Glenn Greenwald broke this yesterday morning, but it's still news you'll want to hear. Pelosi not only came out for criminal investigations into the Bush administration, she insists Democrats did not know about criminal activities:

In an interview with Rachel Maddow ...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly advocated the need for criminal prosecutions, not merely fact-finding. She even directly criticized the proposal by Sen. Pat Leahy for a "Truth Commission," on the ground that such a Commission would improperly immunize lawbreakers and thus foreclose prosecutions:

MADDOW: This is something that liberals have really been pushing. And you have stated your support for John Conyers convening an investigation into potential lawbreaking in the Bush administration. PELOSI: Absolutely. MADDOW: You've been outspoken about contempt of Congress charges related to the politicization of the Justice Department and that investigation. You have been less specific about how Congress should proceed on warrantless wiretapping and torture. Why is that? . . . PELOSI: Senator Leahy has a proposal, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is a good idea. What I have some concern about though is it has immunity. And I think that some of the issues involved here, like the services part, politicizing of the Justice Department, and the rest, they have criminal ramifications, and I don't think we should be giving them immunity.

Pelosi then acknowledged that the FISA bill passed by Congress in 2008 was flawed in many important respects, but said that the "part of the bill that was positive" was the requirement that the Justice Department's Inspector General investigate the NSA eavesdropping program and issue a report (due this Summer) as to the scope and legality of Bush's eavesdropping. About that comment, Maddow asked Pelosi whether she would favor criminal prosecutions if, as many people expect, the IG Report concludes that the warrantless eavesdropping was illegal:

MADDOW: Then in terms of your report, if the inspector general report that comes out this summer suggests that there has been criminal activity at the official level on issues like torture, or wireless wiretapping, or rendition, or any of these other issues... PELOSI: No one is above the law. I think I have said that. MADDOW: ... you support a call for a criminal investigation, potential investigation. PELOSI: Absolutely.

That's pretty definitive. Maddow then repeatedly, and rather relentlessly, asked Pelosi about how much she was told about the Bush's use of torture and about the warrantless eavesdropping program and whether her having known about those programs was an obstacle to investigations and prosecutions. Pelosi's answers were largely evasive, but she was very emphatic -- I believe for the first time -- in claiming that while she was told by the CIA about potential "enhanced interrogation techniques" in "the abstract," she was never told that these techniques were actually being used. She also claimed that she put up "very strong resistance" to the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program (I've never seen any evidence of such resistance at all; the only letter from Pelosi that was disclosed was one from October, 2001, which merely raised a concern over whether the NSA had presidential authorization for the program, not whether the program itself was illegal). But what matters here is that Pelosi insists that nothing she nor any other Democrat knew or did poses an obstacle in any way to full-scale criminal investigations.

     How did I miss this, as reported by the UK's Guardian? Why isn't it a major news story in the U.S.? Ah yes...it's all about Sarah.

Biden's comments, first reported by ABC news, attracted little notice on a day dominated by the drama surrounding his Republican counterpart, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

But his statements represent the Democrats' strongest vow so far this year to investigate alleged misdeeds committed during the Bush years.

"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued," Biden said during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC.

"[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution," he added, "out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law."

Obama sounded a similar note in April, vowing that if elected, he would ask his attorney general to initiate a prompt review of Bush-era actions to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies".

Back in April, Obama said that he would ask his AG to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted. Biden's statement simply confirms that the Obama campaign hasn't backed off from that intention.

But "genuine crimes." Where do we start? That would be a really good discussion to have right now, in my opinion. Aggressive war, torture, illegal rendition to torture, surveillance without warrants, criminal negligence over Katrina, various counts of perjury before Congress...

Instead we get endless talking heads pretending they don't know what their conservative guests really think - or even say when they think the mikes are off.

Update: In between when I wrote this post on Tuesday night and its posting today, Biden backed off his statement (H/t - JC in comments).

Biden emphasized that "no one's talking about President Bush. ... I've never heard anybody mention President Bush in that context." He noted that "there's been an awful lot of unsavory stuff that's gone on ... but I have no evidence of any of that. No one's talking about pursuing President Bush criminally."

Biden concluded his comments by explaining that possible misdeeds are
"being looked into now, just so it never happens again in any other administration. ... The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, 'God, let's go take a look at what this --.' The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened." 

I understand the arguments on why the Obama campaign should tread softly on this - that it will simply enrage and energize the Republican base. But Palin has already energized that base and in any case this whole triangulation thing strikes me as spineless fence-sitting.