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Let’s assume the worst about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her rough re-entry into the national debate over Bush Administration torture tactics. Even though she vigorously disputes this, let’s assume that she knew back in 2002 that the Central Intelligence Agency was performing water-boarding and other “enhanced” interrogation tactics upon terror suspects. Let’s assume Rep. Pelosi said nothing for years even as those policies crumbled under the weight of their own illegalities and immoralities.

This makes her a hypocrite, a coward and probably a liar (not exactly a new or rare trifecta in Washington). It neutralizes her as a weapon the Democrats may choose to employ as some (but not all) Republicans eagerly seek to distance themselves from the disastrous policy. It paints her as part of the problem and not part of the solution, which is the kinder way of saying what many GOP leaders were saying about Pelosi as the week wore on. It also helps educate us all about the routine interaction between parties on sensitive intelligence matters.

But what Pelosi’s complicit silence does not do is exonerate the men who drafted the torture memos and the men and women who authorized them to do so. Their degree of culpability for this mess is an order of magnitude more profound than is Pelosi’s. She did not conjure up the dangerous legal theories used by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, and Steven Bradbury to justify the shift in policy. She didn’t decide to call off FBI interrogators (whom we now know were successful) and replace them with dark CIA operatives (whom we now know were not).

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Hello and welcome to the third (or maybe the fourth) incarnation of CourtWatch, an online column at cbsnews.com that began in the good old days, a decade ago, right after Al Gore invented the Internet, when Arlen Specter was a Republican, Al Franken was a comedian, and Susan Boyle was just a nice Scottish lady.

Today, CourtWatch moves from being a regular feature in the Opinion section of the website to being a stand-alone blog that will be updated daily (the Good Lord willing) with analysis and commentary on breaking legal news and events. We’ll try to find you good links to the best law pieces around—we’ll trawl through the papers and blogs to do so-- and hopefully we’ll generate interesting conversations and debates about topics you care about. And if there is something you’d like to see covered by CourtWatch by all means let us know.

-Andrew Cohen

More From Andrew Cohen:

CourtWatch Columns Before Today

Andrew Cohen's Posts In Hotsheet

Check out Andrew Cohen's new blog with analysis and commentary on breaking legal news and events here - http://www.cbsnews.com/courtwatch.

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