Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would worsen an already bleak budget outlook, increasing deficit projections and driving the nation more deeply into debt, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this morning.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount."

"On the contrary," Elmendorf said, "the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health-care costs."

....the reform measures put forth so far would not fulfill their pledge to "bend the cost curve" downward, Elmendorf said. Instead, he said, "The curve is being raised."

The CBO is the official arbiter of the costs of legislation, and Elmendorf's stark testimony is certain to undermine support for the measures even as three House panels begin debate and aim to put a bill on the House floor before the August recess.

Maybe there are some people left in Washington that actually care about their reputations. After months of listening to the Obama administration's nonsense about reducing the deficit by taking over healthcare, it's refreshing to hear someone actually testify during this debate that such ideas are ridiculous. Kudos for Mr. Elmendorf for calling it like he sees it.

There are growing signs that the ObamaCare Express may be stalling as voters learn more about the costs and other heretofore undisclosed features that reveal the scheme to be a blatant government takeover of the world's finest medical delivery system.

The timeline attached to President Kennedy's proposal -- the mission would have to be launched before the end of the 1960's -- was meant both as an inspiration for the US space program, and a challenge to the Soviet Union, which had beaten the US both in successfully launching a satellite into orbit (Sputnik, 1957) and in launching a manned space flight (Yuri Gagarin, 1961).

The Soviets accepted our challenge, but never could get the bugs worked out of their designs for a massive rocket capable of lifting a heavy payload and blasting free of the Earth's gravity. Their gigantic N1 rocket was launched four times between 1969 and 1972. Each launch attempt proved to be a spectacular failure.

America's equally gargantuan Saturn V rocket also had its share of problems, but ultimately its design proved enormously successful. Whereas the Soviet N1 utilized small 30 kerosene and liquid oxygen engines in its first stage, the first stage of the Saturn V utilized five enormous F-1 engines. Although the size of the F-1 engines gave engineers a number of challenging problems to solve, the Saturn V was never plagued by the sheer number of mechanical failures experienced by the Soviets, who had to synchronize 30 engines in order to produce a working rocket booster. And while all three stages of the Soviet N1 used kerosene and oxygen as fuel, the American Saturn V employed kerosene as a rocket fuel in only the first stage. The second and third stages of the Saturn V used J-2 rocket engines that burned liquid hydrogen and oxygen, a lighter and more powerful rocket fuel. Thus the more reliable Saturn V could lift a much heavier payload.

The program to land a man on the moon was named Apollo. It was preceded by the Mercury program (1961 - 1963) and the Gemini program (1965 - 1966). Apollo 1 ended in disaster when its crew, Gus Grissim, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, died in a fire during a launch simulation on January 27, 1967.

The Apollo program was grounded for nearly a year after the fire, while the command module underwent a through redesign. Apollo 4 (Nov. 1967) and Apollo 6 (April 1968) were unmanned test launches of the full Saturn V launch vehicle and command/service module configuration. Apollo 7 (October 1968) was the first manned Apollo flight. Apollo 8 (December 1968) was the first manned space flight to break earth orbit and orbit the moon. The reading of Genesis 1 by the Apollo 8 crew while circling the moon was an incredible event that spiritually united a world that had been torn apart by war and strife.

Apollo 9 (March 1969) was the first mission flown with the Lunar Module. The astronauts successfully extracted the LM from the third stage of the Saturn V, orbited the earth with the command/service module (CSM) and LM docked, separated the LM and tested its engines, and performed several space walks. Apollo 10 (May 1969) set the stage for the moon landing. The full spacecraft (CSM and LM) left earth orbit, orbited the moon, separated, and the LM crew descended to within 8.4 nautical miles of the lunar surface.

And in July 1969, the first mission to actually land a manned space craft on the moon was a "go."

If you were one of the millions of viewers around the world who watched the launch of Apollo 11 forty years ago this morning, here is what you saw:

More to come on the historic flight of Apollo 11 during the next few days, including a celebration of Neil Armstrong's epic "giant leap for mankind" on July 20th.

I have also learned that some folks have to find things out the hard way. Having just completed my MBA, I went looking around for advice on the classes I still need to take in order to sit for my CPA license. Along the way, I found an interesting website which had a number of college forums. I visited the section on business schools, and found some lively discussions, including a number of prolific members with strong opinions but poor experience. It's fascinating in a way, how people will voice an opinion on something they have never done and about which they really know very little. Part of that, I suspect, is the attraction of online forums, where you can writer as long a post as you please without fear of interruption. Sure, you may get a sharp retort, but the thing there is that it comes in response to your article or comment, and that means you are making things happen. In blogging, that's pretty cool, but it's far less cool when politicians start doing it.

Laws. There's no doubt that we need them, but at some point they get to be burdensome, especially when the guys passing the laws make sure that they are not forced to abide by those laws. And at some point they become unreasonable, ridiculous, and cross the line into tyranny. Take the seat-belt law, for example. I'm all in favor of people wearing seat belts, they are a great invention. But a law requiring everyone to wear a seat belt? That, to me, is over the line. Think about it - if I have an accident and I am stupid enough to not wear a seat belt, who does that hurt besides myself? It does not increase the danger of the situation for other drivers or pedestrians, or the public at large. So what is that law meant to do? It's a law meant to keep us safe. That may sound good, but nowhere in the federal or any state Constitution does it say that the government can pass laws in order to make us safer from ourselves. That's why it makes no sense to ban trans-fats. Yes, it's stupid to gorge on things that will give you a heart attack, but the government has no business choosing the meals of honest citizens. It's one thing and a good idea to require restaurants to tell is what's in their foods, so we can make informed decisions, but quite another to tell us we cannot make those choices ourselves.

The government passes more and more laws every year, and for what? Some of them are necessary, but in truth most are not at all necessary, and more and more of them take away our choices in order to protect us from the consequences of those choices. The thing is, if we are not allowed to make our choices, to face natural limits to what we can do and to see the direct consequences of our actions, instead being told by the nanny state that others will decide for us, then how do we learn? People today decry what they see as environmental threats, but they fail to realize that humans have faced such threats before - efforts to eradicate rats began when it was discovered that they carried plague, sanitation of the water supply began when it was discovered (then forgotten and later rediscovered) that there was a way to provide a clean water supply and remove foul waste, and coal was largely replaced with oil as the new energy source proved more efficient and cleaner. All of this happened without a single environmentalist agency. We are quite capable to seeing and addressing our needs through our own faculties and efforts, if only the government would stop pretending we cannot. Our economic markets can repair themselves, indeed history shows they always have, if only the government would stop borrowing generations of future earnings to try to create a solution by artifice. And the voters can be trusted to find and support the best candidates and political platform, there is no need or cause to keep presenting us with a PR-spun packaged candidate as fake as the late MJ's nose.

We will make mistakes, to be sure. Some of them will be huge blunders, and that's a fact. But that's how we learn, and for all the best intentions of government, it's more than time for these esteemed politicians to stop spending our children's future, stop pretending they can control everything and prevent any bad news, and just go home to do some honest work. They do far more harm than good, and it's apparent they are learning nothing themselves.

The Washington Post posed their concerns that targeting such a narrow segment of the economy (the rich) might dilute the wherewithal to pay down future deficits. Absent from the Post's manifestly faux concern about deficit spending is an examination of the liberty interests at work in this debate. Liberal activists and trial lawyers have a habit of demagoguing about liberty interests any time a particular class of individuals is singled out for "special treatment" by governing authorities. This approach fits neatly into their victimization theology and almost always passes under the radar of the activist media that enables them. Except when the victims are rich.

Ed Morrisey has done yeoman's work in breaking this hypocrisy (and the Washington Post's ridiculous reasoning) down to its elemental level:

This is part of the entire problem with the "progressive" tax system. It punishes people for success and is at its most basic a real consequence of a grievance mindset, in which life is a zero-sum game and winners "steal" from losers. As the economy itself has proven consistently, real wealth expands and standards of living increase for the entire population when capital is allowed to work in the markets. Soaking the rich reduces that capital and stymies the expansion of wealth and creation of new jobs. Government does not create wealth; it eats it...

....Nowhere in the Democrats' plan do they explain why 2.1 million Americans should have to pay to reform the health-care system for 300 million Americans, nor does the Post explain why 2.1 million Americans should have to pay for the massive deficits created by Democrats in Congress and Barack Obama.

Regardless of the outcome of the ObamaCare debate, it would be a victory for proponents of private sector wealth creation if it focuses the national debate on where the money comes from and how it should be spent. This country requires a long discussion (once again) about who produces this wealth and the obligations of those producers to the rest of society. One of the reasons for the ridicule and opprobrium directed toward the Tea Party movement (and the denigrating comments about John Galt) in the current political dialogue is that the opponents (i.e. appropriators) of private wealth creation are terrified that most middle class voters may find themselves someday to be another person's definition of "rich".

Congressman Kevin Brady and the Republican Joint Economic Committee have put together this handy chart (Adobe PDF) that traces the cashflow and bureaucratic command structure as proposed in the House Democrats' current health care overhaul plan.

Can we trust a bureaucracy this big to make timely and individualized decisions about something as paramount as our health care?

(h/t Drudge)

"Ultimately, this is not about a process, it's about results," David Axelrod, Obama's senior political strategist, said during an interview in his White House office. "If we're going to get this thing done, obviously time is a-wasting.

...."That's a test of bipartisanship -- whether you took ideas from both parties," Emanuel said. "At the end of the day, the test isn't whether they voted for it," he said, referring to Republicans. "The test is whether the final product represented some of their ideas. And I think it will."

Even the Washinton Post is beginning to doubt the wisdom of the massive tax increases Congress envisions to pay for ObamaCare:

The deeper issue, though, is whether it is wise to pay for a far-reaching new federal social program by tapping a revenue source (the "rich") that would surely need to be tapped if and when Congress and the Obama administration get serious about the long-term federal deficit.

....Pretending that "the rich" alone can fund government, let alone the kind of activist government that the president and Congress envision, is bad policy any way you look at it.

It's no mystery why the Democrats are rushing this legislation. Their political capital is diminishing at an alarming rate as the public comes to view the stimulus legislation as an abject failure and Cap and Trade as a massive regressive tax on consumers. It's now or never for the progressives on ObamaCare and therein is the opportunity for an opposition party. As they did on the stimulus bill, Republicans in the House should unanimously reject Obamacare. Even if the Democrats succeed in peeling off RINO Senators Snowe and Collins in the Senate, a united Republican opposition may pay off in 2010 as voters continue to witness double digit unemployment and flat to negative economic growth.

The urgency about health care legislation today is rooted in political expediency. Unlike the stimulus, where the perception of economic Armageddon was the hammer used to pass the legislation, there is no healthcare crisis. The crisis is the sinking ship of Democratic political capital, much of which has been squandered in record time by a Congress and President that are amazingly removed from the lives of their constituents. The urgency of the ObamaCare debate is exclusively an affliction of the Washington ruling class.

Democrats claim these tax increases on the rich won't do any economic harm. They should read the work of Christina Romer before she became chief White House economist. Ms. Romer and her husband, David Romer, a Berkeley economist, have published multiple studies on the impact of tax policy changes over the past 100 years. One of their findings is that "tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained and highly significant negative impact on output." In other words, tax hikes are an antistimulus.

Mr. Rangel and House Democrats are also banking on the idea that raising tax rates by 20% will raise 20% more tax revenue, but that's like telling Wal-Mart it can raise prices by 20% and get 20% more profit. When taxes on the rich rise, their reported income tends to decline. The last time the top federal income tax rate was 50%, the richest 1% paid only about 25% of all income taxes. Today, at a 35% rate they pay nearly 40%.

Of the more stunningly obtuse fiscal maneuvers by President Obama and the Democrats, massive tax hikes in the middle of a severe recession takes the prize. So consumed are they with zeal to redistribute income, Democrats are substantively killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. This might be riotously funny black comedy except that it's your job at stake. And speaking of jobs, Mort Zuckerman says the economy is even worse than we think:

The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.

The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent.

These are facts that should be carefully weighed by voters while Congress considers a list of new taxes.

I've been a nervous wreck about somethings, and it has blown my concentration to smithereens

I go for my back surgery tomorrow.

And I have to say, I am one nervous S.O.B.

Had to take another pre-surgery blood test due to my initial one coming back all screwy, so, in addition to worrying like a wuss about the surgery, I have these scenarios in my head of having leukemia or some other disease.

I know. Stupid of me. But I'm a certified hypochondriac at times.

My biggest worry is the anesthesia. Not getting enough and feeling the operation, or getting too much and I'll be in a drug-induced coma.

Or the surgeon flinching and I'll be dead from the legs down.

Feel free to ad any worst-case scenarios I may be missing.

I know. This stuff is done all the time. You're there one second, they drip some happy juice into you, count back from 100, and all the sudden you wake up in post-op, wondering what happened.

Anyway, it is supposed to be same day surgery, so God willing, I'll check in tomorrow and hopefully be able to write a bit.

Till then, wish me luck.

Shawn

Let's see:

• President Obama (when he was still candidate Obama) proposed assessing Social Security tax on annual payroll wages over $250,000. Currently, Social Security tax is not collected on wages over $102,000. Under Obama's proposal, incomes between $102,000 and $250,000 would still be protected from Social Security payroll taxes.
• President Obama has every intention of letting the tax rates established by President Bush for the top two income tax brackets expire in 2010. Those brackets, currently at 33% and 35%, will then rise to 36% and 39.5%.
• President Obama proposed capping the amount of deductions for mortgage interest, investment expenses, and charitable contributions at 28%.
• Democrats are now proposing a "surtax" on wealthy individuals earning over $280,000 and couples earning over $350,000. The surtax ranges between 1% and 3% based on income (or between 4% an 6%, depending on whose proposal you consider).

How does all of this add up? For very highly paid salaried employees, 6.5% of their income above $250,000 will be taken away via the proposed Social Security payroll deduction. Reducing the income tax deductions for mortgage interest, investment expenses, and charitable donations will lead to higher adjusted gross incomes, which will then be subjected to the higher rate of 39.5% for the top tax bracket. That higher adjusted income would also be subjected to the new healthcare surtaxes. It's not a stretch to also assume that tax increases at the local and state levels will be targeted primarily at those who earn over $200,000 a year.

Who really gets overwhelmed by these tax increases? Not the Warren Buffets, or Ted Turners, or Sumner Redstones. Not the Kennedys, not the Rockefellers, not the Hiltons or the Fords or the Heinz-Kerrys. Not the Oprahs or Michael Jordans or Arnold Schwartzeneggers. Not the John Thains or the Angelo Mozilos or Daniel Mudds or Carl Icahns. Not the Steven Spielbergs or Michael Eisners or David Geffens. Not the swank denizens of West Palm Beach or Beverly Hills or the Hamptons. Not the "old money," or the super rich.

The people who really get hammered by these huge tax increases are the people who came from middle class backgrounds, went to college and then graduate school and mastered a highly-specialized vocation (or became a successful entertainer or athlete, but not a superstar), or who have started their own businesses, and then worked very hard to earn a comfortable middle-six-figure income. They are the people who followed their dreams and fulfilled the wishes of their parents by studying, working hard, and finally achieving success. They are the dreamers of the American Dream. They are usually the first generation of their family to really "make it big." They are the people that our country is supposed to help build up and reward. And the Democrats are poised to snatch everything they have worked for right out from underneath them, and, for those right at the edge of top tax bracket, leave them worse off financially than those who earn tens of thousands of dollars a year less per year.

Victor Davis Hanson has been doing the math as well, and he gets the dynamics of the problem exactly right:

... the results of the Obama war against them are threefold: 1) in major key states, the productive minority's state income taxes will near or exceed 10%; their federal rates will go to 40%; the abolition of caps on FICA will ensure 15% plus of most of their income will go for new Medicare and Social Security bites; and they may well be eligible for a newly proposed punitive health-care surcharge tax of 4-6%.

If one were to add all that up (forget rises in sales taxes, inheritance taxes, luxury taxes, etc.), then one can get to 70% of one's income. So right this minute, the electrical contractor is thinking:

"I made $412,000 last year due to Saturday jobs, overtime, risky bidding, gambles on new equipment, and new lines of credit, but under Obama I will pay maybe $50-80,000 more of my income to the government. In other words the cost of, say, hiring two more entry-level electricians, or the cost of outfitting an entire new van with boom and equipment, or what I cleared every Saturday last year -- all that will go to the government."

And that means rippling throughout this key sector of the economy -- even before these taxes have been enacted -- are hesitation, stasis, and ultimately constriction -- at first for psychological reasons, soon confirmed by the actual facts of less money. In short, very bright people will be thinking how to hide income, how to barter, how to slow down and not produce goods and services, rather than blast full speed ahead and enrich angry others.

[...]

Final observations: Obama brilliantly conflated the Wall Street class with the upper-tier of Main Street in Animal Farm fashion: the former gets lectured, but stays enriched through bailouts; the latter takes both the moral hit for the former's crimes and greed and the actual hit in higher taxes.

(Nota bene: the new Democrats, in Prince Charles fashion, like the taste and culture of the hyper-rich, who care little about taxes, are sensitive behind their ramparts to the less well off, and know high-culture (think Streisand, Gates, Soros, the Georgetown/Hollwood/Silicon Valley, Upper East Side, Cambridge, Mass, set). These aristoi despise the wheeler-dealer, always on the move, uppity, wanna-get-rich scrambler that is desperately trying to get his get kid through Public U, and add a wing on his gross MacMansion, while towing his outboard up to the lake for five hours of water-skiing, without an opera, symphony, or NPR analysis on the radio).

As WizBang's own HughS and many others have repeatedly emphasized, nothing about the Obama Administration's (or the Democratic party's) economic plans is really meant to stimulate the economy. There is honestly no way that their plans can. The massive tax increases necessary to fund President Obama's benevolent socialist utopian fantasies will most likely keep the economy stagnant, as small business owners and skilled professionals begin to actively avoid risks and deliberately slow the growth of their businesses in order to keep from being overtaken by ever-increasing tax burdens.

For years, France has struggled with lackluster economic growth and unemployment permanently stuck between 8% and 10%. High taxes, draconian employment regulations, massive public welfare and pension schemes, and incredibly generous government-mandated employee benefits programs have created the perfect conditions for economic stagnation and an ever-growing population of permanently under-employed residents, particularly immigrants from Africa and Muslim nations.

If the Democrats succeed in stifling small business, leaving only their valued constituencies in Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government largely in charge of planning our economy, then we will be headed directly down the road traveled by European socialist democracies during the 1960's and 1970's.

Many of those nations have seen the error of their ways, and are now employing free market economic solutions like cutting tax rates, limiting regulations in order to increase competition, and encouraging greater private investments in formerly state-managed businesses entities.

How long before America understands that it is currently traveling backward with respect to economic progress, not forward?

As a result, one Saudi feminist is trying to draw international attention to how oppressive the Saudi rules are toward women. From CNN (Link via Hot Air):

Wajeha al-Huwaider picked up her passport, got in a taxi, and headed from her home in eastern Saudi Arabia to the nearby island kingdom of Bahrain -- a 45-minute drive that many Saudis take to get away for the weekend.

Despite having a valid passport, Saudi authorities at the border sent al-Huwaider home. That's because in Saudi Arabia, a woman needs permission from her male guardian before she can leave the country.

Al-Huwaider -- a vocal women's rights activist in Saudi Arabia -- knew before she left that she would be turned away at the border. Her attempted trip was simply to make a point about the Saudi guardianship system that she says "controls all aspects of women's lives."

"Either you treat us like mature citizens or let us leave the country (permanently)," she told CNN.

She's urging all Saudi women who are tired of "being oppressed" to go "to any border and try to cross it without permission from their male relative."

She wants to end Saudi Arabia's strict guardianship laws in which women must get permission from their husband, father, or closest male relative before doing the most mundane of tasks -- including working outside the home, going to school, maintaining a bank account, or leaving the country for a weekend getaway.

I can't imagine living in a country where I had absolutely no rights and the men viewed me as a piece of property. The men clearly hate women so much they don't want to so much as look at them in public, which is why women must be fully covered. Take a look at Saudi Arabia's "Miss Beautiful Morals." She's praised because she submits to being reduced to nothing but a shadow with no identity whatsoever. Then again, she doesn't have a choice really. If she wants to have any kind of life at all, she has to submit to the rules the men have made for her.

Women are blamed if they are raped. Women are killed if they do anything that the men think have brought shame on them. I am convinced that if the men in these cultures could manage to propagate the male population without the assistance of women, they would get rid of the girls and women all together.

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.'

This snappy riposte has disappeared from the discussion of that war in the wake of General Petreus' successful surge strategy. However, I think it's time to bring the phrase back as a useful term to describe both the responsibility and consequences that should attach to the Obama administration's handling of the economy.

Last 4th of July weekend Vice President Biden told ABC's George Stephanopoulos:

"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," Biden told me during our exclusive "This Week" interview in Iraq.

Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package.

Too optimistic? And who is this "everyone else [who] misread the economy"? It's an important question because this is what Biden told Stephanopoulos last December 19, 2008:

Vice President-Elect Joe Biden said the U.S. economy is in danger of "absolutely tanking" and will need a second stimulus package in the $600-billion to $700-billion range.

"The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in," Biden told me during an exclusive interview -- his first since becoming vice president-elect-- to air this Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

As Jennifer Rubin notes, there are two problems at work here:

...But worse than the policy problem [failed stimulus] is the credibility problem. As both Herbert and Boehner point out, the administration has resorted to lying. It is not that the president and his advisors failed to comprehend the magnitude of the economic crisis. It is that they got the solution wrong, and now they refuse to admit the mistake. It may not be long before the Washington press corps start hounding Obama, as they did George W. Bush, to admit "error."

It's obvious by Biden's own words above that the Obama administartion knew exactly how bad the problem was in 2008. They simply prescribed the wrong solution and voters now know it. Vice President Biden is simply betting no one remembers what he said six months ago. It is our pleasure to remind the Vice President and his boss that they too must abide by pottery barn rules: They broke the economy and now they own it.

To some degree, such artists of malice are an evil we must endure; the same protection of freedom which allows one idiot to dress up as Hitler and stomp down a street on the one hand, allows David Letterman to prove himself a moronic misogynist and thug on a nightly basis on the other. But a line has been crossed when elected officials act in such manner. Without naming names, it is sadly obvious that the political world has degenerated to such a condition. We now have the closest thing to one-party rule with deliberate public disparagement of all disagreement for the first time in two generations. And as long as the public puts up with such behavior, it will remain the new standard, or become even fouler.

Here are the winning entries:

1) (retired military) - "Obama tries to imitate the first black president."

2) (Mabeldog) - "Hey, baby! Once you go 1/16th black, you never go back!"

3) (Jeff) - "President Barack Obama is struck by a shot from the assy knoll"

4) (hpb) - "Obama considers Stimulus 2.0"

5) (Gmac) - "Damn, that's going to cost me another trip out to eat somewhere exotic."

6) (Jeff Blogworthy) - "That puts a twinge in my surrender monkey."

The Readers Choice Award this week goes to:

(retired military) - "Obama leans to the right for the first time since he was elected President."

That's all for this weekend. A new edition of the Wizbang Weekend Caption Contest™ will debut Friday morning.

Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that (Holder) is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. ...."I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

Uh huh. Only Newsweek would repeat this propganda verbatim but, make no mistake,the official rehabilitation of Nancy Pelosi has begun. Does the timing of these revelations strike anyone as suspicious? Think for a moment about the Realpolitik involved here and focus on the fact that the Obama adminstartion would crawl over broken glass to distract the public's attention from a failed stimulus, failed cap and trade, fading ObamaCare, sinking polls and a cratering economy. What makes me think this would have been front page news last weekend if Sarah Palin hadn't made her announcement?

Let's assume just for fun that AG Holder actually is operating independently. Who will be the actual targets of this investigation? George Bush? Not likely given the protections of executive priveledge. Dick Cheney? Not likely for the same reasons. President Bush's advisors? Not likely either, for reasons that are protected by executive priveldge and lack of evidence (they did nothing wrong). Congress?.... (OK, that was a joke.) Which CIA do we believe, the one that sabotagued President Bush or the one that allegedly lied to Nancy Pelosi?

The entire torture prosecution meme, and the Potemkin Panetta "lying to Congress" Theatre, is all part of a two scene drama: the rehabilitation of Nancy Pelosi and the diversion of attention from a failing Obama policy in multiple areas. The torture debate was settled months ago but the egos in the Democratic Congress and a sinking Obama presidency require a new distraction now that Sarah Palin is off the front page.