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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.

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h/t David

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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From Late Edition Dec. 21, 2008. Ed Rollins slaps Bush pretty hard for the damage he's already done to our economy.

BLITZER: David Gergen, did President Bush do the right thing by bailing out Chrysler and GM?

GERGEN: Yes. He had backed himself into a corner and had to act and I think Dick Cheney put it well when he said had Bush had not done this, he would have been remembered as the Herbert Hoover of his era.

And it was unfortunate they had to come to this thing. But the real point is here, he's not only been forced to do that, but he has punted this to Barack Obama. Obama now faces a ton of huge decisions in the first 90 days of his presidency. BLITZER: There's no doubt, James, that he did punt in effect because by March 31st, if it doesn't look like it's working out, it is all going to be up to the president-elect and the new Congress to decide what to do.

CARVILLE: They're going to run out of money before March 31st. And right now, auto sales, everybody, doesn't matter, not just American carmakers, Japanese or European carmakers also are down 35, 40 percent. I don't think anybody thinks that is going to change between now and March and David is right, they have the ball and they're going to have to figure out what to do with this and it's going to be quick, very quick.

BLITZER: So Ed Rollins, the $14 or $17 billion in this initial bridge loan as it's called, that could escalate. That could go up to a lot more money given the overall state of the economy and the low demand for new cars right now.

ROLLINS: I think there's no question if you're going to try to save this industry, which is an industry in real problems, you are going to have a lot more money that is going to be thrown at him. I think that's a lot of the objections of the Republicans.

I think the problem the president made here is he let it go to Congress. The Congress, his own party, basically, didn't want it. There's a few weeks before the new president comes in and this president is trying to be relevant. He doesn't want to be Herbert Hoover, he is going to be Herbert Hoover. I don't care what he says, or what Dick Cheney says, this president has damaged this economy and is going to go out with a tarnished record. I think the critical thing here is let the new Congress take charge and let the new president take charge and move it forward. Unfortunately, it is on their watch and it is a mess.

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After hearing a report that Barack Obama plans to use his full name during his inauguration, Bay Buchanan comes to the conclusion that all of that fearmongering and race-baiting the GOP used during the election has just magically gone away and it was perfectly fine for them to have used his middle name in the manner they did.

So, Bay: If what you say is true, or if you even believe it yourself (which I doubt), why then did John McCain feel the need to repudiate Bill Cunningham?