I think the Democrats, Barack "shoot from the lip" Obama and "Queen" Nancy Pelosi, in particular, learned some valuable lessons recently.
They learned the hard way not to go up against a Republican who has a backbone, experience, ethics, a protect-Americans-first philosophy and the truth on his side. That person is Dick Cheney.
All Cheney did was simply state that America was less safe under Obama than it was under President Bush. He was sick and tired of all the insulting comments made by Barack and the Democrats, attacking Bush and Cheney, and wanting to treat them as criminals.
And the Democrats didn't like it when Cheney pushed back.
Obama, in a childish, immature snit, actually put our security in danger simply to make a political point. He irresponsibly caused the release of classified interrogation reports describing the procedures used on terrorists but conveniently forgot to also release the follow-up reports that showed how critical these methods were in obtaining valuable information _ information that probably saved thousands of American lives.
Cheney simply demanded these follow-up reports also be released so that the public saw the entire picture, not the less than ethical half truths Obama wanted them to see, letting them decide who was telling the truth and who was lying.
Lo and behold, Obama, like all liberals do when exposed, immediately backed down. This guy is becoming easier and easier to catch deceiving people, and I am having less and less concern that he will last longer than his present four-year reign. I am concerned, however, as to how long it will take for the country to heal itself from the poorly thought-out, destructive goals he wants to accomplish.
Now let's us turn to Nancy Pelosi. Talk about an embarrassment to the party. Here is a typical liberal Bush-hater who is so desperate to tarnish the Bush legacy that she will revert to anything that could possibly bring this about.
She willingly took up the Chris Dodd call for "Truth Commissions" to be held in order to prosecute and throw in jail those in the Bush administration who allowed these enhanced interrogation methods to be used on our enemies.
Her (and other radical lefties in the Democratic Party) feigned moral outrage, manufactured indignity about these methods of "torture" and wild stories of the CIA lying to her and Congress got her into some pretty hot water during one of her recent weekly press conferences.
I actually enjoyed watching her make a fool of herself by stammering, stuttering and tying herself into knots as she tried to respond to reporters' questions about what she knew and when she knew that waterboarding was being used on terrorists.
She claimed that the CIA had lied to her in a September 2002 briefing, saying, "We were told specifically that waterboarding was not being used."
Unfortunately for Nancy, truthfulness is a foreign concept. Also unfortunate for her is that the reporters didn't let her off the hook with her wacky answers.
When her first explanation didn't fly, she said, "I wasn't briefed. I was informed that someone else had been briefed about it."
It was simply lie after lie, and it eventually caught up to her. Other members of Congress remembered her being there when they were briefed about the methods being used. The CIA released a chart that showed a minimum of 13 briefings at which she had been present where specific mention about waterboarding took place.
Former CIA Director Porter Goss said the CIA provided truthful information to Pelosi and others. He also stated that during the briefings, the members asked if enough was being done, meaning, should even more harsh techniques than waterboarding be used?
Leon Panetta, current CIA director, agreed with the Goss version of events. Now you can say that Goss was being partisan because he's a Republican, but Panetta was appointed by Obama and is hardly a Bush lover. He has to carry some credibility.
Nancy finally just stormed out and said she was finished with answering questions. In desperation, she flew off to China to discuss global warming. Pretty pathetic.
Hopefully, the House Democrats will get a backbone and realize she is a detriment to their party and vote her out of the speaker's position. She only won the speaker job originally by a 118-95 vote, and she has to be in a much weaker position now.
Everyone is pretty much laughing at poor Nancy now. From CNN and the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, they are all piling on. Even Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon have had lots of joke material about her on their programs (Google "Nancy Pelosi jokes").
Go away Nancy, just go away.
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Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.
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