Raising the question of whether she’s actually been paying attention to the news this week, this morning on Fox News Liz Cheney attacked the Obama administration’s handling of attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad as “insufficient,” insisting that the administration’s “first instinct is to inform him [Shahzad] that he’s got the right to remain silent”:

CHENEY: When the administration captures a terrorist and their first instinct is to inform him that he’s got the right to remain silent, that is exactly the wrong way to win this war. When we capture a terrorist, our first instinct has got to be: How do we understand the networks to which this terrorist is connected? How do we understand where he was trained? How do we understand who the leadership is? The administration is approaching this, and again this morning you had John Brennan saying, “Well, this was one-off because he drove the truck alone.” That doesn’t even make sense, it’s inexplicable. But if you aren’t willing to acknowledge that you’re facing a committed network of terrorists as your enemies, and that it’s radical jihadist Islam, then your response to that is gonna be, by definition, insufficient time and time again.

Watch it:

What’s inexplicable is why Liz Cheney is treated as a national security expert. First of all, informing a suspect — in this case, a U.S. citizen — of his or her right to remain silent is the law. It says an enormous amount (none of it good) about Cheney’s understanding of and respect for that law that she thinks that the administration’s concern for it should be grounds for attack.

Second, the fact of the matter — which by now should be well known by anyone claiming to be interested in keeping America safe — is that when Faisal Shahzad was apprehended (just over 53 hours of having parked his vehicle in Times Square), the arresting agents invoked the “security exception” in order to immediately question Shahzad about imminent threats before informing him of his right to remain silent.

Asked on Friday whether Mirandizing Shahzad had impeded the ongoing investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “No, it did not. As we have seen in prior investigations, the giving of Miranda warnings has not deterred people from talking to us, and Mr. Shahzad is, in fact, continuing to cooperate with us.” But, in Liz Cheney’s world, this represents a failure.

There’s really no mystery as to why Cheney says these things. She’s a political hack trying to boost her career and her father’s tragic legacy, for whom no attack on Obama is too specious or dishonest. The question is whether she’ll ever agree to appear on a forum where her arguments can actually be challenged, or stay within the safe confines of the Fox News bubble. Rachel Maddow has repeatedly invited her on her show, but Cheney has, unsurprisingly, yet to accept.

Conservatives have responded to the massive economic crisis in Greece — which is spreading to the rest of Europe — by trying to score political points against President Obama’s domestic economic policies. This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace and Liz Cheney pushed the myth that the United States was “bailing out” Greece, and Cheney even suggested that America adopt Greek-like austerity measures to counter the budget deficit:

CHENEY: When you look at the question over whether the US tax payer ought to be contributing to bailing out Greece, I think you also got to say wait a second at the same time that we are looking to put $7 billion to bail out Greece… we’ve got the same types of policies being put in place here in the United States that frankly are much more likely to lead us down the path that we see Greece on.

Mara Liasson pushed back, noting that the notion that the U.S. was bailing out Greece was nothing more than a great conservative “talking point.” Watch it:

The U.S. — along with many other countries– is a contributor to the International Monetary Fund, which serves as a lender of last resort to countries in crisis in order to prevent these crises from spreading worldwide. By Cheney’s standard every Administration in the last 60 years since the IMF was created, including the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations, have “bailed out” countries.

Cheney’s suggestion that the United States adopt the kind of “austerity” measures being enacted in Greece, moreover, would lead to absolute economic catastrophe. Greece is expected to experience massive economic contraction and if the U.S. were to follow that approach, it would fall back into a deep recession.

Still, Cheney contends that America’s deficits will lead to a Greek-like tragedy. But as Marshal Auerback notes, the problem isn’t Greece’s debt per say but its inability to service that debt, because it both doesn’t control its currency (the Euro) and because its economy is contracting. The United States is in no danger of defaulting — the American economy is growing and due to fears over the Euro, investors are boosting the value of the dollar.

In fact, what the crisis has actually shown is the failure of conservative approaches to economic crises. Contrary to most conceptions, Germany’s leadership has long adopted a conservative approach to the crisis, resisting economic stimulus or providing economic support to other European countries. As a result, the crisis has gotten worse and now threatens to spread to other Southern European countries, putting the Euro currency and the entire global economy at risk. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has finally awoken to the danger and has now belatedly agreed to a massive bailout for Greece – one that is considerably larger than what would have been needed if she acted sooner.

But conservatives in America are still holding on to their failed economic dogma. As Dave Weigel notes, “Greece is the new France” meaning that “Greece is now the nation whose name Republicans invoke to make the case against Democratic policies.”