Via the Associated Press: Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, sponsored a resolution on Thursday that would establish a bipartisan congressional panel to investigate whether waterboarding had been used against terrorism suspects by the CIA in 2002.

Oh, that’s not exactly it. Congressman Bishop’s resolution was to investigate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that the CIA misled her in 2002 about whether waterboarding had been used against terrorism suspects.

Republicans Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina joined Democrats in voting 252-172 to defeat Bishop’s resolution.

How did this cheap partisan stunt get to the House floor? TPM’s Zachary Roth explains:

Why did Republicans even get a vote in the first place? Well, according to the Speaker’s office, the GOP brought it up as “privileged resolution”, meaning it gets immediately considered. But the non-partisan parliamentarian’s office ruled that the resolution wasn’t in order, because it wasn’t “relevant to privileges of the House”. The GOP, undeterred, wanted to appeal that decision. At that point, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer offered to table the appeal. So to be precise (perhaps overly so) the vote was on Hoyer’s move to table the appeal of the parliamentarian’s ruling that the GOP resolution wasn’t in order.

If the Republicans (and Democrats) in Congress are in the mood to investigate, then the CIA ought to be investigated — again — for lying to Congress. According to the CIA, members of Congress were briefed about “EITs,” or so-called enhanced interrogation techniques in 2002. But this euphemism for torture was never used prior to 2004.

Related One Utah post:
Can We Believe the CIA? (May 18th)

UPDATE: Jason Williams on KVNU’s For The People has more.

UPDATE: One less torture advocate. Conservative radio shock jock Eric “Mancow” Muller, believing the right-wing lie that waterboarding is not torture, decided to give it a try under controlled conditions.

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,”Mancow said, likening it to a time when he nearly drowned as a child. “It is such an odd feeling to have water poured down your nose with your head back…It was instantaneous…and I don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”

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