Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
But good enough to write up in a Sacramento Bee editorial…albeit, by custom, missing the signature of any human on top or below. See if you can spot the tortured logic. It is so in-your-face, it is impossible to state the position & summary without running into the unsolvable conundrum, each and every time.
I’ll give you a hint: The editorial pretends to make sense, by refusing to admit that some of these definitions might be open to interpretation. Simply follow their lead. Pretend there is no room for interpretation, no opportunity to interpret, no duty to do so. See where that gets you.
Editorial: End the tortured logic
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, May 4, 2008When it comes to torturing detainees, the president can ignore or override any law or treaty. Or at least that’s what Bush administration lawyers believe, as outlined in the infamous 2002 torture memos and reiterated in a March 5 Justice Department letter.
That letter, released last week by Sen. Ron Wyden of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asserts that interrogation techniques banned under the Geneva Conventions are allowed – depending on circumstances. Gone is this country’s absolute ban on torture. In its place we have a Bush administration rule that if you have good intentions, torture is OK; if not, it’s bad.
Some standard. If the president’s intention is “to prevent a threatened terrorist attack,” torture is hunky-dory, regardless of laws and treaties.
The Justice Department letter reprises a 2006 exchange between John Yoo, who penned the torture memos when he worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Douglas Cassel, a Notre Dame law professor.
Cassel: “If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there’s no law that can stop him?”
Yoo: “No treaty.”
Cassel: “Also no law of Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.”
Yoo: “I think it depends on why the president thinks he can do that.”
That’s clearly stated, if not clearly thought out. Anything goes if the president approves it. There is no law beyond the whim of the president.
It is clear that Congress will have to act to restore some semblance of U.S. values. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has two amendments that would be a start. One requires all U.S. agencies, including the CIA, to follow rules of interrogation in the U.S. Army Field Manual. This forbids the use of waterboarding (controlled drowning), induced hypothermia and other techniques.
Gen. Jeff Kimmons, the senior intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, has explained why: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”
Another Feinstein amendment bans outsourcing of interrogations to contractors. The Senate Intelligence Committee approved both amendments last Tuesday.
A bill by Sen. Christopher Dodd also is important. It makes clear that presidential authority to interpret the Geneva Conventions and other treaties is subject to congressional oversight and judicial review.
By passing these pieces of legislation, and overriding a sure Bush veto, Congress would be making what should not be a controversial statement: The President of the United States is subject to the law of the land.
Did you figure it out? It should have hit you like a ton of bricks by the last paragraph.
It’s exactly the same problem as the entirely unrelated issue of Net Neutrality.
The underlying premise is that there are things that are against the law, and so to make sure people follow the law, we need to pass a new law to force them to follow the laws that are already on the books outlawing things that are against the law.
If you respond to that with “well, okay then, we admit there are things left up to the interpretation of the President and that’s what we’re trying to change” — and that would at least be honest — it raises a whole new package of problems. How come the President doesn’t get to interpret laws as they apply to the Executive Branch? That’s supposed to be his job, isn’t it?
I’m pretty sure if you traveled back in time and quizzed the founding fathers about it, they’d be wondering why “congressional oversight and judicial review” are not only influential, but supremely so, upon these interpretations that take place with regard to “all U.S. agencies, including the CIA.” Those are part of the Executive Branch. In fact, I’ve got a feeling more than a few of the founders are going to wonder aloud just when Congress got in the business of interpreting anything.
People who write rules, shouldn’t be the first or the last to say what the rules are intended to mean. That’s why the United Nations flubbed things so thoroughly with Iraq; it’s why we stopped listening to them. That’s what Separation of Powers is all about.
General Kimmons’ comment is particularly disingenuous. Have you been noticing what I’ve been noticing about things that “history tells us” and that “science tells us”…things that are “settled”? They’re called that — because they are anything but. No, I don’t know that “no good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices.” I don’t know that at all; in fact, that’s Thing I Doubt #15. It’s been on the Things I Doubt list for a long time now, and since then nobody’s put so much as an ounce of energy into delivering evidence to me to make me stop doubting it. All I’ve seen is a crapload of people who want me to stop doubting it. But there’s no reason to.
I do know Khalid Shaikh Mohammed lasted much longer under waterboarding than most — just two or three minutes. I know the information we got from him, then, was by all accounts, what one could reasonably call “good intelligence.”
If there’s a grain of truth to that, I could get bad intelligence from interrogation subjects for the next ninety-nine years, and I’d still say it’s worthwhile to keep on keepin’-on.
Who hates us because of our torture practices, anywhere on the face of the globe, who’s ready to like us again if we stop? Oh, scratch that — we did stop. Okee dokee: Who thinks we’re wonderful people now, who was not yet so convinced back when the CIA was still doing this? And who still thinks we suck green eggs now, who might just come around and admire us to pieces if we pass Feinstein’s legislation?
Name just one of each.
And what kind of unbridled hubris does it take to use a high-falutin’ but entirely empty phrase like “law of the land” to describe a bunch of politicians who happen to have opinions you like?
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