Yes, Joan, the man is competent and popular... at bean counting.

Ya think the guy chosen to head up the intelligence community for the most important country in the free world MIGHT wanna know SOMETHING about intelligence? Duh-uh. Sorry, Joan, but simply coming out against torture, detention and interrogation policies does not an intelligence expert make. And this country both needs and deserves the most knowledgeable person possible. Especially in today's post 9/11 environment.

However, following own your convoluted logic, if the day ever comes that you need open heart surgery, I'm sure you won't hesitate to hire the best accountant you can find to perform the operation.

Hooray for Barack Obama. A student of history.

Tax cuts work.

The argument that cutting taxes will jump-start the economy is true enough, but they’ve never diminished Democratic demagoguery that tax cuts favor the "rich" and create huge deficits. These are "class-war" arguments. And liberals love them. They’re also fiction. But this only makes them that much easier to sell to a public that still believes that the Democrats ended the Depression in the 1930s.

The truth is that when Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, there were 11.5 million people unemployed. Four years later when he ran for re-election there were still 11.5 million unemployed. In the end, what lifted us out of the Depression was the country's growing involvement in the World War II marketplace.

Three times in recent history we’ve seen what cutting taxes achieves.

President Kennedy cut tax rates and the economy zoomed. President Reagan, assuming office during a recession caused by President Richard Nixon's Keynesianism and President Jimmy Carter's disastrous "stagflation," drastically cut taxes. And as any economist (other than Paul Krugman) would have predicted, the lower rates strongly stimulated the economy and even brought in more revenue.

The Bush tax cuts have helped us overcome three disastrous financial setbacks. 1) The recession that began during Clinton’s last year in office, caused by the tech bubble burst that resulted in the NASDAQ dropping from 5000 to under 1500 points. 2) The Corporate crash and burns (a la Enron) resulting from the excesses and outright greed of the 90’s. 3) The devastating economic crash in the wake of 9/11.

I think the WSJ evaluated the effect of the Bush tax cuts with the most specificity at the end of 2007, several years after the cuts were implemented:

“Here's the surge you aren't reading about: the continuing flood of tax revenue into the federal Treasury. Tax receipts for April were $70 billion above the same month in 2006, and April 24 marked the single biggest day of tax collections in U.S. history, at $48.7 billion, according to the latest Treasury report. ... Revenues for the first seven months of fiscal 2007 are up 11.3%, or $153 billion. This Beltway bonanza has helped to slash the projected federal budget deficit by more than half from the same point last year. Across the past three Aprils, federal red ink has sunk by nearly $300 billion. The deficit this year could tumble to $150 billion, or an economically trivial 1% of GDP.”

This country was well into a vibrant recovery until the day we found out what a great job Barney Frank, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, had be doing in “overseeing” government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What a disaster both he and Chris Dodd have been. They almost single handedly laid the foundation for a house of cards that has finally fallen. And fallen hard. But we can't talk about that. They're Democrats, you see. Let's do a fluff piece featuring Barney Frank on 60 minutes instead.

Barack Obama, I applaud you.

Sorry, Joan, but those were only Panetta’s words -- NOT his deeds. Because when Panetta served as Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff, Slick Willie and your boy Leon instituted the administration’s policy of “Rendition” -- with the help of national security adviser Sandy Berger and terrorism adviser Richard Clark.

They designed this policy so that they could torture terrorist detainees without having to get their hands dirty. Instead, they simply outsourced the torture to several Middle Eastern countries -- usually Egypt. Then the prisoners were subjected to a level of torture that made CIA waterboarding seem like Sunday brunch.

One of these detainees, Abu Omar, described his years of torture at the hands of Egypt’s security services. It seems his arms were spread out in a crucifixion position and tied to a metal door as electric shocks were fired into his nipples and genitals. He further described how he was raped on two different occasions and also mentioned, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings. Not to mention the fact that he still wakes up at night screaming.

These detainees were tortured with the knowledge, acquiescence and sometimes even the participation of United States agencies without due legal process in countries that had no human rights protections -- all under the Clinton Rendition Policy.

And yes, Joan, Leon Panetta knew all about it. So please go peddle your crap about Panetta changing the way the intelligence community does business elsewhere.

My comments are based on hard facts that help expose what a lazy, uninformed, partisan hack Joan Walsh is each and every day she attempts to be a journalist. That is -- when she's not a kowtowing to Chris Matthews as the same lazy, uniformed, partisan hack on "Hardball." She's really quite pathetic. And only getting worse.