Just an amusing little nugget from Monday's "Balance of Power" live chat with Tucker Carlson and Ana Marie Cox at washingtonpost.com:
New York: I'm going to rob a bank and shoot the security guard on the way out, and when I get home cheat on my taxes and then beat my wife and children, but it's all okay: I told Nancy Pelosi about it first.
Tucker Carlson: Good plan. Did she try to stop you? Alert the authorities? Tell anyone at all about your plans? If not, she's an accessory to your crimes. So at least you'll have company in prison.
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Anonymous: "Good plan. Did she try to stop you? Alert the authorities?"
Um, Tucker, you can't alert the authorities when the authorities are the one committing the torture.
Tucker Carlson: The ultimate authority is the public. Pelosi could have held a press conference or called the New York Times. She didn't. She's complicit.
Asheville, N.C.: What's the reason that the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to which we are a signatory, is being slighted in the local debate on that subject? How do you avoid a treaty commitment to prosecute for this when it is warranted?
Tucker Carlson: Short answer: Because it's a joke. Other signatories to CAT include Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan, and a lot of other places you stand a good chance of being tortured to death by the secret police. So like a lot the United Nations does, it doesn't mean much. Remember when Zimbabwe had a seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights?
Happy Monday, by the way.
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Tucker Carlson: I certainly agree that majority approval is not proof of wisdom....
I'm not for torture, but you're right that a lot of the recent outrage does seem simplistic and childish.
I see what you're doing there, Tucker. It's the Tucker two-step. When Republicans stand accused of violating the U.N. Convention Against Torture...pfft....the law - "it's a joke", "it doesn't mean much." Outrage for violating the law is "simplistic and childish." But if a Democrat (Nancy Pelosi) possibly knew about the torture - she's complicit! Lock her up and throw away the key! Complicit with what, Tucker? Violating the "joke" law?
I mean, there has to be a crime to have something to be complicit in, right? What's the crime, Tucker? And who committed it? And if there is no crime, if torture is not a crime, what did Pelosi do wrong?
Tucker is too clever by half. If it's wrong to know about torture and not say something, then surely it is orders of magnitude worse to order and implement the torture. And when Tucker snarled "She's complicit" - he indicted all of the Bush torturers. If not revealing knowledge about crimes that are to be committed in the future makes Pelosi "an accessory to your crimes"...that means, clearly, that Tucker believes that torture is a crime. He is saying that Nancy Pelosi is complicit - is an accessory to a crime - the crime of torture. The crime of torture committed by the Bush Administration.
I'm surprised Ana Marie did not immediately skewer him on his patent logical flaw.
One might call his partisan outrage against Pelosi...oh, I don't know...simplistic? childish?
Thank you for playing, Tucker. Better luck next time.