Blinked

It's been one of the craziest weeks in recent American pop/politics history and, yes, I've chosen to focus on American Idol and Dick Cheney. Two of our finest media constructs. I can't help finding both so compelling, one for the hope, the other for the fear. And I believe the cat is out of the bag, with Liz Cheney revealing that the reason she and her father are both more out than Adam Lambert right now is because they are afraid, not for the country, but for his sorry ass:

Vice President Dick Cheney decided to speak out after learning that President Barack Obama might open prosecutions of former Bush Administration officials, his daughter disclosed Thursday.

Elizabeth Cheney told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that her father decided to speak out after he learned there was a possibility of legal action.

Which is exactly what should happen if someone abuses a powerful office and manufacture a fraudulent interpretation of the law to cover for their illegal actions. More developments this week include former Homeland Security Chairman, Republican Tom Ridge shooting down the Cheney tentpole argument that we're somehow less safe than under his regime; former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson fingering Cheney to the point of giving orders without informing his boss, then-President Bush (per my fisking of Cheney's tangled statement on the matter); and the waterboarding of a conservative radio personality who lasted six seconds and immediately decried it as torture:



What's important about populist conservative influencers like Mancow doing the now almost cliche waterboard-me stunt is that it yanks away perhaps the key tentpole of the Cheney Family argument, their dismissive wave that waterboarding is not torture. For they are even unwilling to admit that waterboarding is torture, which some of their fellow travelers have while still defending it, as if that first brick will bring the whole house tumbling down.

Like I always say, when you hear "enhanced interrogation technique" think "torture" -- and watch how much she blinks when called on it:



Ending with a debater's trick even lame for high school, Liz Cheney reinforces herself as liar, in the service of another, her dad.

How moving it might be, if not so criminal.