Friday, April 24, 2009

Those wacky Republicans

Why, Mr. Dickinson, I'm surprised at you! You should know that rebellion is always legal in the first person -- such as "our" rebellion. It is only in the third person -- "their" rebellion -- that it is illegal.
-Benjamin Franklin, "1776"

Isn't it interesting that, in politics, the rules change overnight, as soon as a party is out of power?

Take, for example, the current hubbub over the release of memos detailing the "enhanced interrogation methods" (ie torture) used during the Bush Administration in an attempt to get information about al-Qaeda.

While in office, and (as we now know) as one of the people who approved the methods, Dick Cheney firmly stated over and over again that the information should not be released, that it would jeopardize national security, blah blah blah.

However, now that the memos (which contained a lot of information known publicly already, one of the reasons for releasing them) have been made public, the Republicans, led by Cheney and Karl Rove, are suddenly demanding that even more memos be made public. This from a man who had a man-sized safe in his office.

What changed? Simple! They are no longer in power, and they don't like how the new administration is doing business. Thank goodness Cheney and Rove are not in public office -- they can bluster and condemn all they want to, but they have less power right now than Rush Limbaugh.

I wonder -- in this new zeal for freedom of information, will the former vice president and Mr. Rove eagerly appear in front of a Congressional Committee to talk about what they know about the war in Iraq?

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