Conservative activist and Ann Coulter critic Daniel Borchers is calling CPAC’s decision not to invite Coulter to speak at this year’s conference “a fraud” because it is allowing her to host a parallel “Q & A session” there. When asked if CPAC was trying to have it both ways with Coulter, American Conservative Union president David Keene dodged the question, but held out the possibility that she’d be invited in 2009:

We just decided that, given the agenda and all that we had going on this year, there was not a reason to invite her. … She wasn’t suggested this year. That doesn’t mean she won’t be invited again next year.

In congressional testimony yesterday, CIA director Michael Hayden confirmed that his agency used waterboarding on three al Qaeda suspects. In 2006, Hayden banned the use of waterboarding in CIA interrogations. The Pentagon also banned its employees from using it, and the FBI said its investigators do not use coercive tactics in interviewing terror suspects.

But in today’s gaggle, White House said that it may approve the use of waterboarding again “depend[ing] upon circumstances”:

“It will depend upon circumstances,” spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding “the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider.”

Later, in a press briefing, Fratto tried to distance himself from these remarks, claiming that he only was talking about “the process” of approving waterboarding. “I’m not speculating,” he declared. Watch it:

Fratto said this morning that if used again, waterboarding would “need the president’s approval,” and the White House would notify “appropriate members of Congress.”

Last week, Attorney General Michael Mukasey repeatedly refused to declare the practice illegal. Yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden “left open the option of reinstating it.”

Despite its hedging, the White House made clear today it very well may commit illegal torture again.

Digg It!

UPDATE: Jack Balkin has more.

Transcript: Read more

Calling into Fox and Friends this morning, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly discussed the prospect of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) potentially debating on Fox News. O’Reilly said he expects “both Obama and Hillary Clinton to be respectful to the Fox News Channel.” “If you dodge us, it is at your peril,” he added. Watch it:

O’Reilly also claimed that Fox “has treated both candidates fairly,” apparently forgetting the network’s pushing of the false madrassa story.

UPDATE: In June, when Democrats refused to debate on Fox, Fox CEO Roger Ailes claimed that “the candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda.”

Via Ezra Klein, George Packer gets into my favorite hobby of wondering why comparing someone to JFK is supposed to me a good thing:

J.F.K. was a mediocre President. For two and a half years his position on civil rights was legalistic—he stood up for enforcing court orders—until the dramatic images from Birmingham in May 1963 forced him to describe the issue as a moral one. The civil-rights bill he then introduced into Congress stood little chance of passing partly because Kennedy was unwilling to spend the huge amount of necessary political capital. For those who believe he was on his way out of Vietnam when he was assassinated, how to explain the dramatic coup three weeks before his death that overthrew the government of Ngo Dinh Diem and pulled the U.S. ever deeper into the quagmire? Kennedy’s main domestic accomplishment was a tax cut; his main foreign accomplishment was avoiding nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba (his finest hour).

All I’d observe is that it’s actually common for invocations of the heroes of the past to be someone vacuous. FDR-praising liberals typically don’t have the details of the New Deal legislative program in mind or any particular inclination to reinstitute something like the National Industrial Recovery Act. Similarly, it’s been noted ad nauseam that the historical Ronald Reagan doesn’t greatly resemble the Reagan Myth the right has constructed. At the end of the day, there’s probably not much point in worrying too much about the strict accuracy of our comparisons.