That Panetta pick

Andrew,

I agree with you on the Panetta pick, and simply don't see Josh Marshall's point that the pick is "the first story of 2009 that's a real story rather than mere theater or ephemeral drama."

It simply isn't true that this issue has any meat at all. We're seeing the pique of DiFi who wasn't consulted over the selection and no more. But isn't this the same person who rolled over, along with the rest of her party, on the many questions of torture, expansion of power, Gitmo's closure, and so on? Sure, she wanted the Army Field Manual to be used as the basis for conducting interviews, but (as usual), the Dems folded on nearly every question of any significance on the point over years.

And the problems with the CIA aren't mechanical ones, they are political ones. Just as we probably don't want to have a line assembly worker running General Electric, we don't need to have a spook running the CIA, when the problem isn't that the Executive Branch doesn't know enough about the CIA but that there isn't enough distance between them.

Your pal,

Fred