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While discussing with Ed Schultz whether there is going to be a public option in the final health care bill once everything is said and done, Shultz reads off John Boehner's response from the Republicans saying that the Democrat's plan is a "government takeover" of health care. Schakowsky points out that Boehner's statement is of course complete bunk since no one is proposing single payer (sadly IMO) and they've already compromised with Republicans, so they've already got a bipartisan bill. She goes on to make one more really great point on the media's lousy coverage of this debate.

Schakowsky: Let me just say one other thing Ed about the news media. When myths are, or lies are told, it is not just he said she said. I like what you said. It is not true. It is simply a lie that this is a government takeover and I think that it really ought to be up to the media too, not to just report well this is what the Republican said then this is what the Democrat said and this is what the President said. They're telling lies! And I think they need to be called on it.

Amen sister.

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Chuck Todd got called out on Real Time by Jeremy Scahill for calling investigations into torture "political catnip". Apparently Todd has taken no lessons from his back and forth with Glenn Greenwald on the issue since he was still as defensive as ever when someone with well more than an ounce of journalistic integrity calls him out for his lack of it.

Todd went on Morning Joe defending Cheney, and Glenn Greenwald ripped him for the same thing Scahill took him to task for on Real Time:

NBC's Chuck Todd -- who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions -- was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to investigate Bush torture crimes. Needless to say, everyone agreed without question that investigations were a ridiculous distraction from what really matters and would be terribly unfair. This, along with Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan, is what Todd argued after he was asked about the Holder story and the Cheney/CIA story (video is below):

Todd: Look, let's take all of these stories in one big thing: really, the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy, and pushing health care. Cheney, the CIA, and in some respects Sotomayor are cable catnip --

Brzezinski: Yep.

Todd: It's news catnip - but they're sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through.

Brzezinski: I would completely agree with you, yet the questions are being raised by news organizations like the New York Times. Pat Buchanan, chime in, because as I've been reporting [sic], and I'll say it for Chuck's benefit here: speaking to a former senior intelligence official yesterday on the phone for quite some time, saying that this program that Cheney was apparently blocking the CIA from giving Congressional intelligence officials information on, was not even a program -- it was not operational -- it was not even at the stage where you would tell Congress about it or talk to high-level administration officials about it.

Is this much ado about nothing to get the attention off what needs to be done?

Buchanan: Well it's exactly what Chuck said, it's a massive distraction . . . . Let me ask Chuck this: it seems to me you got a real problem for the administration if you go forward at Holder's level --

Todd: Right.

Buchanan: and they appoint a Special Counsel, the first thing the CIA guys do is say is: yeah, we did it; we waterboarded them; and here's the authorization from these lawyers who said we could do it --- the lawyers come in and say we were asked for our opinion and Cheney was the guy who asked us, and the President told us to go ahead and do it. Aren't you right into the White House of the Bush administration as soon as you appoint that independent counsel?

Todd: And I think that's why, in the President's gut, he doesn't want to do this. They've made that clear they don't want to do this. I think that's what you see a lot of the West Wing -- they don't want to get into this because of what you're saying.

Ultimately, a lawyer gets paid to not tell you what the law is -- but to interpret the law, to tell you how far you can push things until you cross a line that a judge will say is illegal. That's what lawyers get paid to do: they get paid to interpret the law, and interpret the law in a way that allows you to stretch things.

You are on a slippery slope - this is a very dangerous aspect to go after, because these CIA guys will say, as you said Pat, we got the letter from these lawyers in the Bush Justice Department that said we can do this. You can't suddenly change the law retroactively because there's another interpretation of this. I'm sure there are a legal minds that will fight and say I don't know what I'm talking about here, but it seems to me that's a legal and a political slippery slope.

This is about as typical a discussion as it gets among media stars as to why investigations are so very, very wrong and unfair and unwise. Still, this discussion in particular vividly highlights several important points worth noting about the role of the establishment media.

Todd later tried to defend himself by doing an interview with Glenn as anyone who reads this blog may recall. Todd didn't fare much better with Scahill on Real Time and was making the same sorry arguments that Glenn already ripped him apart on. Heaven forbid that might stop him from doing it again with an audience that probably had no idea what Scahill was talking about.

It's always enjoyable to me watching these beltway bobble heads who are in love with cozying up to power have to answer to someone who is not, and who actually wants some real reporting to take place, and to see how they react. I look forward to reading Glenn Greenwald's response to Todd's statements tonight if he decides it's worth taking the time to write about.

You have to hand it to those hypocritical Republicans. They are once again controlling this debate because they and their little media enablers keep changing the subject from torture to whether torture is efficient.

Is that really the debate we want to be having in the United States of America? I'm sure there are still are some immoral techniques we haven't used yet. Is it okay to start, on the off chance that they work?

Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

The Republicans who gave on-the-record interviews were Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Rep. John Kline.

Democrats immediately blasted the GOP lawmakers for publicly discussing classified information, while Republicans said Democrats are trying to hide the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.

GOP members on the Intelligence Committee on Thursday told The Hill in on-the-record interviews that they were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks.

[...] “I am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing … then walked out that hearing — early, by the way — and characterized anything that happened in that hearing,” said Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). “My understanding is that’s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said, “Members on both sides need to watch what they say.”

Both Schakowsky and Reyes accused GOP members of playing politics with national security.

“I think they are playing a very dangerous game when it comes to the discussion of matters that were sensitive enough to be part of a closed hearing,” Schakowsky said.

This isn't the first time Hoekstra has done this, either. From ABC News in 2007:

For the second time in as many weeks, a senior House Republican may have divulged classified information in the media.

In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased -- the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons.

"The 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill cut human-intelligence programs," Hoekstra wrote in the piece, in which he also criticized "leaks to the news media."

Formerly the chairman of the intelligence committee, Hoekstra is now its highest ranking Republican. In its recent budget authorizations, that committee kept from public view all figures and most discussion of spending on such classified items as human spying. Hoekstra's apparent slip was first noted on the liberal Web site, Raw Story.

"If Mr. Hoekstra wants to break ranks and disclose that information, that's fine with me," said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert who has long pushed to declassify overall spending on intelligence. "But it is the sort of thing he has harshly criticized in the past."

Indeed, Hoekstra's penchant for openness appears to be selective. He has aggressively attacked unnamed opponents guilty of such leaking, accusing them of "recklessly and illegally" disclosing secrets "for political or other motives" in reports published by his committee.

He's even exacted punishment for suspected transgressions. Last October, Hoekstra stripped the credentials of a Democratic committee aide he believed may have leaked a then-classified document to The New York Times. A month later, he quietly reinstated the aide's access.

What do we say, boys and girls? "It's okay if you're a Republican!"

Not many people know that Judge Jay ByBee is a Mormon and an anti-gay supporter. As Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Jerry Nadler, and Jan Schakowsky all spoke out against him, Harry Reid wasn't saying much. Even though Diane Feinstein voted against his confirmation she now either has a no comment or is trying to wrestle control of the investigation.

Russ Feingold voted against his nomination back in 2003:

On more than 20 occasions, Mr. Bybee refused to answer a question, claiming over and over again that as an attorney in the Department of Justice he could not comment on any advice that he gave at any time. This is unfortunately becoming a very familiar refrain of nominees before the Judiciary Committee.
---
But the failure to make OLC opinions available to the Judiciary Committee during the consideration of a nominee for a seat on a circuit court is unacceptable... The administration should be able to agree to an acceptable procedure to allow the Judiciary Committee to review Mr. Bybee's OLC opinions. Given the recent history of many OLC opinions being made public, it is hard to believe that there are no opinions authored by Mr. Bybee that could be disclosed without damaging the deliberative process. Indeed, it is very hard to give credence to the idea that OLC's independence would be compromised by the release of some selection of the opinions of interest to members of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate.

After the release of these memos why then is Harry Reid not in line with almost every Democratic Politician?

A serious setback, however: Harry Reid, whose Senate would rule on an impeachment in the House, doesn't seem to like the idea:

"Judge Bybee has a good professional reputation in Nevada," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said in an e-mail. "While the memos that have been released are disturbing to Sen. Reid, at this point in time, he doesn't think we should be making a rush to judgment."

And as Alex Koppelman reports in Salon:

Reid has also resisted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to create an independent commission to investigate the interrogation tactics. In a recent statement, Reid said, "I think it would [sic] very unwise from my perspective to start having commissions, boards, tribunals until we find out what the facts are.”

Reid sponsored Bybee's judicial appointment, along with fellow Nevada Senator John Ensign. Ensign has been adamant in his support of Bybee, referring to the calls for the judge's ouster as "outrageous" and saying that "This was not torture. This is the thing we have to get away from, that this is somehow accepted that it was torture. The United States does not engage in torture. This was 'advanced interrogation techniques.'"

My question is of Harry Reid. Are you supporting Judge ByBee because he is a Mormon? I'm not against religion as I've said many times, but if Bybee was involved with any other religion, would Harry Reid have supported him? Will any reporters pose that question to Harry Reid? It just seems odd to me that Reid didn't condemn the memos he's credited with writing much more harshly and is resisting any form of inspection. This is very troubling.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal:

Last night at the Midwest Academy Awards and 35th Anniversary Celebration in Washington, DC, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown introduced Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky by saying, “We may have a special election in Illinois, and if Jan Schakowsky runs, I’ll support her.”

At the end of her speech, Schakowsky threw her hat in the ring, announcing that she was “passing around a clipboard” for people to sign up to be on an organizing committee for her “Senate race, and a basket for donations will follow right behind.” The audience cheered.

There's no guarantee that there will be a special election to fill Barack Obama's seat in the Senate, although it is one of the options being floated by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. If it does take place, the GOP will likely run Rep. Mark Kirk and given their penchant for smearing their opponents unfairly, it may be a difficult battle for Schakowsky, a favorite in the progressive blogosphere.