From last night’s All Stars.

On whether the GOP should accept the stimulus bill:

“…the Republicans have won the battle of the substance on the bill, because it’s an abomination. It’s a trillion dollars which is larded up with special interests and parochial spending on a scale never seen.
So on that, the Republicans have already succeeded.
Now, I think, the larger question is the question of the process. If Republicans say, as they believe in the majority, that the country needs a stimulus, but a real stimulus, stuff that is immediate, temporary, and targeted, as Larry Summers has indicated, they would support it.
As Alice Rivlin, who is the budget director for the Clinton administration has said, you have to separate the real stimulus from the other stuff.
Obama himself writing in “The Post” today admitted that it is two parts. One part is stimulus, and the other is what he calls long-range reconstruction.
Even if you concede it’s really good stuff, it’s long-range. It shouldn’t be accelerated and pushed in the process with no debate, no hearings, any of this.
If you have an emergency, strip out the stimulus, and you could get a consensus on that.
I think it’s a mistake for the Republicans who are now negotiating into the night to try to strip out a little here and a little there and ultimately join in taking ownership of an awful bill. It’s a mistake. They ought to insist–strip out stimulus. Do all the other stuff later and on the regular democratic process and calendar.”

On Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing:

“…it was little bit contradictory–everything possible is not the same as everything within the law, particularly as the Obama administration defines it. He is pretty ambiguous about what the administration would do, and even in the executive order that ostensibly had banned the torture, there is a bunch of out-clauses, including the establishment of a commission which would establish what the CIA would be able to do in interrogation beyond the Army Field Manual.
But I thought what was important in the Panetta hearing was the one area in which he was unambiguous. Asked about whether there would be prosecution of CIA personnel who might have engaged in behavior which the Obama administration today would define as illegal, his answer was no, as long as it was done under legal opinion at the time.
And that, I think, is extremely important. It’s against what Pelosi and Conyers and the House have threatened, which is the actual persecution and prosecution of CIA personnel.
It’s good that Panetta had said that the administration would oppose that. It’s very important.