Recycling Political Trash

I know that the whole idea of columns is that they are supposed to be written by people with strong opinions, but frankly I fail to see the need for a "liberal" quality newspaper such as The Washington Post to hire an apologist for a war crimes and tortures to write one of their weekly columns. Yet they apparently hired George W. Bush's former chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen :

In the past, Thiessen has written in support of torture, and is now making the rounds to promote his new book: “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.” The title shouldn't be a surprise considering that Thiessen declared that “Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office” just days after inauguration. (Politico)

Thiessen ... has spent the entirety of his post-Bush administration career attempting to defend the use of torture by his former boss. I'd have to say the highlight would be the time he argued that torturing Muslim terrorist suspects was necessary because of their religion -- and since that column appeared in the Post, I'm guessing Hiatt thinks there's something to this. Clearly, Hiatt felt that between Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol and Richard Cohen he still didn't have the whole "I heart torture" contingent covered. (Adam Serwer in The American Prospect)

This happens after the WaPo already hired another former G.W. Bush's chief speech writer Michael Gerson, the man who apparently came up with the phrase "Axis of Evil" and has a certain talent for re-writing the truth.

So what is it with the Washington Post - have they now become a recyle bin for political failures? Of course, the WaPo ditorial page editor is Fred Hiatt, himself a neoconservative in foreign policy and strong supporter of the war Iraq.

The recycle bin has extented to the whole so-called liberal media, - at least according to the calculations of Steven Benen in The Washinton Monthly:

It's been tough to keep up with all of them, but the list [of staff of the Bush White House in the mainstream media] is getting pretty long:
Dana Perino (Fox News), Michael Gerson (Washington Post), Mary Matalin (CNN), Sara Taylor (MSNBC), Tony Snow (CNN), Frances Fragos Townsend (CNN), Nicole Wallace (CBS News), Dan Bartlett (CBS News), Jeff Ballabon (CBS News), Tony Fratto (CNBC), Juan Carlos Zarate (CBS News), Karl Rove (Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal), and now Thiessen.

Meanwhile political recycle bin in France is not the media but the court although it does not necessarily work for every politician.

If we ever worried about politicians being out of work.......