Mark Twain said, "To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman."
Who would believe that the Bushies wanted to wiretap members of Congress? Oh, sorry. I would too. But who would believe that a congresswoman would be on the phone with a suspected Israeli spy, allegedly offering to "waddle in" and try to persuade the Department of Justice to drop the case against said suspect? (The particular wiretap in question seems to have been by the books, incredibly enough.) This is mighty close to real, true treason, last I checked. And who would believe that she would not be prosecuted by that very same Department of Justice, and then, coincidentally or otherwise, hit all the news shows as the best Democratic shill for warantless wiretapping, unsullied by scandal?
It's like a bad spy novel. But a bad, real spy novel. It's hard to make stuff up that equals the insane convolutions of this situation involving Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). Buckle up for an interesting ride. One wonders who else they wiretapped, and who else might have been compromised into lending political cover to the Gonzalez DOJ.
ADDITIONAL: Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel blog goes digging in the newly released torture memos and discovers that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month alone. And Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month.
If torture doesn't work, try and try again, apparently. It turns out as well that the CIA interrogators went beyond even the usual methods of waterboarding, employing a "more poignant" method. Touching.
Which is all precisely why people like this specimen of near-humanity and his well-dressed friends ought to spend a month being treated the same way before they wear those oh-so-funny "Club Gitmo" shirts.
