January 01, 2010 PBS The McLaughlin Group
(Nicole:) Ah...the end of the year brings with it the recaps and "best of" and "worst of" lists. Of course, when you're on the McLaughlin Group, the bests generally include Republicans and the worsts are invariably Democrats. Funny how that works.
From some serious gloating of nothing but Republican political superstars to watch (Carly Fiorina, really? The woman drove HP into the ground and we're supposed to find her a credible legislator? And Jenny Sanford as the new Governor of South Carolina? Is is to laugh.) and Democrats destined for oblivion (I'd love to see Rahm take a hike, but I'm not seeing it happen), the segment is nothing but laughable and predictable partisanship, with the stunning exception of Pat Buchanan denouncing Sen. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" episode as the worst of political theater.
In the "Scandals" segment, Buchanan blows any good will by using the ludicrous e-mail tampering as proof needed to deny global climate change. The rest of the scandals are predictable: Eleanor Clift picks John Ensign, Monica Crowley goes the deficit route (funny how that didn't bother her during Bush's two terms), and Mort Zuckerman chooses Charlie Rangel. But John McLaughlin is not having any of that. To John, the worst scandal of the year is Attorney General Eric Holder investigating torture.
Um...say what? We can spend years and millions of dollars investigating whether Clinton was a cheating dog, but investigating whether or not we have violated our own treaties by torturing people (keep in mind Maher Arar was completely innocent and tortured until he gave a false confession)...now THAT'S SCANDALOUS.
Ugh, the humanity.
