You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (124)

PLAYS: (710)

SNL's Bill Hader spoofed James Carville responding to Rush Limbaugh's attack on President Barack Obama after he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rush Limbaugh, now how does a fellow like that have fans? Don't worry, he's mean and fat. How are you going to call him Rush? that's a terrible name for a slow fat man, Seth. only place he's rushing to is Quiznos. Free double meat and wave some coupon he made on a home computer. He should win the Nobel piece of pie.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (71)

PLAYS: (299)

More of Michele Bachmann's nuttery from last night's Larry King Live. Bachmann singing the praises of Hannity, Limbaugh, Levine and Beck and calling their followers who are as King points out, 2% of the country, a "critical mass" and a "movement".

KING: Congresswoman Bachmann, I would gather from your political end of the -- of the spectrum, you enjoyed that?

BACHMANN: Well, sure. Republicans like humor, too, Larry. And so it's fun to see -- it's fun to -- it's fun to watch that show. And I think that what we're seeing now is after nine months, "Saturday Night Live" has decided to take on the president, too. I think that's good for everyone.

KING: Well, but here's what might not be so good for everyone. Senator Lindsey -- GOP Senator Lindsey Graham recently blamed the current lack of civility in U.S. politics on voters electing confrontational representatives, faulted the 24 hour news cycle -- hello us -- talk radio and groups like MoveOn.org.

Did he have a point, James?

Are we -- have we gotten vituperative?

CARVILLE: Well, yes. But I mean to some extent, too, the politicians are -- are playing along with this, too. Yes, I think so. And I think Senator Graham, like a lot of people in the Republican Party, everybody keeps one-up in Rush, one-ups Glenn Beck or one-ups Sean or one-ups the next guy to see who can say the nuttiest thing. And I think people like Senator Graham or -- or a congressman from Michigan, a fellow by the name, I think, of McCarter, who called Senator DeMint nuts. I think people in the -- there's some people in the Republican Party who want to get that party in a methadone clinic so they can get off of the heroin and all of this crazy talk that comes out of all these people. And so that's what's going on here.

BACHMANN: You know, Larry, one thing...

KING: Ari, are the...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Are the...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: ...as he calls them, are the nutty -- Ari, are the nutty people, frankly -- and some of them go a little wacko -- hurting you?

FLEISCHER: I'm glad to see that James just played his part in lowering the temperature.

Look, Larry, I take these things with a grain of salt. You know, in the -- in the election of 1800, it was said you couldn't walk across the street without fear of being caned by people from what was then the opposite party. This has been a part of the lifeblood of a noisy democracy forever.

What's happened today is just with the speed of communications, it gets reverberated and echoed faster.

But here's the bigger point -- and I say this with all respect. The evening cable show that has the most viewers has three million viewers in a nation of 300 million. And so I think a lot of people are pretty sensible, don't pay attention to all the noise and all the shouting. And I'll take this country with its noisy democracy over any other country any other day. BACHMANN: And, Larry, if I could just add...

KING: There was a "New York"...

BACHMANN: ...there's no -- Larry...

KING: Go ahead, Michele.

BACHMANN: Larry, if I could just add, the shows that have had the greatest ratings increases in recent time have been Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity. People go where they think they're going to hear the truth. And that's why they're going to those shows.

KING: But -- but, Congresswoman, as Ari points out, they're talking about 1 percent of the population. They had no effect on the election. And to the -- wouldn't -- wouldn't you, as a Republican, would you want them to be the voice of the Republican Party?

BACHMANN: Well, still, it's their ratings that are going up. And I think you have to look at the reality of ratings...

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1492)

PLAYS: (5895)

From Larry King Live Oct. 6, 2009. Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann does her best to avoid answering the question first of all on whether she agrees with the birthers or not on where the president was born, and she completely dodges answering, with the help of GOP flack Ari Fleischer, whether she thinks the birthers are nuts or not.

She also claims that the only ones who are raising the issue are those on the left and is nearly laughed off the set. It's clear Michele didn't want to completely piss off her wingnut base while doing her best to try to appear sane on Larry King's show.

It's hard to say what was worse. Bachmann's dodge or Ari Fleischer trying to compare those on the left who were upset about the stolen presidential election to the wingnut birthers. NOT the same thing Ari. Epic fail there bud.

KING: James, were you going to comment on some of this falderal?

CARVILLE: I would love to comment on (INAUDIBLE), where you left off.

FLEISCHER: So would I.

(CROSSTALK)

FLEISCHER: Go ahead, James. You go first.

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, there are seven Republicans in the House that have birther legislation before there. And one of the things that people don't like is that politicians get a simple yes or no question and they try to evade it, just like I heard Cong -- the Congresswoman do. She's known to be very outspoken...

BACHMANN: Oh, not at all. I answered.

CARVILLE: I can't believe that she doesn't have the courage just to give us a simple yes or no answer -- do you believe that these birthers are plum crazy, because that's what Senator Graham was saying?

And it's a simple question -- do you believe that they're crazy or not?

KING: But that was the only question...

FLEISCHER: Let me -- let me jump in.

KING: (INAUDIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Do you think they're nuts?

All right, go ahead, Ari. Go ahead.

FLEISCHER: I -- I think this movement is nutty. I think this is nutty. I think there's no evidence and people shouldn't waste any time on it.

But I want to point out something that is a terrible hypocrisy about all of this. When George Bush was elected, there were many people who called him illegitimate and said that he lost Florida despite there being no evidence of that being the case.

CARVILLE: I was one.

FLEISCHER: But nobody...

CARVILLE: I was one.

FLEISCHER: But hold on a second. Hold on, James.

CARVILLE: Yes. OK. I was one of them.

FLEISCHER: Hold on. Nobody blew the whistle and started to say, well, wait a minute, aren't these people on the left nutty?

It always seemed that people said George Bush was a divider, not a uniter and they didn't talk about the tactics of the left being the problem.

Now, when people on the right are making claims that are not supported, it's as if all the media referees now can't wait to blow their whistle and throw their flags and say the problem is on the right.

That's hypocritical. And if you ask me, there's -- there's a loony factor in both parties. And I'd say for everyone who's a little lulu on the left, there's -- I mean on the right -- every one who's a little lulu on the right, there's about 1.8 who's lulu on the left.

CARVILLE: Well, I was one.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (63)

PLAYS: (274)

John King asks Mary Matalin what she thinks about Lindsey Graham's statement that Glenn Beck does not represent the Republican Party and Matlin does her best to distance Beck from the party as well. This is looking like a new theme her from them. He may not be willing to call himself a Republican but he sure as hell is doing their dirty work for them.

KING: All right. One more. One more before I let you go. Glenn Beck works for another network here in town. I believe it's the FOX News network. And there's been a great controversy about some of the things he said about the president. It was put to Lindsey Graham, a conservative senator from North Carolina, this morning on another program. Does Glenn Beck speak for you and the Republican Party?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: No. I'm not saying he's bad for America. You've got the freedom to watch him, if you choose. He did a pretty good job on ACORN.

What I am saying, he doesn't represent the Republican Party. When a person says he represents conservatism and that the country is better off with Barack Obama than John McCain, that sort of ends the debate for me as to how much more I'm going to listen.

So he has a right to say what he wants to say. In my view, it's not -- it's not the kind of political analysis that I buy into.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This is the political analysis I buy into. What do we make of this?

MATALIN: Well, full disclosure, Glenn is a threshold author, Simon & Schuster imprint, of which I'm associated with. Glenn has two best-sellers. This has never happened before. Two No. 1 best-sellers in hard cover and paperback, non-fiction. All right. Somebody out there is listening, what Glenn Beck says. I know he doesn't listen and Lindsey doesn't listen.

Glenn Beck is unequivocal in saying he's not a Republican; he's not a Democrat. He possibly has libertarian leanings in a vacuum. So what he has tapped into is really, really what I think is going to be the dispositive future for us. Maligned mothers.

He did not -- it wasn't just ACORN. He did the czars. He was instrumental in these tea parties and this rising opposition, again, of people who aren't typically listened to. He doesn't affiliate with either party, or any party, but he has tapped into this mainstream of America who feels otherwise not listened to.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (52)

PLAYS: (164)

From State of the Union, Mary Matalin is asked to respond to Steve Schmidt's comment that Sarah Palin getting the 2012 presidential nomination the GOP could have a "catastrophic election result". I think Matalin knows full well Schmidt is right and doesn't want to admit that this nightmare McCain has inflicted on us would be a disaster for them if she is nominated.

KING: All right. Quick raw politics, before we run out of time. I was asked to moderate a panel the other day at an Atlantic magazine, with the first draft of history conference, they called it. And your old friend, Steve Schmitt was there. He ran the McCain campaign. He worked for Vice President Cheney back in the Bush days.

And I asked him about Sarah Palin's book. As you know, it's -- "Going Rogue" is the title of her book. It's coming out pretty soon. It's already a best-seller, even though you can't buy it yet. And I said, you know, "Steve, how are you going to play out in that book?" Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: When we do the index read, the Washington read, and we look up Steve Schmitt, what are we going to find in the book about Steve Schmitt?

STEVE SCHMITT, FORMER MCCAIN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I think it may say that I was anti-rogue in the -- in the running of the campaign.

I think that she has talents, but, you know, my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, and in fact, were she to be the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Do you agree with that, Mary?

MATALIN: All right. Steve, the Bullet, is a man of many talents, and he -- no one would ever call him the anti-rogue. He is a rogue.

This focus on Sarah Palin is one of these beltway obsessions.

KING: But is he right? Is he right?

MATALIN: Well, she's not going to -- we don't even know if she's running. Focusing on 2012.

Here's what Sarah Palin has become: an iconic expression for people, particularly maligned moms, who feel like they're not listened to, who feel like they're attacked when they express themselves. No one is -- including Steve, who's a friend of both of ours, that she has been pilloried beyond anything that is acceptable in politics.

But to focus on 2012 is irrelevant to what she represents today, which will have an impact on the midterms, which is she's dissed for being an expressive and conservative woman.

CARVILLE: Well, disclosure here. Sergeant Schmitt, who outranks Corporal Carville but not General Jones, came and -- came to Tulane and talked to my students about many of these things. And I would say his comments were slightly more reserved to you than they were in the classroom.

But there's a reason that Sarah Palin is getting all this attention. She's got a book coming out, which is selling, by the way, to be fair to Sarah Palin, it's selling like crazy. She keeps interjecting herself in the national dialogue. She gives a speech in Hong Kong. And yes, people -- and there are a lot of people out there that frankly think that she's -- to put it mildly, not up to the job.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (79)

PLAYS: (314)

From John King's State of the Union, James Carville cites the tobacco industry using Betsy McCaughey to plant a story at The New Republic as an example of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that President Obama is facing. Of course Mary Matalin pretends she has no idea who Betsy McCaughey is.

KING: All right. Let's stay for a moment on the -- because I said we would mention it after the break, and Mary brought up that term that we came to know during the Clinton years -- the Clinton presidential years, the vast right-wing conspiracy. It was on his mind.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREGORY: Your wife famously talked about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" targeting you.

GREGORY: As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?

CLINTON: Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARVILLE: Again, this week, there was breathtaking proof that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy. It was revealed in Rolling Stone that Philip Morris paid -- paid a woman named Betsy McCaughey to plant a piece in The New Republic, all right?

This was -- this is not -- in other words, this was a tobacco company paying for a piece printed in a so-called respectable magazine.

Now, I don't know that, in The New Republic in 2006, that, oh, gee, the whole thing was, kind of, a mistake after they went through all of that. I don't know if The New Republic has called the president to apologize, but I suspect, as we go through, we're going see more and more instances of this.

And every Clinton person, when the president told us the stuff with Taylor Branch, it felt good. And you know what really made us feel good, is Bill Clinton's doing a whole lot better than The New Republic is. They're sitting there at the CGI, and everybody went "Yes." That was a great moment to be a Clinton person.

MATALIN: I don't even know what he's talking about, but I'll say...

Continue reading »

From NBC--Update Thursday: Part 1

Featuring the Republican Meeting Open and James Carville.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (86)

PLAYS: (286)

As Media Matters has noted, despite CNN's president Jon Klein sending a memo out stating that the network wanted to "avoid booking talk radio hosts" because "[c]omplex issues require world class reporting", they continue to make exceptions for the likes of Tea Bag Party organizer Mark Williams.

Tonight's AC360 was another example of the network giving a hate mongering Tea Bagger with a radio show a format, but they're worried about sullying their image if they might let someone like say, Stephanie Miller back on, who's been pretty vocal about being blacked out from the network on her radio show.

If they wanted to actually give some context to complex issues, they'd allow talk radio show host Thom Hartmann on as a commenter and collectively raise the average IQ of the people who regularly appear on their programming by a few percentage points rather than let this Know Nothing hate monger on there.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (120)

PLAYS: (160)

It looks like Mary Matalin, Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol all got their talking points from the same place for the Sunday shows this week. Matalin, like Wallace claims that we haven't been attacked since 9-11 and then names anthrax attacks as something that was prevented by the CIA after they tortured prisoners.

Uuummmm.... Mary, I hate to break this to you, but we were attacked by anthrax. But then you're fully aware of that already, aren't you? I doubt there's a single person in the Bush administration that has forgotten the event that was enough to scare some Democrats into voting for the invasion of Iraq.

I'm also wondering how many of the "attacks" she rattled off are on the list from Keith Olbermann's The Nexus of Politics and Terror? My guess is more than a few if she was forced to give specifics and maybe had someone besides her DINO husband and that hack John King sitting across the table from her.

As our own Jon Perr pointed out to me, Matalin is doing a good job of carrying water for Dick Cheney and his strategy to assure that torture is never investigated.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (97)

PLAYS: (266)

Ooops...lol. During Howard Kurtz's tribute to former CNN contributor "The Prince of Darkness" Robert Novak, someone forgot to bleep out his "bullshit" remark.

KURTZ: But it was the battle over the war and his friendship with such sources as Karl Rove that would prove his undoing. Rove was one of two White House sources who told Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joe Wilson, was secretly employed by the CIA. And Novak's disclosure of that fact six years ago ignited a firestorm. He was called a traitor and worse.

Novak had little to say publicly about the leak investigation, even as he revealed his confidential sources to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

NOVAK: I don't think I did anything wrong, but as a practical matter, it wasn't a big scoop, you know. It was just a throwaway line, and the whole column was not abusive toward Joe Wilson in any way.

KURTZ: He began to seem a relic of an earlier era. CNN dropped "CROSSFIRE" and "CAPITAL GANG," and at one of his increasingly rare appearances, Novak lost his temper while arguing with James Carville.

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: ... is watching you. Show them you're tough.

NOVAK: Well, I think that's bullshit. And I hate that. Just let me go.

ED HENRY, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: About this Senate race, James, that...

KURTZ: He left the network soon afterwards, joining Fox News, and published his memoir titled, fittingly enough, "The Prince of Darkness."

Thirteen months ago, the man who never seemed to stop arguing was sidelined by cancer.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (946)

PLAYS: (6948)

Chris Matthews asks Joan Walsh about her article at Salon where she weighed in on Liz Cheney's appearance on Larry King Live, and refused to put some distance between herself and the crazy birthers. Joan reiterated some of what she wrote in her post at Salon:

I wasn't planning to blog so I took notes in real-time, and I can't promise Cheney's quote is verbatim. But she said the same thing twice, so I'm confident I caught her drift. After King showed video of the crazy birther who disrupted a meeting with poor GOP Rep. Mike Castle, demanding he acknowledge Obama was born in Kenya (that's one birther claim); and after Carville denounced them as a "poor, pathetic" fringe group, King gave Cheney a chance to distance herself from them. But Cheney demurred, telling King the Birther movement exists because "People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas."

The rarely shocked Carville seemed briefly speechless, and even King, not known to be the most combative interviewer, tried a second time to get an honest reaction from Cheney -- which I read as expecting her to separate herself from the crazies. But Cheney repeated her talking point about Obama inadequately defending the nation overseas. Unbelievable. Carville called her on it, accurately: "She refuses to say, 'This is ludicrous,' because she actually wants to encourage these people to believe this."

Now, I've debated Cheney, so I know she'll do anything from rudely interrupting to lying to make her point, but even I expected her to take King's opportunity to distinguish her brand of Republicanism from the hooligans who run with the Birthers. But she didn't. Wow. The GOP keeps coughing up younger, supposedly more compelling, "new" leadership, from Sarah Palin to Mark Sanford to, now, Liz Cheney -- and they keep making clear they're not ready for prime time. It's remarkable.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (4754)

PLAYS: (2517)

Liz Cheney appeared on Larry King Live with James Carville and when asked about the tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum, she suddenly has a problem with calling this type of violence terrorism. Now we need to be "careful" with our words.

And of course Cheney thinks this has nothing to do with our political discourse either. Heaven forbid she'd allow any of the blame for whipping up the crazies in this country to be laid at the feet of her buddies over at Fox News.

Anyone want to take dibs on how different a conversation this would have been had this been a foreign terrorist rather than a right wing, white-supremacist, domestic terrorist?

Carville's response is pretty pathetic and he doesn't even try to call her out for being unwilling to call this act terrorism. Despite that fact there was one improvement in this interview from the norm when pundits are debating Liz Cheney. I think Carville took a page from Joan Walsh's book, and didn't allow Cheney to monopolize the debate later on. You can read the full transcript on CNN's site here for that portion of the show.

KING: Our original topic -- and we will get into it -- was the future of the Republican Party. But one cannot go into any discussion tonight without asking about their reaction to today's fatal shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, of all places, in Washington. An African-American guard is killed. The suspect, an 88-year-old white supremacist.

Liz, what do you say?

CHENEY: Well, I think it was obviously a horrific event, Larry. And I think that, as I understand it, they have apprehended the man who was guilty. We know who he was.

I do think people need to be a little bit careful about using words like terrorism before we know exactly -- you know, clearly, he was psychotic. But we don't really know much yet about whether or not he was representing any sort of an organization. I think we need to be a little bit careful.

But, obviously, it was -- it was a horrific event.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (106)

PLAYS: (278)

Mary Matalin thinks having a few more "conviction conservatives" like Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh out there would be a winning formula for the GOP in future elections. I wonder if she actually thought this one through ahead of time.

I don't think it bodes well for Republicans to be using phrases which include the word convict and Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh in the same sentence. The only thing that magnifies for me is a reminder that if they were both treated like most Americans who aren't rich or well connected, they would both have already served some time in prison.

KING: So, James, what do the Republicans need to end this personality, Rush versus this guy? They need an election, I guess.

CARVILLE: Yeah they do. And, you know, my friend and my mentor Mark Shields once said that political parties are like churches. Figure out what party is trying to drive out the heretics and which party is trying to get the converts. And all of the people that they drive out that they say are heretics, we're glad to take them as converts.

And I think that's part of the problem here is, I'm not the member of a movement, I'm the member of a political party that I'm glad to say that embraces people of some different ideologies and tries to get things done.

And the Republicans, right now, consider themselves -- a lot of them consider themselves part of a movement more than a part of the Republican Party. Senator Jim DeMint said he would rather have 30 real conservatives than 52 -- or 51 that are not that conservative.

As one commentator very briefly observed that if they continue their policies, he'd be lucky to have 30. I think they're going through a time where they're trying to figure out what they are and they have some that want to start up an inquisition and they have some that want to start up a -- you know, a bunch of missionaries. We'll see which way it goes.

MATALIN: John, if we had 30 good conviction conservatives, they'd have a magnifying force. Look what Dick Cheney has done in just a couple of weeks with one strong cogent voice.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1608)

PLAYS: (3871)

It's awfully nice to see one real liberal on This Week's roundtable. Katrina Vanden Heuvel gets to the heart of the matter. (In another part of the discussion, she pointed out that the arguments over torture "aren't a political football game" and chided the other panelists that outside the Beltway, things look very different.)

STEFANOPOULUS: The White House is obviously sensitive to this charge on flip-flopping, but does it matter if you end up in a place where you're going to get a lot of support?

CARVILLE: Look, first of all, if you say that my general said I shouldn't release this, it'll cause a spike, and the president says okay, I won't release it, I mean, I think that, as George pointed out, was something he said during the campaign, we'd be awfully uncomfortable as Democrats if he was releasing these pictures tomorrow and these were things that General Petraeus and Secretary Gates were saying - and with a new command coming into Afghanistan, General McCrystal, would have said, "Don't do that," so let me tell you, as a Democrat, I'm very glad he decided to listen to what his commanders said. And it may very well be that as it winds its way through the courts, the courts will release them anyway.

STEFANOPOULUS:: That may be, and maybe part of the calculation is that they are gonna come out eventually. But we're at a critical time in Iraq now as troops are moving out of the cities, we're heading toward elections in Afghanistan and the timing here did matter.

CARVILLE: Right. And again, you would not want to be president and have the secretary of defense and your top commanders come back and say we advise against doing this. That would make me uncomfortable, and I'm a pretty good Democrat.

CHENEY: Those same people advised against doing it before the White House publicly announced they would be releasing those photos, so it's a little disingenuous to say, you know, he made the decision based on what the military commanders were saying

VANDEN HEUVEL: But it's also buying the military argument that the release of these photos will increase violence. These photos - Guantanamo, Bagram - that has been the cause for any anti-Americanism and our actions, our policies in escalating in Afghanistan.

CARVILLE: I agree with you, we became infatuated with torture. We should have never done that. However, given the reason that you have these photographs is because they exist, having said all of that, if these generals come in and you're the president and they said you shouldn't do it right now, I don't envy the decision, but I'm more comfortable as a Democrat with him making this decision than another decision.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (128)

PLAYS: (254)

More not so veiled threats from Republicans with their outrage over the release of the torture memos? I think Bill Bennett is confusing what President Obama did to the way Republicans do business. Slash and burn and if you're going down take as many as possible with you. I also just love the way Cooper introduced this. "We don't take sides". Well that's great Anderson. Heaven forbid one "side" might represent the truth at times and if that's the case, you should take that "side". I don't think truth is what your after when you bring in James Carville and Bill Bennett to debate each other. One corporate Democratic DLC partisan hack vs a Repubican partisan hack. Fair and balanced right?

COOPER: Now the growing political uproar over allegations of torture and enhanced interrogations, breaking down mainly, though by no means exclusively, along party and administration lines. Now, depending on which blog or op-ed page you read, the president is either poisoning the political waters by leaving the door open to investigating torture, or Dick Cheney and company are trying to bury the ugly past and get away with crimes.

We don't take sides on this program. We present you with facts and opposing views, so you can make up your own mind.

COOPER: I'm joined now by political contributors, left and right, James Carville and Bill Bennett.

James, a "Wall Street Journal" editorial today said -- and I quote -- "By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their anti-terror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret."

If laws were broken, should there be an investigation?

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, if laws were broken, of course there should be. That's the -- the job is to uphold the laws of the Constitution of the United States.

But it -- it may be that there's a way -- you know, maybe -- we certainly need to find out more about this. It might be through a commission. It might be through congressional hearings. It might be through a trial.

But I think that the public now is going to demand that we have some answers here, and the answers may be favorable to the Bush administration. They may not be favorable. But it's -- it's going to be a pursuit here. I mean, journalism's not going to leave this alone. I -- I doubt if the Congress is. And it appears that the legal system's not going to leave this alone.

COOPER: Bill, is -- by doing that, is the president injecting a poison, Bill?

(CROSSTALK)

BENNETT: Well, I think so, but let put me down a marker here. I think Barack Obama's going to regret that he did this.

He's going to regret that he changed his mind, too, because it looks less, frankly, right now like the rule of law, or a -- you know, saluting the rule of law, and more like bloodlust. The president said let bygones be bygones, we're moving forward, let's put this behind us, and then flipped.

And it looks, from all evidence, that he was pressured into this for political reasons.

Now, can there still be an inquiry that's not politically based? Yes. But just bear this in mind. When you build the gallows, be sure you know who it is you plan to hang, because, when all of this comes out, some of the people who are, you know, yelling the loudest for Dick Cheney's head or for these lawyers' heads -- and this is not going to happen -- may find themselves in trouble as well.

Continue reading »