"I don't equate 'intelligence' with being smart.... I think conservatives are smarter"

"Unnatural" Equals "Intelligence"

This story is true, because conservatives are smarter than liberals, but false because it shows the inane thinking and twisting that goes on in evolutionary psychologists heads.

Epic Beard Man -- I Have Held Off Long Enough (Beyond Viral)

(Language Caution)

Secret Service vs. Bumper Sticker ("Kill Obama-care before it kills you")

According to a retired couple who called into the Michael Medved show (which I heard... to which I will post the audio when I get it), the following occurred:

The Secret Service were dispatched from Omaha Nebraska this week, WHY?

To question a retired couple because of a bumper sticker on their car that was so terrible and threatening that 911 was called by some idiot and the Nebraska Highway patrol pulled them over and detained them until the Secret Service arrived. What did that terrible sticker say,

Kill Obama-care before it kills you!

According to the gentlemen he and his wife were held for 35 to 40 minutes by the Nebraska highway patrol until the agents arrived. The agent commented on the kill Obama stickers until the couple showed him that was not what it said. The agent left with no further comments.

The Secret Service agent commented on the spelling, saying that bot "Kill" and "Obama" were capitalized making it seem like the intention was to "kill obama."  The retired gentleman pointed out that "kill" was the first word in the sentence and was capitalized due to its placement as the beginning of the sentence; and "Obama" is a proper name, thus its reason for capitalization.  The call was soo funny... the government could have saved money by just sending their agents to Grammar 101.

Iraqi Shoe Thrower Dodges a Shoe -- Karma... No, Reaping What You Sow

"Musical" Interlude

What Happens When A Professional Fighter Meets a Normal Dude -- A Hospital Visit (Butterbean vs Johnny Knoxville); Plus: Best of Butterbean

Only In L.A. -- "Style" Council LA Weekly

My Son via Jib-Jab

U.S. Flags vs. Being Offended

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize -- Just Republicans Who Are Skeptical?

(JawaReport h/t)

,

Even liberal Peter Beinert is flabbergasted that the Yasser Arafat Peace Prize went to a man who has actually accomplished nothing.

I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce. He’s done nothing to deserve the prize. Sure, he’s given some lovely speeches and launched some initiatives—on Iran, Israeli-Palestinian peace, climate change and nuclear disarmament—that might, if he’s really lucky and really good, make the world a more safe, more just, more peaceful world. But there’s absolutely no way to know if he’ll succeed, and by giving him the Nobel Prize as a kind of “atta boy,” the Nobel Committee is actually just highlighting the gap that conservatives have long highlighted: between Obamamania as global hype and Obama’s actual accomplishments. (Moonbattery h/t)

The Times Online has noticed the "Life imitates the Onion" quality of awarding a Nobel Prize to an over-rated narcissist who has accomplished Jack Squat.

The prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace. (Ibid.)

Reformed Chicks point out something many miss, that is:

His name had been mentioned in speculation about possible winners, but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early for him to take the award - he took office only two weeks before award nominations closed.

FreedomDogs expands on Reformed Chicks point:

Let’s take a look at the president’s first 12 days in the White House according to his public schedule to see what he did to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize:

• January 20: Sworn in as president. Went to a parade. Partied.
• January 21: Asked bureaucrats to re-write guidelines for information requests. Held an “open house” party at the White House.
• January 22: Signed Executive Orders: Executive Branch workers to take ethics pledge; re-affirmed Army Field Manual techniques for interrogations; expressed desire to close Gitmo (how’s that working out?)
• January 23: Ordered the release of federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries. Lunch with Joe Biden; met with Tim Geithner.
• January 24: Budget meeting with economic team.
• January 25: Skipped church.
• January 26: Gave speech about jobs and energy. Met with Hillary Clinton. Attended Geithner's swearing in ceremony.
• January 27: Met with Republicans. Spoke at a clock tower in Ohio.
• January 28: Economic meetings in the morning, met with Defense secretary in the afternoon.
• January 29: Signed Ledbetter Bill overturning Supreme Court decision on lawsuits over wages. Party in the State Room. Met with Biden.
• January 30: Met economic advisers. Gave speech on Middle Class Working Families Task Force. Met with senior enlisted military officials.
• January 31: Took the day off.
• February 1: Skipped church. Threw a Super Bowl party.

So there you have it. The short path to the Nobel Peace Prize: Party, go to meetings, skip church, release federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries, party some more.

Verum Serum adds to the plot:

Here’s a rundown of who he beat taken from their respective Wikipedia pages:

• Piedad Cordoba – Senator Córdoba has been a constant supporter of legislation addressing discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation and race. She is an outspoken critic who has opposed several of the controversial policies implemented by [Colombian] President Álvaro Uribe.
• Sima Samar – Dr. Samar publicly refuses to accept that women must be kept in purdah (secluded from the public) and speaks out against the wearing of the burqa (head-to-foot wrap), which was enforced first by the fundamentalist mujahideen and then by the Taliban.
• Ingrid Betancourt – a Colombian-French politician, former senator, anti-corruption activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Betancourt was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on 23 February 2002 and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later on 2 July 2008. The rescue operation, dubbed Operation Jaque, rescued Betancourt along with 14 other hostages (three Americans and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers). In all, she was held captive for 2,321 days after being taken while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green.

Even if you take for granted, which I do, that the Nobel Peace Prize is basically an award for liberalism, you have to question whether Obama was a better choice than these women.

And finally, Vulcan's Hammer hits it:

Here are some worthy people that I think should have received this award and that are certainly far better picks that Barack Obama:

• Burmese monks whose defiance against, and brutalization at the hands of, the country's military junta captured the attention of the Free World several years ago and continue to bravely resist their government. The prize should have been awarded to Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and other Zimbabwe opposition leaders who were arrested and in some cases beaten by police back in 2007 while protesting peacefully against dictator Robert Mugabe. The Prize should have gone to Father Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest in Vietnam arrested in 2007 and sentenced to eight years in prison for helping the pro-democracy group Block 8406. The prize should have gone to Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Uyyouni, co-founders of the League of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia, who are waging a modest struggle with grand ambitions to secure basic rights for women in that Muslim country. The prize should have gone to the people of Iraq, who bravely work to rebuild and reunite their country amid constant threats to themselves and their families from terrorists who deliberately target civilians. And finally, if the Nobel committee had any real moral rectitude, it could have awarded the prize to the people of Iran who resisted and protested against a corrupt voting process in their country.

It is pathetic that the Nobel committee chose to give the Peace price to someone who has done nothing to deserve it.

The Pres Himself Agrees (Founding Bloggers h/t):

Upon hearing that President Barack Obama had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, people from all quarters offered their opinions on why the Nobel committee would do something even the President admits he “does not deserve” (White House Communications Chief Anita Dunn :55).

I wanted to get all my Nobel Prize posts in one blog to make the search a bit easier for those coming over from THE WORLD ACCORDING TO KIMBA: LIBERAL BLOGGERS A "PAJAMA PARTY?", there may be an issue with IQ? (*wink*) So I added some extra content from UrbanGrounds, a site I will add to my blog roll. I think some "in-your-face commentary can be found at a couple of sites:

• Perfect Recipient - Atlas Shrugs
• Richly Deserved - ibid.
• World Stunned - Old Ironside
• ReasonTV Video - ReasonTV Pokes Fun
• Hoping for Peace - UrbanGrounds
• Gasps as Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize - AP
• --- video
• WTF? - Telegraph UK
• Why? - Frum Satire, Jewish Humor
• Peggy Noonan Calls Wicked - Denny Burk
• Obama Says He Doesn't Deserve - Fausta
• Tale of Two Nobel Winners - Enter Stage Right
• Nobel Committee's Illusion - Ibid.
• Swedish Journalist Predicts Obama Would Win Nobel - Verum Serum
• Nobel Bump: Approval Ratings Rise - The Swamp
• (Non-Bump) Nobel Fails to Impress - Powerline Blog
• Rush, Nobel Embarrassment - Ibid.
• Gandhi Never Won It - Ibid.
• Fidel Castro Lauds Obama's Win - Sweetness & Light
• Zero Won - The Spirit of Man
• Noonan Wants to Write Obama's Nobel Speech - Just One Minute
• More on Obama's Nobel - Ibid.
• Nobel Cheese Prize - Big Lizards
• Nobel Peace Prize Should Go To Nuclear Weapons - Powerline Blog
• Paul Rahe: Has He Earned It - Ibid.

Al Gore Won the Prize for a PowerPoint Presentation -- It Should Have Been This Hero

Here is that great commentary by Urban Grounds I mentioned:

So, who came in second to President Zero Accomplishments in the running for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize? Who out there that has been toiling for and affecting real peace through very real personal sacrifice in often life-threatening situations — yet still lost out to a guy who merely “hopes” for peace?

Moonbattery has a list of some of the other nominees that lost out to The Won:

As a bonus, let’s consider who the Nobel Committee considered less worthy than Barack Hussein Obama to receive to Nobel Peace Prize:

• Chinese Human Rights Activist Hu Jia – imprisoned for campaigning for human rights in the PRC, not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.
• Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. — not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. (Not to mention the symbolic value of awarding a Chinese dissident on the 20th Anniversary of the Tianenmen Square Massacre.)
• Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute has built nearly 80 schools, especially for girls, in remote areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years – not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.
• Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who risks his life by advocating interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims, also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.
• Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur and is apparently also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

Ace piles on:

But come on. Not a single one of them has ever been on the cover of People Magazine.

Update: Someone mentioned this (forget who) — Thank God the Nobel Committee didn’t use its power of publicity to highlight the travails and triumphs of those people, and use the spotlight to illuminate human rights abuses, or anything.

Thank God Himself they gave the prize to someone who really needs a bit of additional media hype.

You know what? At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood awards Obama an Emmy for all of his fine television work this year. And you might as well give him a Pulitzer and a Nobel Laureate for all of those damned fine speeches he wrote…And rumor has it that next week Vancouver is going to award Obama a gold medal in the 2010 Olympic Games.

SNL Even Piles On:

Here's a "Top-Ten" list:

1. With David Letterman somewhat distracted, I thought I’d solicit nominations for a top 10 list. Here’s a few to start off:
2. Consolation prize for losing the Olympics
3. Who gives a rat’s you-know-what about Afghanistan, anyway
4. The Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology were already taken
5. “We couldn’t give an ‘un-prize’ to George W. Bush, and this was the next best thing”
6. For extraordinary diplomacy at the Gates-Crowley “Beer Summit”
7. UPDATE: “Obama? I thought we were giving it to Osama“
8. The Norwegians wanted to honor one of their own, and the committee discovered that Obama was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker.
9. ONE MORE: Norway needed to stimulate its prize industry, and Obama was willing to trade in an older, less efficient prize.
10. AND FROM THE COMMENTS: He was the 10th caller.

Rush Limbaugh on Obama's "Win"

General Public's View

• OBAMA: 'SURPRISED AND DEEPLY HUMBLED'...
• WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...
• MIXED REVIEWS; 'EMBARRASSING JOKE'...
• PAPER: This makes mockery of peace prize...
• White House Aide: 'It's Not April 1st, Is It?'...
• Carter: 'Bold statement'...
• Lech Walesa: 'Too early. He has no contribution so far'...
• Michael Moore: 'Congratulations President Obama -- Now Please Earn It!'
• Sen. Inhofe: Obama received Nobel Peace Prize for 'de-emphasizing defense'...

(click cartoon for video source)

What do you expect from them: Advisor to Nobel-award winning POTUS says shari’a law “gender justice” for women

Am I awake?

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama’s name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president…

The Nobel committee praised Obama’s creation of “a new climate in international politics” and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama’s predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said.

In other words, they gave him a Nobel for … being Hopenchange-y. And you thought Mark Halperin’s grade inflation was bad. This makes three times, incidentally, in just seven years that the committee’s turned the Peace Prize into a “f*** Bush” award by bestowing it on a liberal American Democrat. The Goracle got it in 2007 and Carter received it in 2002, making today’s announcement yet one more reason to consider The One his presidential heir.

...(read more)...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(video source)

OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew both warm praise and sharp criticism.

The decision to bestow one of the world's top accolades on a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." But critics -- especially in parts of the Arab and Muslim world -- called its decision premature.

Obama's press secretary woke him with the news before dawn and the president felt "humbled" by the award, a senior administration official said.

When told in an email from Reuters that many people around the world were stunned by the announcement, Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, responded: "As are we."

The first African-American to hold his country's highest office, Obama, 48, has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process since taking office in January.

"Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said in a citation.

...(read more)...

Wife Blows MI6 Chief’s Cover on Facebook (Does She Twitter?)

This comes with a Fausta’s h/t. FaceBook in the news for what it does best, connect people... even those that do not need to be connected.

Wife blows MI6 chief’s cover on Facebook

The wife of the new head of MI6 has caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all of Britain’s spying operations abroad.

But entries by his wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

Lady Sawers had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site’s 200m users around the world who choose to be in the open-access London social network on Facebook.

The extraordinary lapse exposed the couple’s friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including a leading character in The Archers, the BBC Radio 4 drama, and revealed that the intelligence chief’s brother-in-law, who holidayed with him last month, is an associate of David Irving, the controversial right-wing historian.

Once the Foreign Office had been informed of the faux pas all the material was removed from the internet. The move suggests that MI6 or the Foreign Office had not vetted the information the Sawers family shared over the internet.

Foreign Office staff are warned about using social networking sites when they join but MI6 advises its agents to maintain even tighter secrecy, telling them to reveal their true role only to their closest family.

Last night Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, told The Mail On Sunday: “This type of exposure verges on the reckless. The prime minister should immediately commission an internal inquiry as to whether this has breached the security of the incoming head of MI6 too seriously to allow him to take up the post.”

The Tory MP Patrick Mercer said the MI6 chief had left himself open to blackmail. A Foreign Office spokesman was unavailable for comment last night.

Danny DeVeto, Drunk

(HotAir h/t)

Biden, The Left, and Scare Tactics (Heterosexual AIDS, Anthropogenic Global Warming, and now the Flu)

It is the flu for God's sake. Prager points out that Biden is lying in this video. A caller just said they closed down all the schools in Huntsville for two "suspected" cases. Come on!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

First Dead in America... not American -- World Health Org: "7-Dead from Swine Flu"

This "Swine Flu" has never been a real problem yet. The news outlets started out their reporting, however, like it was. Drudge, this morning, had a link to the first "American" dying from it. However, it was a 22-month old child with other health issues that dies from getting the flu. It was complication on complication due to poor health practices in Mexico.

Only 7 swine flu deaths, not 152, says WHO

A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease....

What do red-necks think of the swine flu:

Swine Flu "Pandemic" -- First American Dead (UPDATE)

While there is a fear of this new strain, which is a spin off really of the avian flew. You must keep in mind that it isn’t out of control and that it is quite normal in its parameters. Drudge has a headline “First Dead” (CNN), the news is all about this – which shows the negative aspects of the news (my beloved FOX included).

This "American" was actually brought across the border and is Mexican, not American.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A child in Texas has become the first fatality from swine flu in the United States, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.

"I can confirm the very sad news out of Texas that a child has died of the H1N1 virus," the CDC's Dr. Richard Besser said.

Give me a break! One death. In a regular flu season we have about 20,000 deaths on average. For instance, these are the averages up to about 2001 from Wrong Diagnosis:

Deaths from Flu: 63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia (NVSR Sep 2001); estimated 20,000 deaths from flu (NIAID)

Cause of death rank: 7th leading cause of death in 1999 and 2000 is "pneumonia/influenza" (CDC)

Death rate extrapolations for USA for Flu: 63,729 per year, 5,310 per month, 1,225 per week, 174 per day, 7 per hour, 0 per minute, 0 per second. Note: this automatic extrapolation calculation uses the deaths statistic: 63,730 annual deaths for influenza and pneumonia (NVSR Sep 2001); estimated 20,000 deaths from flu (NIAID)

Deaths information for Flu: An estimated 100,000 hospitalizations and about 20,000 deaths occur each year from the flu or its complications. (Source: excerpt from Focus On The Flu: NIAID) ... average of 20,000 to 40,000 deaths per year. (Source: excerpt from Microbes in Sickness and in Health - Publications, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: NIAID) ... in the United States more than 100,000 people are hospitalized and more than 20,000 people die from the flu and its complications every year. (Source: excerpt from The Flu, NIAID Fact Sheet: NIAID) ... In an average year, flu leads to about 20,000 deaths nationwide and many more hospitalizations. (Source: excerpt from What to Do About the Flu - Age Page - Health Information: NIA)

Everything in moderation folks!

Swine Flu Vaccination from 1976 -- Remember The Epidemic of 76'... Because There Wasn't One.

Give Me A Break! Obama Jewelry?!

The audacity of JC-Penny! (HotAir h/t)

Obama's Missteps, Our Future Reward... Unfortunately (Lives Lost Most Probably)

The Obama administration is backtracking on its statement that some may be open to legal prosecution for their involvement in the "torturing" three members of Al Qaeda. The problem of the Democrats is moral equivalency. While they say Republican see thing in black-and-white, and they see things in shades of grey (with thanks to Dennis Prager), they in fact see all torture techniques -- putting a guy in a small cell with bugs -- as morally wrong. They do not see gradations of "torture" like they do not see gradations between cultures and social-issues (moral equivalency of marriage, for instance).

See for instance Democrats calling our military Nazi's and Terrorists:

• John Kerry calls American troops terrorists
• Durbin Compares U.S. Troops to Nazi's, Soviets, & Pol Pot
• Murtha calls Marines Murderers (of course these Marines were all acquitted becuase they were under fire from these places they fired on. I have to include a response by a Marine to Murtha, and a story on Murtha being sued for slander.)

I can here recommend a book by Michelle Malkin entitled, "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild"; and another book by an ex-dem entitled, "Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal."

One reason Obama is backtracking is that his own leadership may be in jeapordy as well. Even though Nancy Pelosi may have been "dozing off when the briefers described waterboarding. Such excuses, if the expression can be excused, hold little water" (more from this article at end of blog). For instance:

Glenn Thrush's Blog:

Nancy Pelosi denies knowing U.S. officials used waterboarding — but GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail.

Two unnamed officials told the paper that Pelosi, then a member of the Democratic minority, didn't raise substantial objections.

Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen wrote:

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.

So it seems that Democratic leadership knew well what was going on... I wonder how that sits with Code Pink. One section from the memos mention the wall that these few (handful) of terrorists were pushed up against (roughed up), let's read from it:

The memos also give the lie to a leaked 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), based exclusively on the say-so of KSM and other "high-value" detainees, that "an improvised thick collar . . . was placed around their necks and used by their interrogators to slam them against the walls."
As the Bybee memo notes, the "wall" was a "flexible false wall . . . constructed to create a loud sound"; that "it is the individual's shoulder blades that hit the wall"; and that the purpose of the collar was "to help prevent whiplash." If this is torture, the word has lost all meaning.

I am a 3-time convicted felon, and during my interrogation I wish I had a WWF wrestling floor that moved and made loud noise and a color to prevent whiplash. The summation of this line of thought at a great (must read) article from the Wall Street Journal is this:

All of this might appease the President's MoveOn.org base, but he can't expect to satisfy them without also weakening American intelligence capabilities. The risk-averse CIA that so grievously failed in the run-up to 9/11 was a product of a spy culture that still remembered the Church Committee of the 1970s and the Iran-Contra recriminations of the 1980s. Mr. Obama needs to stop this score-settling now, and he can start by promptly releasing the documents that reveal what the CIA learned from its interrogations.

These lawyers, CIA investigators, covert military personnel, and the like have changed immediately after they were effectively told that they can be charged (if not by our government, at least civilly) for trying to gain information in the process of saving American (and others) lives -- they have cut back on what they are doing in order to gain this life saving information. Obama has immediately made this country more apt for attack by a single sentence. An editorial makes this point... focus in on the last paragraph:

Unfortunately, on April 21, Mr. Obama backtracked and opened the door to possible prosecution of Justice Department attorneys who provided legal advice with respect to the enhanced interrogations program. The president also signaled that he may support some kind of independent inquiry into the program. It seems that he has capitulated to left-wing groups and some in Congress who are demanding show trials over this program.
Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can't be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.
Any investigation must include this information as part of a review of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and supported this program. To get a complete picture of the enhanced interrogation program, a fair investigation will also require that the Obama administration release the memos requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney on the successes of this program.
An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001. (emphasis added)

Slate Magazine has a decent article on the situation as well, however, I want to focus in on why Obaman waffled back-and-forth on this issue. I will comment shortly and then post in its entirety the IBD Editorial, which is (as usual), top-notch. I think that Obama didn't think through this debacle far-enough to realize that if another attack happens, people will point to this period as a "Church Hearing" moment where the CIA "doesn't need to be handcuffed again or demoralized," again... by Democrats (referring also to the "wall" built by Democrats between the CIA and the rest of law inforcement). I will surely point to the Democrats threatning those involved in this immature release of classified documents if attacked. Now the IBD Editorial:

Fair-Weather Hawks By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, April 23, 2009

National Security: It was easy for key liberal Democrats to be tough on terrorist prisoners when 9/11 was fresh in the public's mind. Why is it so easy for them to condemn that stance today? Democrats who now itch to see Bush administration officials convicted for providing legal justification for waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques are chained at the ankle to those they want prosecuted.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then on the House Intelligence Committee, and others knew of the tough methods as long ago as 2002. A December 2007 Washington Post story revealed that in September of that year, Pelosi attended an hour-long meeting in which she "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."

Then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller was there too, and top Republicans. According to the Post, "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."

In fact, top Democrats like Pelosi and Rockefeller sat in on about 30 such bipartisan private briefings. One of those in attendance, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman and former CIA Director Porter Goss, remembered: "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing." According to the onetime Florida GOP congressman, "the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Another official present at the early briefings told the Post, "there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.'"

Only the moderate former House Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., objected, in the form of a classified letter. She would later garner Pelosi's ire for defending the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program.

The Washington Times further reported this week that the Intelligence Committee's top Democrats and Republicans "each got complete, benchmark briefings on the program" and "if Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding."

Statements from Pelosi and other Democrats suggest maybe they were dozing off when the briefers described waterboarding. Such excuses, if the expression can be excused, hold little water.

The fact is clear: Top Democrats in Congress chose not to object to getting tough with terrorist prisoners because the poll ratings told them it was politically dangerous not to be an anti-terrorist hawk in 2002 and 2003.

Today is different. These hypocrites now smell a huge political opportunity. But if the legal architects of enhanced interrogation — and, logically, former President Bush himself and his top national security staff — are on the hook for prosecution, so are Pelosi and others who knew of the harsh techniques and never raised a peep.