner at the Chaney house.
Wait a minute. Didn’t Dick Cheney mellow after he left office as Vice President and got a heart transplant? Nope. He’s flogging a book about that heart but won’t think about the donor: “It’s my new heart, not someone else’s old heart.”
“Well, I understand people’s concern about it, but an intelligence program that does reveal sources and methods, which in fact is what you’re talking about, is significantly less effective because you’re not just revealing it to the American people, you’re revealing it to your targets, to your adversaries, to the enemy.”
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The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
— “Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project,” Scott Shane, New York Times (more here)
Details of the CIA program remain secret; what has leaked is information about the former Vice President’s role in concealing the activities from Congressional intelligence oversight committees. This comes a day after inspector generals of five intelligence agencies reported that Mr. Cheney’s office restricted knowledge about a warrantless eavesdropping program of questionable legality, and the excessive restrictions diminished any usefulness the data might have had.
Outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney coasted through the inauguration of Barack Obama and Joe Biden Tuesday. He was in a wheelchair.
Mr. Cheney pulled a back muscle after spending the weekend hunched over a document shredder in his office.
The former Vice President claims he hurt his back moving boxes out of his old office, but Stanley I. Kutler of the University of Wisconsin Law School says: “[W]hen the Archives goes to open Cheney’s papers, they are going to find empty boxes.” A federal judge allowed Mr. Cheney to determine which of his official papers should be preserved. Details here.
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President George W. Bush, following a tradition started by Harry Truman, is expected to pardon the 2008 National Thanksgiving Turkey. Mr. Bush has always enjoyed this ceremony, except for the year when things went horribly, tragically wrong, and his pardon came too late.
President Bush has more pardons to consider in his remaining weeks in office, and the herd of turkeys gobbling for clemency is bigger than the one at Turkeyfest in Cuero, Texas. Jailbirds looking to leave the turkey pen include GOP gobblers Edwin Edwards and Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Fowls facing future chopping blocks include David Addington, William Haynes, and others who permitted torture in the name of national security.
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