The world awaits the answer to this pressing question. Although Madam Speaker has little time for the U.S. military, we all know how much she likes to avail herself of its aircraft when traveling from point A (California, say) to point B (Washington, D.C.). It costs the taxpayers a bundle, but, hey, what are taxpayers for if not to keep their leaders living in the style to which they’ve become, or would like to become, accustomed?
But will hoi polloi soon be welcoming her back in the airport security lines please-remove-your-shoes-and-jacket-m’am? Who knows?
“Toast.” That’s what some friends of mine say while savoring the spectacle of Madam Speaker twisting in the wind of her own words:
The CIA lied to me! They lied to us all! I thought waterboarding was a lower-class sporting event. No, I mean, I never heard of waterboarding. That is, I’d heard of it but it was President Bush’s fault. Let me repeat: I have it here somewhere . . . I never Bush administration why are you pestering me that’s the wrong page be very clear it’s not my fault.
As an editorial at NRO points out, once you untangle the spaghetti of Pelosi’s palaver, you’ve got some pretty serious allegations there. Lying to Congress is a no-no, that is, a crime, and it is not surprising that the agency’s director Leon Panetta, though a California Democratic like Nancy Pelosi, instantly took issue with Madam Speaker’s aspersion. “CIA officers briefed [Pelosi and others] truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah,” Panetta noted tersely, “describing the ‘enhanced techniques that had been employed.'”
What do you say to that, Nancy?
In one sense, this is exactly the sort of event that the word “schadenfreude” was invented to describe.
But into every silver lining a cloud must come. For although it would be nice to welcome a former Madam Speaker Pelosi back into the airport security lines with the rest of us slobs, one feels a bit like St. Augustine contemplating his embrace of chastity: Give us Pelosi, Oh Lord, but not yet. As Mark Steyn says, there is a lot to be said for keeping Nancy Pelosi in situ until the 2010 elections have run their course. What better public face, unless it be that of Harry Reid, can there be for Democratic legislators? Better, I mean, for Republicans.
Yes, on balance, though I regret the pleasure of witnessing Nancy Pelosi’s early and ignominious departure from her position as Speaker of the House, I see the wisdom of foregoing that delight until after she is allowed to inflict even more damage on her spendthrift, vindictive, and morally scrofulous party. Bring it on.
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