To help get around GOP obstruction tactics, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has hired a speed reader for his committee staff. The new hire put on a demonstration for committee members today.
In more substantive House news, Democrats blocked the GOP’s cynical ploy to launch a House investigation of Nancy Pelosi for charging that the CIA lied to her.
And so it goes.
So have 14% of the released Gitmo detainees “returned to the battlefield” as Vice President Cheney and his daughter keep saying? Maybe not.
Every day, as you know, we bring you The Day in a Hundred Seconds. Today, though, weaving together the day’s two speeches, it’s particularly inspired and brings together what the day was about. Take a look.
Porn star Stormy Daniels creates the Stormy Daniels Exploratory Committee as a first step to challenging Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) in next year’s election.
GM headed toward a bankruptcy filing next week, closely supervised by the Obama Administration. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Zack Roth puts together the rap sheets on the Newburgh Four. Highlight: The guy in the group who claimed to have lived in Afghanistan when he was young was lying to boost his “terror cred.”
The most pointed attack on President Obama in Dick Cheney’s speech yesterday was his claim that after all is said and done Obama is still reserving to himself the right to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the future. We documented that this talking point is a riff off comments made by CIA Director Leon Panetta — and that it’s arguably stretching what Panetta actually said. But it should be noted that Chris Matthews gave David Axelrod a chance to rebut Cheney’s claim, and Axelrod only danced around the question. Watch the video. We asked the White House yesterday to comment on Cheney’s claim and got no response.
TPM Reader BB, a “proud citizen of the Netherlands,” says it’s time the U.S. man up and stop NIMBYing the Gitmo detainees:
If you live outside of the US, or the US centric bubble. then the incredible stupidity of the this viewpoint is obvious.
Where does the World Court reside? It resides in the Hague in the Netherlands. the Netherlands has a population of 16 million (that are not allowed to bear arms or such).
The world courts deals with the worst of the worst, anything in Gitmo pails to what these folks have done.
Let’s take those war criminals (of which dozens have been tried and sentenced) from the Balkan conflict as an example. Here is a group that still has lots of support (Serbs primarily) all across Europe. They are in cells in the Hague which is driving distance from their homeland. Not like some poor Afghan farmer totally divorced from his people, these people have strong support living with a few hours drive!! Almost nothing could stop them from attacking and trying to release there leaders (and heros), or at least taking revenge on the country they are incarcerated in. The REAL danger to this court pails to anything the perceived Gitmo people could possibly do.
Just look at the history of the Balkan conflict, its horrible geenocide and the people who did the killing, and then grab a map to see where the two countries lie, you will get the picture. Then do the same for the Afghan conflict … Kinda makes you giggle.
But, do you hear the good people of the Netherlands on the streets demanding these criminals leave or cowering under their beds at night? No, it just might be that not all folks in the globe are NIMBY and some have the balls to realize that freedom comes at a price, and you never know when you will have to pay up in full.
Could it be that a small country in “old” Europe has more balls than the gun toting folk wingnuts of the US have?