May 6, 2009 
Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State, is touring around the United States in a speaking engagement blitz.
She visited The "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" on March 23. In April she was paid to speak at the NFL’s annual owners meeting, and recently she has been booked at various events and graduation ceremonies.
Her representation, The Washington Speakers Bureau disclosed Rice demands $150,000 per speech, which is the same amount as George Bush. The Washington Speakers Bureau represents her, former president Bush, Laura Bush and other political figures.
On May 3, she visited and spoke at the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation’s Capital, “Memorial Lecture” series in D.C. [How there is a memorial lecture series for an elementary school is beyond my comprehension]. During the day she spoke with elementary student, and was questioned about various topics including torture. Later that night she performed for the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, according to the May 4 article by Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post.
Keeping with the school theme, on May 4 she conducted a school-wide assembly at Bodine magnet school that is co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, PA. That night she spoke again at a dinner for the 60th anniversary of this chapter, which is thought to be apart of the secret society, Council on Foreign Relations.
In addition to speaking engagements, she is currently the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and returned in March as a professor of political science at Stanford.
Just last Monday April 27, Rice was at a dinner reception in a Stanford University dorm, and she was questioned by students, including Jeremy Cohn. Some of the debate was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube by Reyna Garcia.
In response to Cohn’s questions, Rice said, “Abu Grave was wrong, but in terms of the enhanced interrogation and so forth: anything that was legal, and was going to make this country safer, the president wanted to do. Nothing that was illegal –nothing that was illegal, and nothing that was going to make the country less safe.”
Cohn said, “500,000 died in World War II, and yet we did not torture the prisoners of war.”
While shaking her right index finger back and forth at Cohn, Rice said, “And we didn’t torture anyone here either.”
Cohn said, “We tortured them in Guantanamo Bay.”
Raising her voice, Rice said, “No, no dear you’re wrong, you’re wrong…Do your homework first.”
Rice was heated, so she allowed another student to question her.
Sammy Abusrur said, “So I read in a recent report - recently read - that said you in a memo - you’re the one who authorized torture…I’m sorry - waterboarding. Is waterboarding torture?”
Rice replied, “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture. So that’s - and by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency that they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did.”
Abusrur re-asked if waterboarding was torture in her opinion, and she said, “I just said the United States was told - we were told nothing that violates our obligations under the convention against torture. And so, by definition if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture” (Garcia, “Condoleezza Rice meets with some students,” YouTube-link).
Her statements have been compared to the infamous one made by President Nixon during his interview with David Frost, “When the president does it; that means it is not illegal.”
In summary, Condie would be a really mean professor.
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