Leave it to Glenn Beck to turn Rep. Michele Bachmann's ethics investigation for improper use of her PAC donations into a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government has secretly been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Beck: Bachmann Ethics Investigation Is a Muslim Brotherhood Plot:

As Beck sees it, Bachmann has been a target of the Brotherhood for a long time because she has been "uber clear" about the threat posed by the organization and so, in retaliation, the State Department has been relocating hundreds of Muslim Somali refugees into her congressional district. And for daring to ask why this was happening, says Beck, "now she's under investigation":

[Editor's note: Somalis have been settling in the U.S. since the 1920s. The Twin Cities is home to the largest Somali community in America, and it's been that way long before Michelle Bachmann started her wacko conspiracy theories. Nice try, Beckster.]

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Jon Stewart took quite a few swipes at the GOP clown show we witnessed this week, with Republicans grilling Sec. Hillary Clinton over their drummed up Benghazi witch hunt. After opening things up with a reminder of the fact that Republicans and the talking heads over at Fox were claiming that Clinton was faking her health problems, Stewart took his audience back through some of the highlights of the most obnoxious moments during Clinton's over five hour long testimony before the House and Senate committees.

As Stewart noted, Clinton did a really good job of taking the better part of their criticisms of her, and turning it right back around on them and called her the "Magneto of finger-pointing."

Stewart didn't spare the Democrats, who he slammed as too "ass-licky, and who for the most part, looked like they were more worried about getting a job in a future Clinton administration if Hillary were to run and win a presidential race in the 2016.

He wrapped things up showing how Fox took her contentious back and forth with Sen. Ron Johnson completely out of context and he got one last shot in on Sen. Rand Paul for his ridiculous statement that Benghazi was the "worst tragedy since 9/11."

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I've been watching Fox "News" and every other talking head on that network do their best to blow this issue up and politicize it since the attacks on our embassies on the anniversary of Sept. 11th, and am in agreement with Rachel Maddow about politics always having an "ick factor" and this one being worse than usual, but quite a few harsher words than just "ick" came to mind for me in regard to just how craven these recent political attacks have been.

The Republican party continues to prove that there is absolutely no topic that they will not politicize and no amount of hypocrisy too blatant for them to have an ounce of concern about if they think it will score them some cheap political points. Listening to the party that led us into an invasion of a country that was not a threat to us based on lies and the literal clusterf**k that was the invasion of Iraq, and the amount of national treasure, lives, and other atrocities associated with our actions there, now carping about whether we had enough security at one of our embassies in a country in the middle of the type of turmoil after just ousting their dictator that Libya is in right now, frankly is enough to turn my stomach.

These people are shameless and they apparently think the entire country has a severe case of amnesia and can't remember what happened to them over the last decade or so. It's disgusting and shameful to put it their actions in the kindest terms possible.

And here's good little Romney water-carrier Jason Chaffetz stepping all over himself attempting to explain his hypocrisy on CNN this Wednesday morning with Soledad O'Brien -- Right-Wing Media's Libya Consulate Security Mythology Falls Apart :

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How can a company allegedly responsible for killing 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007 continue to get State Department and CIA contracts? CIA Director Leon Panetta says there is "not much choice" because few companies have the capabilities of Blackwater.

"Since I have become director, I have asked our agency to review every contract we have had with Blackwater and whatever their new name is now, Xe, to ensure first and foremost that we have no contract in which they are engaged in any CIA operations. We're doing our own operations. That's important that we not contract that out to anybody," Panetta told ABC's Jake Tapper Sunday.

"I have to tell you that in the war zone, we continue to have needs for security. You've got a lot of forward bases. You've got a lot of attacks on some of those bases. We've got to have security. Unfortunately, there are few companies that provide that kind of security," Panetta continued.

"State Department relies on them. We rely on them to a certain extent. So, we've bid out some of those contracts. They provided a bid that underbid everyone else by about $26 million and a panel that we had said that they can do the job, that they've shaped up their act," he said.

"There was really not much choice but to accept that contract," said Panetta.

"But having said that, I will tell you that I continue to be very cautious about any of those contracts and we're reviewing all of the bids that we have with that company," he concluded.

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November 04, 2009 CNN

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Anderson Cooper had some tough questions for Liz Cheney, but like any good Villager comes out swinging initially but fails to do any real follow up after Cheney lies to him repeatedly. It was nice to see someone actually call bulls#@t on some of her talking points though. It's more than I can say for Chuck Todd. Cheney also basically admits that her father's reason for speaking out has more to do with protecting his own hide than national security. The transcript of the full interview is available here.

COOPER: Most former vice presidents walk off the public stage quietly, at least for a while, but not Dick Cheney. His tough talk seems to be working for him. His approval rating, now 37 percent, has jumped eight points since leaving office in January. President Bush's approval rating has risen six points, to 41 percent, from 35.

Dick Cheney's daughter Liz served in the State Department during Bush administration, has been an outspoken defender of her father's record as vice president. She joins us now.

Thanks for being here.

LIZ CHENEY: Great to be here. Thanks, Anderson.

COOPER: Is it -- is it appropriate for your father to be so out in front right now so soon after leaving office, essentially mocking the sitting president of the United States?

L. CHENEY: Well, he's not mocking the sitting president. But I think that...

COOPER: Well, saying he's pandering to Europe?

L. CHENEY: He is pandering to Europe.

I mean, I think that -- that, you know, there's sort of a level of political nicety that's important to observe, except in certain circumstances. And one of those circumstances is where the national security of the nation is at risk, as my father feels strongly that it is.

I don't think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies, that he was going to be doing things like releasing the -- the techniques themselves, so that the terrorists could now train to them, that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush administration, I think my dad began to feel very strongly that somebody needed to speak out, that this needed to be a full airing of views, and not a one-sided mischaracterization of the last eight years.

COOPER: But these -- you know, these are techniques which have been around. I mean, the Nazis used them. The -- the Khmer Rouge used them. The -- the North Koreans used them. So, it's not as if terrorists were unfamiliar with these techniques, if they wanted to train for them. And I'm not sure you really can train for torture or -- or enhanced interrogation.

L. CHENEY: Well, I think, first of all -- yes, I mean, I would question the premise there.

I think that you have got to look at the legal memos, actually, which now you can do. The legal memos are very clear. And this was a -- a very carefully designed program, and it was a program that the CIA designed, that they had the lawyers look at to make sure that the line that divided sort of rough treatment from torture wouldn't be crossed.

But the important point here, though, there's a big difference between a terrorist sort of Googling, you know, techniques that might be used and a terrorist who can now pull up these memos and actually see, OK, well, they're going to be able to do this, you know, to me for this many minutes, but I know they won't cross that line.

What the president has done is ensure that no future president can use any of these techniques. So, that's a big step. And that's a step that I think really does endanger the country.

And, frankly, if the president himself in the future is faced with a ticking-time-bomb scenario, it's not clear to me, you know, what exactly he will do, even though he's reserved to himself the right to take action like these techniques.

COOPER: Is it appropriate, though, for your father, who has had access to high-level intelligence for -- for eight years, to be very publicly waving a flag, saying, we're much weaker now than ever before? Isn't that, in fact, emboldening our enemies? Couldn't you make that argument?

L. CHENEY: I think that it is a moral obligation to stand up and say, wait a second. You know, when you...

COOPER: But you can write letters. You can -- you can have meetings with the president. He could have a meeting with the president and say very firmly, "This is what I believe," and the president would either listen to him or not.

But to stand up publicly and -- if...

Well,. Yes. No, absolutely.

COOPER: If a Democrat was doing this in a Republican administration, wouldn't be the Republicans be saying, this is traitorous?

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Part 1

Rachel Maddow talks to former State Department lawyer under Condoleeza Rice, Philip Zelikow who says that the Bush administration attempted to destroy all copies of an alternative memo on interrogation techniques he wrote in 2005.

From Philip Zelikow's blog at Foreign Policy magazine The OLC "torture memos": thoughts from a dissenter:

At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

Stated in a shorthand way, mainly for the benefit of other specialists who work these issues, my main concerns were:

• the case law on the "shocks the conscience" standard for interrogations would proscribe the CIA's methods;

• the OLC memo basically ignored standard 8th Amendment "conditions of confinement" analysis (long incorporated into the 5th amendment as a matter of substantive due process and thus applicable to detentions like these). That case law would regard the conditions of confinement in the CIA facilities as unlawful.

• the use of a balancing test to measure constitutional validity (national security gain vs. harm to individuals) is lawful for some techniques, but other kinds of cruel treatment should be barred categorically under U.S. law -- whatever the alleged gain.

The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

Part two below the fold.

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January 02, 2009 C-SPAN