h/t right.org

In a yet another tortured explanation of what she knew, and when she knew it, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now claims that she was “misled” by the CIA regarding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

“They misled us every step of the way.”

In a just concluded press conference, Ms. Pelosi stopped short of calling the CIA briefers “liars”, but the distinction was one of semantics only.

Calling for a “Truth Commission,” Pelosi attempted to tie the CIA interrogation briefings to later briefings by the Bush Administration regarding WMD’s in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her twisted explanation only serves to make the torture debate less about enhanced interrogation techniques and embarrassing the Bush Administration, and more about Nancy Pelosi’s credibility.

Playing the victim card is an extraordinary response, especially for the person who is third in line of Presidential Succession.

video update from msnbc:

update: read more at Politico

update2: FoxNews is reporting that the CIA is taking “great offense” to the Speaker’s statement. The CIA said to Fox, “We stand by the documents.”

update3: AP has this LuLu of a quote from the press conference:

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

update4: John Carey has more

Don’t you love happy endings?

View 2009 Tea Parties in a larger map
h/t Freedom Works

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

The key word here, though, is “probably.”

Two years ago, I blogged about a promising new drug that held out hope for a major breakthrough in the treatment of many forms of cancer. It’s called dichloroacetate, or DCA for short. Two trials have been completed at the University of Alberta. Also, clinical trials in patients with solid tumors that have failed standard therapies, as well as in patients with malignant brain tumors have begun.

Desperate people, however, can not and will not wait for the formal clinical trials to be completed, published, reviewed, and submitted to governmental authorities for approval. They don’t have the luxury of time. And, thanks to the miracle of the internet, people are finding out about DCA, and are self-administering their own treatment programs.

Forums, blogs, and journals have sprung up across the web to bring the needed information to families who are willing to grasp at any available hope. Normally, I would suspect these people would be ripe prey for a con artist, and a healthy skepticism of generally anecdotal evidence would be called for. But, what impresses me the most is that these folks who are blogging their experience are not doing so to make money. They are offering no advertising, nor selling a product. They seem to be motivated only by their desire to share their experience, and to pass along any helpful information that they discover.

I don’t know how long it will take before the FDA will approve DCA for use in cancer treatment. At this point, however, it really doesn’t seem to matter. People are taking the matter into their own hands, and their reported results are truly remarkable.

In this blogger’s humble opinion, this is what the internet is all about.

People-powered news indeed.

Related Links:

This is the original news story from two years ago: “New Scientist”

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Curing Cancer: The DCA Story

The DCA Site

Pure DCA

DCA: Is this the answer?

University of Alberta, DCA Research Information