This morning on “Face The Nation,” Bob Schieffer demonstrated the core competency of most Sunday talk show hosts– familiarity with the latest right-wing lies.

Schieffer first interviewed defeated presidential candidate Senator John McCain, who dismissed the suggestion of inquiries into the Bush administration’s rampant lawbreaking as a desire to “settle old political scores.” Then Schieffer brought on Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [transcript (PDF)], who has called for a commission to investigate the Bush crimes.

Excerpt, with emphasis added:

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let– let me just ask about you this part, I mean, is there anything else to know here?

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: Oh, yes. There– a lot is made of the fact that– well, we have pictures from Abu Ghraib, we have the waterboard memos. We– we know the people did not tell the truth when they said we weren’t doing that. We know they weren’t telling the truth when they said well, you only had to waterboard once or twice and got everything you needed. We– we know that’s not the truth.

But, I want to know who was it who made the decisions that we’ll violate our own laws, we’ll violate our own treaties, we’ll even violate our own constitution. That we don’t know. We don’t know what that chain of command was.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, is there the risk? I mean, and you know the argument you– we’ve been hearing it all that– that we somehow criminalize our political system. I mean, you know, in banana republics one group throws out the other group and they put them all in jail and then they stay there till somebody else comes along and throws them in jail

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: (Overlapping) But I’m not–

BOB SCHIEFFER: Are we going down that kind of trail here?

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: No. I think not. And I– you know, I’ve heard the talking point that’s– usually by people who are afraid they may be looked are the ones making that– making that argument. But I’m not out for some kind of vengeance and, certainly, if you have people in the field who are told here are the orders from the White House, here is a legal memo telling you what to do and how to do it. Now, nobody is going to prosecute them, although, I would note that when FBI agents were there and they saw what was being done, when they reported back to the headquarters, FBI director Mueller said, “No, you can’t do that. That violates our own rules. That violates our understanding of the law. You have step back” and they did till there were some who knew that.

What I want to know–who were the people in the Office of Legal Counsel, in the President’s Counsel office, even in the Justice Department who knew this was against the law and still told people to go and break the law? I’m more concerned about those people than I’m going after somebody in the field.

Where do you suppose Bob Schieffer got the bizarre idea that the United States of America might turn into a “banana republic” if we make some attempt to return to the rule of law? From the Banana Republicans, of course…

When President Obama issued his first set of executive orders in January, Rush Limbaugh feared the new standard of openness might lead to public revelations of Bush crimes… and then we’d be a banana republic!

What I’m afraid of is that what Obama did with this executive order is actually make it easier for the media to go get Bush documents. Because you know Pelosi and some of the guys over in Congress are talking about war crimes trials and charges and so forth. [...]

What I’m afraid of is what Obama’s done here is made the gathering of the information for this kind of stuff– This is not American. This is not America. This is not what America does. We don’t– This is banana republic kind of stuff.

This month, Senator McCain told Faux News (video) that releasing torture memos “adds fuel to the fire of demands for criminalizing the legal advice that the President was given. If we set that kind of precedent, then we’re no better than a banana republic.”

Oh, and none other than Karl Rove put out this exact same line of bullshit (forgetting that Chicago is actually a city in the USA):

“[W]e’re going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses. … [T]hat might be fine in some little Latin American country that’s run by, you know, the latest junta — it may be the way that they do things in Chicago — but that’s not the way we do things here in America.”

Jamison Foser, OpEd News:

Now, it’s probably obvious that it takes a pretty warped view of reality to think that we must refuse to prosecute crimes by government officials in order to avoid becoming a Third World dictatorship. But that’s just what Sean Hannity argues: “[W]e don’t need to investigate past administrations like they do in … these Third World, you know, dictatorships.”

If you are a right-wing Republican living in Opposite Land, not one thing that happened during the Bush administration reminds you of Latin America. No, it’s the Obama administration that’s going bananas!

Two months ago, before the release of the latest batch of incriminating torture memos, a USA Today/Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans wanted either criminal investigations (38%) or a Leahy-style commission (24%) to look into the Bush torture regime.