The Least Worst Explanation For Pelosi

Mark Steyn writes about it ----

… Alarmed by her erratic public performance, the Speaker's fellow San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein attempted to put an end to Nancy's self-torture session.

"I don't want to make an apology for anybody," said Senator Feinstein, "but in 2002, it wasn't 2006, '07, '08 or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."

Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn't change, but the country did.

It was no longer America's war but Bush's war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties' leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.

Dianne Feinstein has provided the least worst explanation for her colleague's behavior.

The alternative – that Speaker Pelosi is a contemptible opportunist hack playing the cheapest but most destructive kind of politics with key elements of national security – is, of course, unthinkable.

Senator Feinstein says airily that no reasonable person would hold dear Nancy to account for what she supported all those years ago. But it's OK to hold Cheney or some no-name Justice Department backroom boy to account?

Well, sure. It's the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn't mean it, so that's okay, whereas Carrie does, so that's a hate crime.

In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn't, because to her it's about the shifting breezes of political viability. …

Steyn’s entire column’s here.

It includes a skewering of the NY Times’ Maureen Dowd’s partisan attack on former Vice President Dick Cheney.

I admire the way Steyn took Feinstein's attempt to excuse Pelosi and turned it against them both, exposing Pelosi as a hypocritical, self-serving hack who ranks America's security low on her "Me First" list and Feinstein as her excuser in chief.