5/19/2009

When Newt Gingrich Was Condemning the FBI, It Was A-Ok:
In a confluence of incompetence and evil the likes of which hasn't been seen since, well, probably this year's Republican National Convention, former Speaker of the House and possible Future of the GOP Newt Gingrich appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox "news" show. It was not unlike watching two drunk guys stare at themselves in a mirror as they perform self-fellatio and then insist that they're totally not gay.

Gingrich was there to sing his new single, "Boom Boom Pelosi," wherein he says, "Well, the first thing is, you know, all around the world, the young men and women who are risking their lives today trying to protect this country. And now they've got to look over their shoulder and wonder whether the third ranking politician in the country is going to throw them away. You know, she's not just a member of the House. She's in the Constitution. The Speaker of the House is the third ranking person to be president of the United States. She's a potential commander and chief. And she defamed, she smeared every single person that works for the CIA everywhere in the world. And I think that undermines their morale."

That would be because Pelosi made the seemingly obvious statement that the CIA misleads Congress "all the time." Um, they're spies. Misleading is part of what they do.

Still, this would be the same Newt Gingrich who, when he was a member of Congress and Speaker of the House back in the mid-1990s (a time that really seems a century ago, although if it were, Gingrich would presumably be dead now), viciously savaged the FBI and its director, Louis Freeh, over a variety of events, including the raid on Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco and the bullshit -gates, Travel and File.

Indeed, Gingrich not only held up an anti-terror bill President Bill Clinton wanted in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, but he also said on Meet the Press in May 1995, "We have to understand that there is, in rural America, a genuine -- particularly in the West -- a genuine fear of the Federal Government and of Washington, D.C., as a place that doesn't understand their way of life and doesn't understand their values." Gingrich pointed directly to actions by the FBI as to why such "fear" existed. And he supported hearings on what happened at Waco, two years after the fact.

In other words, titanic asshole Newt Gingrich thinks that if Nancy Pelosi says the CIA misleads Congress, it doesn't mean that there should be hearings into the substance of what she's alleging. It means she should resign as Speaker of the House. But when he was Speaker of the House and saying to the media that the FBI was incompetent and a threat to Americans, it didn't mean he was undermining the FBI agents' morale and he should resign. No, then it meant that Congress ought to investigate.

Could someone, somewhere tell this tubby, hypocritical fucker to go the fuck away? Wait, no. Instead, please let him run for president in 2012.