The Nation’s Editor and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel was on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, debating Republican strategist and outspoken “enhanced interrogation” defender Liz Cheney; conservative columnist George Will; and former McCain strategist Steve Schmidt. Debating both the efficacy of torture and the political realities of investigating Bush-era crimes, vanden Heuvel pressed a strong case for a torture “truth commission,” arguing that torture needed to be placed above politics and investigated fully by a military-led commission. 

The roundtable resonated. At Huffington Post, Jason Linkins live-blogged that vanden Heuvel “Is really up against it here … bravely fighting the  panel on the matter of releasing the detainee photos.” The Daily Beast listed the debate between vanden Heuvel and Cheney one of their seven best moments from Sunday talk, while Crooks and Liars praised vanden Heuvel for arguing that torture shouldn’t be a “political football.” 

In this excerpt, vanden Heuvel and Cheney debate the need for an investigation into possible Bush-Cheney abuses: 

In this clip, also featuring vanden Heuvel, Matt Corley at ThinkProgress catches Cheney spinning some half-truths and obfuscations about her father’s relationship to the CIA and the allegation that he ordered waterboardings to help establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaida:

You can watch video of the full roundtable here. The panel also discussed the protests of President Obama at Notre Dame. vanden Heuvel criticized the protesters, calling out their hypocrisy for protesting a pro-choice President (Obama) but not a pro-death penalty President (Bush) when he delivered his commencement at the University in 2001. You can read her Editors Cut on the issue here.

The Nation’s National Correspondent John Nichols appeared on The Ed Show Monday, May 11th, and discussed how Speaker Nancy Pelosi should handle the increasing criticism from Republicans, who are attempting to hold her accountable for knowing about the use of “enhanced techniques” during the Bush administration. Nichols advocated that Pelosi should call the Republican’s bluff and offer to testify under oath with former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman and straight shooter Bob Graham. “What they should outline is the fact that they were lied to,” Nichols says, “that the Bush/Cheney administration lied to the Congress and the people of the United States.” This move would make it more difficult for Bush and Cheney to refuse to testify, he added.

Watch the video here:

On Thursday, May 7th, Nation Washington Editor Chris Hayes appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and weighed in on a poll that has mapped areas in the US in favor of secession including Texas, where nearly half of Republicans want to be independent of the United States. Coincidentally, Georgia, South Dakota and Oklahoma recently passed sovereignty resolutions. As part of his response, Hayes gave the Republican Party a bit of advice. “It’s been 100 days,” he says, “There is a part of me that wants to be like, ‘Guys, suck it up. You had power for a very long time.’”

Watch the video here:

The Nation’s National Affairs correspondent William Greider spoke with Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on May 5th. The veteran journalist discussed the dangers of our military-driven spending, the rule of the “governing elites,” the causes behind the economic crisis and the redeeming value in bank “stress tests.” The tests, he says in the interview, “will lead to a fundamental initiative because it leads to, eventually, a general reform of the corporate income tax and that can have deep impact on trade.” Greider is the author of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country.

Read the transcript or watch the video here:

On Wednesday, May 6, Nation columnist Naomi Klein appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show and provided context to the bank bailouts, which she called the “greatest heist in monetary history,” and the economic crisis. “My real concern,” says Klein in the interview, is that “the crisis on Wall Street created by deregulated capitalism is not actually being solved, it’s being moved. A private sector crisis is being turned into a public sector crisis.” Klein is author of The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and according to Rachel Maddow is “one of the most influential thinkers, anywhere.”

Watch the video here:

On Tuesday, May 5th, Nation Washington Editor Chris Hayes appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann to discuss Eric Odom, creator of the tea party protests, who is upset that supporters are taking his “movement” national and focusing too much on the federal government. An unsurprised Hayes notes that this is the outcome of a small campaign being hijacked by the Murdoch Empire. “You see now the cost that comes to marrying yourself to these big institutions in the conservative movement that I don’t think have much real connection to whatever there is of a right grassroots,” Hayes says. Watch the video here: