PELOSI FLOATS ANOTHER DEFENSIVE TRIAL BALLOON: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for ‘appropriate’ legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday. The Pelosi camp’s version of events is intended to answer two key questions posed by her critics: When, precisely, did she first learn about waterboarding? And why didn’t she do more to stop it?” It also answers the question of “how weaselly can Pelosi’s defense get?”

She’s getting pretty close to Frank J.’s recommendation: Good line for Pelosi: “Yes, I heard about the waterboarding, but it was so traumatic I repressed it.”