what’s off the table, mommy
what has fallen to the floor?
what never even made it
what proves less is more?

when you carve your blessed beast
when your knife is painted red
will you smile for the cameras
with a tear to shed
just one tear to shed

(chorus)
cascading showers
rivulets of rain
rising waters in america
drowning once again
cascading showers
dropping from the clouds
cascading showers
no one can hear the screams
no one can hear the screams
among the silent crowds  Read more 

[Pelosi’s statement.]

Well, I guess now I know why impeachment was “off the table.” Anybody for Barney Frank as the new speaker? Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen in WaPo:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique[ly illegal and unconstitutional?] CIA program designed to wring [torture] vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the Bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites [gulags] and the harsh techniques [torture] 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 [not to mention the US military**]. But on that day, no objections were raised.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods [torture] 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).

Yeah, the Village is a big sack of pus just waiting to be lanced. Unfortunately, some of that pus is blue.

Nice going, there, Leader Nance.  Read more 

And that’s why they like it.  Read more 

From www.vastleft.com:

We’re not in Geneva anymore, folks. Without further commentary, consider this snapshot of today’s debased America…

After playing tape of Dick Cheney calling waterboarding a “no-brainer,” along with Tony Snow’s subsequent spin, Rita Cosby interviewed retired Marine and former “interrogator at a survival school” Bob Newman (video — Internet Explorer only):

Rita: How do you break it down, Bob?

Bob: Well, first of all it’s clear that the radio interviewer with the Vice President and the Vice President himself don’t even know what waterboarding is. It’s a very simple technique, it is not a dunk in the water. Imagine this, I place you the subject on your back in the supine position, and I tie you down to a board, maybe an ironing board or just a wide board of some sort, and you’re laying there, and your feet are up in the air, so you’re elevated like this, with your head down.  Read more 

Thanks, McClatchy. Charlotte News Observer:

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture, and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Good thing it calls for a brain instead of a heart, right, Dick?  Read more