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Following today's niceties by his fellow former presidents and President Obama, who of course felt compelled to try to come up with something polite to say about George W. Bush at the opening of his library, Chris Hayes reminded his audience that, luckily, he and his staff are under "no obligation to be nice for the sake of being nice" to Bush.

Hayes proceeded to lay waste to the Bush apologists who have been doing their best to rewrite his legacy, such as Fox "News", Jennifer Rubin and a host of his former advisers who have been making the rounds on the talk shows these days.

And then there's the bizarre "choose your own adventure" video game being featured at the library and the fact that they're trying to paint Bush as a great president because he had to make "tough decisions," regardless of how horrible those decisions were.

HAYES: This does not sound like the kind of thing that's going to make everyone realize what a great president George W. Bush was. In fact, it sounds to me like the world's easiest video game. Invade a country for no reason, or don't invade a country for no reason? Don't invade a country for no reason.

Celebrate John McCain's birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans or don't celebrate John McCain's birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans? Don't celebrate John McCain's birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans. I could do this all day.

Torture people or don't torture people? Don't torture people. Deregulate and tax cut the country into financial ruin, or don't deregulate and tax cut the country into financial ruin? There is no reason people, to over-think the Bush presidency.

It was just as bad as you thought.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama was "disengaged" and personally responsible for some of the deaths caused by a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11 of last year, but seemingly forgot that President George W. Bush read the book "My Pet Goat" for seven minutes as almost 3,000 people died during the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"Did the president at any time during this eight hour attack pick up the phone and call anybody in Libya to get help for these folks?" Graham opined during an interview on CBS News. "And I do believe if he had picked up the phone, called the Libyan government, these folks could have gotten out of the airport to the annex, and the last two guys may very well be alive... But if he failed to call on behalf of those people under siege then I think that's a massive failure of leadership by our commander in chief."

CBS host Bob Schieffer asked Graham if he had any proof that the president had not made an attempt to contact Libya during the September attacks.

"I don't know what the president did that evening," the South Carolina senator admitted. "I don't know if he ever called anyone, I know that he never talked to the secretary of defense, I know that he never talked to the chairman of the Join Chiefs. They never talked to anybody at the White House."

"This was incredibly mismanaged, and what we know now, it seems to be a very disengaged president," he added. "Again, if he had lent his voice to this cause, I think it would have made a big difference. And I'm not going to stop until we get an accounting."

"We know nothing about what the president did on the night of Sept. 11th during a time of national crisis, and the American people need to know what their commander in chief did, if anything, during the eight hour attack."

As Bush was reading the book "My Pet Goat" with school children on Sept. 11, 2001, Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted to let him know a second plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City.

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I tell you what, coming from a man that was part of a White House and from a party that seems to care about nothing else but playing politics, this is pretty rich. But that appears to be the line of attack the Republicans are going to use to defend Paul Ryan's draconian budget proposals. As Paul Begala rightfully points out here, Ryan's proposal is "intellectually dishonest" and just a means to dismantle our social safety nets while giving tax cuts to the rich that don't need them.

I don't care for a lot of the cuts that the Democrats have agreed to and think they're going to harm the economy and am not happy that they haven't fought harder to push back against them. I was glad to see President Obama look like he was finally willing to draw a line in the sand on some of their demands. And I was glad to see him finally use his bully pulpit to talk about the unfairness of giving tax cuts to the rich while demanding that the working class take the hit to balance our budget. It's long overdue IMO.

And I'll ultimately judge him by his actions and not by his words. When we've already been through things like getting assurances that he was fighting for a public option in the health care bill, but was privately making deals behind the scenes where it had already been negotiated away, forgive me for being skeptical to say the least about whether any of us should trust that he'll stick to his guns until we see how all of this pans out in the end.

That said, I was glad to see President Obama finally looking like he understands how fed up the public is with the redistribution of wealth in America, and it amazes me that Republicans honestly think that supporting Paul Ryan's really extreme budget proposal is somehow good for them politically. If the Democrats don't hang that budget proposal around their necks, they'd be foolish. And Andy Card and the rest of them can whine about the politics of this all they want, but they're making their bed with supporting Ryan, so they'd better learn to live with the repercussions of it now.

Card whines here that the president “didn't provide leadership” because he waited for Ryan to put this proposal out there before he came out there and laid down some markers with what he'd like to see in the budget himself. He praised Ryan for his leadership and said he's provided “a great service” to the country since President Obama didn't embrace the Simpson/Bowles deficit commission debacle that never found enough votes to get any kind of concensus. He's done a “great service” alright... a great service in leading the Republican Party right off a cliff by alienating a huge part of their base – senior citizens and those nearing retirement age once enough of them get a look at his proposals.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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From Countdown:

A new internal government report reveals that President George W. Bush played a direct role in instructing Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to go to former Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bed and urge him to personally approve warrantless wiretapping on Americans.

From James Risen and Eric Lichblau's article at the New York Times:

While the Bush administration had defended its program of wiretapping without warrants as a vital tool that saved lives, a new government review released Friday said the program’s effectiveness in fighting terrorism was unclear.

The report, mandated by Congress last year and produced by the inspectors general of five federal agencies, found that other intelligence tools used in assessing security threats posed by terrorists provided more timely and detailed information.

Most intelligence officials interviewed “had difficulty citing specific instances” when the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program contributed to successes against terrorists, the report said.

While the program obtained information that “had value in some counterterrorism investigations, it generally played a limited role in the F.B.I.’s overall counterterrorism efforts,” the report concluded. The Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence branches also viewed the program, which allowed eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans, as a useful tool but could not link it directly to counterterrorism successes, presumably arrests or thwarted plots.

So much for that talking point that all that spying kept us safe from another terrorist attack.

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Tonight's: Corporate Socialism-Gate, Poetic Justice Department-Gate and The People's House-Gate.