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Shocker:  Bill Kristol supports “targeted air strikes” on North Korea.  And Brit Hume agrees.

Jeez.

It’s somehow become Video Friday here at Essential Liberty.  Honest, I didn’t plan it that way.

Here’s a little video history of Shep Smith at Fox News showing glimpses of decency and free-thinking while mired in the propoganda machine.

Back in November, Ralph Nader referenced Uncle Tom when discussing Barack Obama.  Shep Smith no likey:

And here’s Shep emphatically stating his stance on torture:

And finally, my personal favorite, Shep Smith trying to be a good Fox News soldier, but unable to contain his contempt for new colleague (and Fox’s new Golden Boy), Glenn Beck:

Shep needs to go ahead and break free from The Dark Side and join the Alliance.

Tell you what, Fox News — we’ll trade ya for Doug McKelway.

Conservative loudmouth Mancow Muller agreed to be waterboarded live, on air.  He believed it would be a walk in the park.

“I go swimming… it’s gonna be like being in the tub.”

After what looks to be between 5-10 seconds under the water, he bailed.  His opinion?

“I don’t want to say this… I do not want to say this:  Absolutely torture.  Absolutely.  I mean, that’s drowning.”

And that was after a single 10-second waterboarding session, administered by someone who wasn’t looking for answers.

Methinks Doug doth protest too much.

Doug, along with Alison Starling, was part of my daily routine in the morning at WJLA.

Watching him threaten to punch someone in the face for disagreeing with his bullyboy antics changed that.

This is what they fight about… what to call the opposing party.

From the Associated Press:

By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer Ben Evans, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Republican Party leaders are trying to avoid a public confrontation over a GOP-led effort to rename the Democratic Party the “Nationalist Socialist Democrat” party.

The Republican National Committee is slated to vote on several resolutions Wednesday. Leaders already have softened one that would have pointedly criticized Republicans who supported recent billion-dollar bailouts.

Party Chairman Michael Steele and others say the party should also drop the renaming resolution and focus on more serious problems. To avoid a party dispute over the renaming, they were trying to compromise on milder language that would simply criticize Democrats for what they call socialist tendencies.

The fight reflects a divide between Republicans who want a more centrist message and party hardliners.

From CNN:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is engaging in a “despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort” to withhold what she knew about the CIA’s aggressive interrogation techniques, Newt Gingrich said Friday, in what amounts to the harshest criticism yet leveled at the California Democrat.

In an interview with ABC Radio, the former House Speaker said Pelosi flat-out “lied to the House” when she earlier claimed the CIA had never briefed her about the Bush administration’s use of aggressive interrogation techniques including waterboarding.

“I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don’t think the Speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters,” Gingrich said.

Pelosi has been under fire from critics who say that she was fully briefed on the techniques in 2002 and 2003.  On Thursday, the California Democrat accused CIA officials of misleading her, reiterating an earlier claim that she was briefed on such techniques only once — in September 2002 — and that she was told at the time that the techniques were not being used.

Pelosi also said the briefing she received from the CIA was incomplete and inaccurate, and she called on the CIA to release a full transcript of the briefing. She also accused Republicans of jumping on reports of the briefings to cause a distraction.

“She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior,” Gingrich also said in the blistering interview.

“Speaker Pelosi’s the big loser, because she either comes across as incompetent, or dishonest. Those are the only two defenses,” he continued. “The fact is, she either didn’t do her job, or she did do her job and she’s now afraid to tell the truth.”

Again, focus on Pelosi, take your eyes off Bush/Cheney.

And CNN swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

A quick synopsis, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan:

… History is beginning to gel around the assumption that the Bush-Cheney administration presided over the worst attack on US soil in history and failed to capture or bring to justice any of its perpetrators, put the next generation into unparalleled and unsustainable debt, did nothing to combat climate change, viciously opposed the civil rights movement of its time, shrunk the GOP to one in five voters, precipitated the worst recession since the 1930s, took the US into two grueling, unwinnable wars, humiliated the US at the UN with fatally flawed intelligence for war in Iraq, and destroyed the credibility and endurance of the Geneva Conventions, thus ensuring that future captured Americans will be tortured with no recourse.

And who’s to blame for all this?

Nancy Pelosi.

Somehow, Pelosi, who was only Speaker of the House for two years of the Bush presidency’s eight, has become the subject of the right’s latest counterattacks.  Every pundit on Fox News, every right wing blogger, every Sarah Palin stalker with a twitter account, every knucklehead that goes to sleep staring at a Sean Hannity poster every night, every Joe Six-Pack who dreams of getting waterboarded by Carrie Prejean…  they’re all screaming the same thing:  What did Nancy Pelosi know?  Why is she lying?

And the main stream media, fickle followers that they are, are jumping right on board.

And nobody seems to notice that this is classic deflection.  It’s so blatantly obvious, I’m embarrassed to even bring it up.

But they’re doing it, and we’re letting them.

The Bush/Cheney administration should be feeling the heat right now.  As more and more evidence is revealed, it’s becoming obvious that they not only condoned, but actually directed the torture of detainees at the hands of our soldiers and government agents.

It was George W. Bush, and it was Dick Cheney.  Those were the HNICs.  (google it)

But now the question is, “What did Pelosi know about it?”

What did Pelosi know about what Bush and Cheney were actually doing???

Yes, I concede that it is important to know exactly what everyone… and I mean everyone’s… role was when torture became the M.O. for interrogating suspected terrorists.  Pelosi should be held accountable if she knew what was going on and didn’t voice any objection.

But by no means should Nancy Pelosi be the singular focus of everyone’s energy right now.  Not by a long shot.

James Harrison of the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers is refusing to attend the traditional meeting with the President this year.

Maybe he objects to President Obama’s policies, or maybe he’s using this stage to make some kind of profound political statement?

Nope.

“This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” Harrison said.  “As far as I’m concerned, [Obama] would’ve invited Arizona if they had won.”

Yes, James.  President Obama probably would have invited Arizona if they were the Super Bowl Champions.

By the way, James Harrison just received a $10 million signing bonus as part of a new six-year, $51.175 million contract with the Steelers.

And I write this blog for free.

Andrew Sullivan asks some hypothetical questions and makes a profound point:

We appear to be nearing a happy ending in the case of Roxana Saberi, the American journalist detained by Iran and accused of being a spy. But ask yourself this hypothetical and distressing question.

If Saberi had confessed on Iranian television that she was a spy, and if the New York Times discovered that prior to this confession, she had been kept in solitary confinement in freezing temperatures, had been slammed against a wall twenty times in a row, and had then been shackled from the ceiling for days in such a way that the pain was excruciating, and had been blasted in her cell with extremely loud noises to keep her from sleeping for a week …

… do you think the New York Times would report that she had been “tortured”? Or would they adhere to their current practice and say she had been subject to “harsh interrogation”?

If the leaders of Iran publicly stated that they had succeeded in proving that she was indeed a spy and her confession showed it, would Dick Cheney believe them? And would Bill O’Reilly proudly argue that the Saberi case proves that “harsh interrogation” “works”?