Another GOP Exploding Cigar

By Keith R. Schmitz

The right wing has been salivating over the prospect that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew and approved waterboarding, somehow exonerating those in the Bush administration who wanted a return to the Spanish Inquisition. For sure they saw this as a distraction from the effort of the Obama administration to push through its reforms.

Again another setback for the GOP. They have been pushing and pushing and pushing the notion of Pelosi's culpability in supposedly approving waterboarding, making it OK. Now Majority Steny Hoyer is calling their bluff -- and more.

Here's the problem for the incredible shrinking party. According to The Hill, Hoyer is calling for the records on the Congressional briefings to be brought out into the sunlight.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, has pushed for hearings after engineering the release of CIA documents that say Pelosi, the panel’s ranking Democrat in 2002, was briefed on interrogation techniques used on a terrorism suspect who is now known to have been waterboarded.

But former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who received a similar briefing at the time, has also said he wasn’t told that prisoners were being waterboarded.

Oops. The speaker might very well be vindicated and the GOP embarrassed. Life goes on.