I am seriously loving CNN’s Soledad O’Brien of late. Have always enjoyed her work, but lately the woman has been on fire when it comes to dealing with political types who are clearly playing games with the truth. (As part of my homage to Soledad, see this post detailing her feat of “Sol-splaining” the truth to political hacks.)

Today it was GOP Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada, who was on Soledad’s show to talk about John McCain and Lindsay Graham trying to kill UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s expected nomination to be Secretary of State. McCain and Graham are upset with Rice because they thinks he lied, or didn’t know enough, about the situation in Libya immediately following the attack on our consulate and CIA outpost there.

During their talk, Soledad pointed out – as I do in my post this morning – that McCain and Graham seem to be taking a hypocritical stance on Susan Rice’s nomination since they didn’t seem to have any problem with Condi Rice’s nomination to the same job, even though she did something far worse than Susan Rice. Condi aided the Bush administration in lying its way in to a war, Iraq, that has cost us trillions of dollars and countless American, and Iraqi, lives. That’s a lot bigger than 4 casualties at a US consulate in Libya.

In response, GOP Rep. Heck , who’s on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the administration over the Libya attack, appears to exonerate Susan Rice, and instead prove that Condi Rice should have been the one blocked from becoming Secretary of State. The video is below, but here’s NYT columnist Charles Blow’s take on what Heck just said:

CHARLES BLOW: What I’m trying to figure out, are you saying that Condoleeza Rice actually should have known, because she had more intimacy with the information [WMD in Iraq] and then still said something that she knew was wrong, and that in fact Susan Rice is a sacrificial lamb because she was put out as the face of the administration for something that she didn’t know anything [about], so in fact that’s more of a defense of Susan Rice than it is a condemnation of Susan Rice. That’s how it sounds to me. SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: That’s what it sounds like to me, so, forgive me sir, will you walk us through this one more time. You think it’s different because Condoleeza Rice actually had first-hand knowledge?

And Heck just continues reiterating that Susan Rice’s situation is far worse than Condis’ because Condi was heavily involved in Iraq war planning and Susan Rice was not heavily involved in what happened in Benghazi. Which only goes to prove that Susan Rice shouldn’t be the Republican party’s scapegoat.

Then again, far be it for the Republicans to turn down the chance to beat up on a woman, and a black woman at that. Rice should be consider herself fortunate that she wasn’t a Latina too.

Here’s the video – great television, and a great job by Soledad and Charles Blow.

