Torture-Tape Gate Fallout ~ Jane Harman, & Special Commentary from Robert Novak

California Democrat Jane Harman, graduate of Harvard Law, & one of the exalted Congressional "Gang of Eight" we seem to have no choice but to trust to vet secret info too sensitive to national security for us to know about (for our own good, y'understand) revealed in the wake of yesterday's news that she knew about the CIA torture tapes, & their destruction did ~ well, nothing really.

Law professor Marty Lederman takes her task on Yale law professor Jack Balkin's Balkinization blog with the headline "Proof Positive that the Intelligence Oversight System is Hopelessly Compromised." Read the letter she wrote to the CIA about the torture tapes & Lederman's comments: http://balkin.blogspot.com/

Twitter of the Day: Robert Novak's conspiracy theory ~ the CIA as a "rogue agency" refusing to take direction from anyone ~

Laff-off: Robert Novak, ever the faithful shill for Bushco, & a man with an uncanny *entirely coincidental* talent for being at the center of whatever propaganda storm the Administration seems to benefit by, posits in an op-ed in the WaPo that Bush is the victim of a "rogue CIA," rather than the man whose White House made torture legally tenable in the 1st place.

Will Novak be telling us next that Gonzales, Addington, Yoo, Cheney & Meyers, who had, after all, something to do (we know not what, exactly, yet) with the White House push to justify the unthinkable in contravention of international law are entirely independent "rogues," too?

Even funnier, Republican Congresscritter Peter Hoekstra ~ yes, credible, reasonable, mild-mannered Hoekstra, backs him up, or appears to have fed him the "story." Pffft!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/23/AR2007122302073.html