So, in case you were wondering about the priorities of Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's torture advocacy group Keep America Safe, they've got a "comprehensive national security scorecard" giving members of Congress grades based on how they voted on certain matters, going back to the PATRIOT Act. It works pretty much as you'd imagine -- if you voted for more oversight of interrogations, surveillance, or detention, that hurts your score. If you voted to deny detainees access to civilian courts or you voted against restrictions on torture, that helps your score.
Hilariously, if you voted for the war in Iraq, a discretionary war started on false pretenses against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, that helps your score. In the House, eight of the 27 votes involve whether or not to close Guantanamo or transfer detainees.
My favorite vote, though, has to be this one:
Withhold Funding For Removing Politically Incorrect Terms From The Intelligence Community. Hoekstra, R-Mich., amendment that would bar the use of funds to prohibit or discourage the use of the phrases "jihadist," "jihad," "Islamo-fascism," "caliphate," "Islamist," or "Islamic terrorist" within the intelligence community or the federal government.
Just so you know, when liberals say that Republicans actually think saying "terrorist" more helps national security, they aren't just making that up to make Republicans sound like idiots. This is the national-security kiddie pool.
UPDATE: Gulliver, who writes an excellent national security blog you should be reading, points to this statement from Bush-era defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as an explanation for how to understand conservatives' obsession with the terrorism lexicon.
