And this is a good idea, because...?

The random-ideas-that-stink generator was up and running again at the White House.

A day after telling CIA employees at their headquarters in Langley, Va. that he won’t prosecute CIA operatives for employing certain interrogation techniques, the President says that perhaps he’ll go after the Justice Department lawyers instead who devised the legal authority for the interrogations… except that he won’t, he’ll leave that decision up to the Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said

Translation: Obama has floated the idea and is now seeing which way the winds blow before telling Holder to unleash the hounds on Bush administration officials. Want proof?

Obama also said he could support a congressional investigation into the Bush-era terrorist detainee program, but only under certain conditions, such as if it were done on a bipartisan basis. He said he worries about the impact that high-intensity, politicized hearings in Congress could have on the government's efforts to cope with terrorism.

If that isn’t trial balloon-floating, then we don’t know what is.

We can’t begin to describe what a bad idea this is. We’ve already given up quite a bit of the playbook with the highly-selective release of the CIA interrogation memos and with a trial even more classified and secret information will be required to be made public. How does this benefit our safety?

Some people will argue that the claim that the interrogations did indeed prevent future attacks as Dick Cheney has argued is akin to proving a negative. And they would be correct unless those memos are released for examination. Again, more playbook revealed and again, how does any of this actually benefit our safety?

And, despite assurances that CIA operatives will not be prosecuted themselves, how comfortable do you think these people will be taking the stand against people they believed to be in good legal standing and for which they were being advised in good faith on the war on terror? And how does this effect morale with respect to the CIA’s efficacy in continuing to round up the bad guys, foil plots and continue this fight? How is any of this of actual benefit to our safety?

As the President even intimated above, how is the time and energy that will be spent on this whole affair by our intelligence community of any benefit to our safety? Instead of doing their job of protecting this country, they will be preparing for trial. Awesome.

And you wanna bet some Democratic law makers who had full knowledge of these techniques yet did nothing to stop it aren’t squirming in their seat right now? We’re looking at you, Nancy.

Unfortunately, it’s this last reason that will be why we most likely won’t see any real action instead any of the aforementioned ones. No matter – results are all we care about around here.