Tonight on the NewsHour, Ray was moderating the weekly “analysis of Shields and [Lowry]” (in for David Brooks). They talked about Mukasey and waterboarding. Then, Ray attempted to turn the conversation to the President’s statement that he would not nominate a successor to Gonzalez, if in fact Mukasey was not confirmed; and that he would be using more Executive Orders to get his policies enacted rather than dealing with Congress at all. (Gah!)
Lowry’s answer, after a perfunctory, “in [the] waning months…you saw the same thing with the Clinton Administration…you turn to executive orders.” (Clinton did it too!!!) Then, bizarrely, he said “Just to go back to waterboarding…I don’t think it’s torture.” (WTF! OK Rich, why don’t you sign up at SERE?) Then he reiterated that KSM is a bad, bad man and exposing him to “2 minutes of panic” is ok.
But Ray, in a priceless maneuver, turned to Shields with a wry smile, and said, “Oh yes, we were talking about the President and his relationship with Congress, before Rich took us back to torture.” Mark went on to make his curmudgeonly point: “The President has no relationship with Congress.” (][He's] for torture and against children’s health care”. Awesome!)
IMO, Lowry is a weenie and should be slapped down like that much more often!
(PS, why did Rich choose the word “straddle” in describing HRC’s debate performance. Not “equivocate”? Ay.)
