Sam Stein
Newt Gingrich Throws Bombs At "McCarthyist," "Radical" Obama (VIDEO)
VIDEO at link~
05/10/09 11:05 AM
In an interview that was fiery even by his standards, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accused the Obama administration of coddling terrorists, labeled the idea of investigating the Bush administration as modern day "McCarthyism," and falsely charged that the Democratic-controlled Congress never tried to outlaw torture.
It was, if nothing else, a tour de force in oppositional politics. Sitting down with "Fox News Sunday," Gingrich insisted that the former firm of Attorney General Eric Holder had represented 17 alleged terrorists on a pro-bono basis. "For no fee," he added, for good measure. "It is the largest single thing they were doing for free, defending Yemenis."
Firms like Holder's Covington & Burling, of course, have represented alleged terrorist under the notion that everyone deserves a legal defense, not out of some shared ideology or political sympathies. But context and clarification weren't Gingrich's order of business on Sunday. There was, he claimed, a "weird pattern" of the current White House being on the wrong side in the war on terror.
"You look at this administration," he said. "You look at the Obama administration, the number of attorneys that have been appointed who were defending alleged terrorists. There's this weird pattern where the Bush people wanted to defend Americans and were pretty tough on terrorists. These guys are prepared to take huge risks with Americans in order to defend terrorists."
And yet, even as he was asking the Obama administration lawyers whether they are now or have ever been representing terrorists, Gingrich managed to make accusations of McCarthyism. On the topic of investigating the authorization of torture by the Bush administration, he claimed: "What we're seeing now in a very sad way is as bitter a partisan attack on the Bush people, as much as we've seen since the McCarthy era. The degree that they're putting specific people at risk for criminal prosecution is unprecedented in modern America."
more...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/10/newt-gingrich-throws-kitc_n_201314.html