Most people in the libertarian movement know who Eric Dondero is. Certainly anyone who has ever cruised the threads on any pro-Ron Paul or libertarian electronic forum or blog have run into his rather unusual definitions of libertarianism and even the meaning of freedom. He supports Rudy Giuliani for president, claiming that the pro-war, pro-torture and authoritarian former New York mayor is incredibly libertarian. Dondero has now taken to writing articles about African-American presidential candidates at FrontPage Magazine. In other words, most libertarians would claim that Dondero's beliefs are pretty much the antithesis of libertarianism.

Likewise, Nancy Pelosi is well known to people on the left. Unlike Dondero, she's known by millions of real people around the real world -- not just geeks like me who spend way too much time on the Internet. Like they do with Dondero, people opposed to the Iraq War protest Pelosi's actions.

Dondero defended the practice of waterboarding. Now it seems that Pelosi has known, since 2002, that the U.S. government has been engaging in this practice of torture. From WaPo:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

She knew about it, yet she did nothing about it.

Most Democrats I know are rightfully opposed to torture. All libertarians I know are opposed to torture, as torture is clearly inconsistent with libertarianism. Because of his political views, Eric Dondero couldn't even be elected to the position of County Chairman in the Libertarian Party. Nancy Pelosi currently serves as Speaker of the House and has no Democratic opposition to her re-election bid.

Unless Democrats actually favor torture and the building of the American Empire, this makes Nancy Pelosi the Eric Dondero of the left. The obvious question is why Democrats continue to put her in power.