Right Wing Nut House

Richard Hofstadter was once referred to by George Will as “the iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension,” largely because one of his more popular works, the essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” took direct aim at flyover country and some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories that flourished at the time. (The essay still makes good reading, if only because Hofstadter was an excellent writer and captured the essence of the “Red Scare” so well.)

In truth, from what I know of Hofstadter and his work (largely through criticisms penned by conservative historians), he had that maddening tone in his writing that he was privy to a great truth and that only those who accepted his premises and agreed with his reasoning could grasp it. (If you are truly interested in tracing the history of conspiracy, Daniel Pipes excellent study Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From is a must read.)

Conspiracies flourish among the ignorant, the uneducated, and the oppressed according to Pipes. The Arab world lives on conspiracy. Governments find it advantageous to promote them in order to deflect criticism for the wretched conditions of their citizens.

For a while, the conspiracy culture in America was little seen or heard. Following the banishment of the John Birch Society from mainstream conservatism, modern paranoids were left without a mouthpiece to reach the population at large. They were indeed confined to the fringes where they argued incessantly among themselves in their little known journals and magazines while the world moved forward.

It is unfair to confine the paranoid style to the right as Hofstadter tried to do. Even while he was writing his essay describing it, there was the left wing fringe that saw Nazis in Washington and tried to connect the Rothschilds and the Jews to a shadowy international finance conspiracy that used the now debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a factual text. (Both right and left loved that one.)

But for many years, it really didn’t matter because the fringe of both right and left were never given the opportunity to reach the public at large due to the control of media by the few. You might hear some Kluxer spouting nonsense on a small radio station somewhere or find a copy of The New American littering the floor of some public restroom. But by and large, the fringes were relegated to the, well, fringes.

All that changed with the advent of the internet, of course. Now, every manner of conspiracy nut has crawled out from underneath their rocks and polluted our discourse. Their ranting forms the background of internet chatter. A decade ago it was Vince Foster and Ron Brown, cocaine cartels, murder for hire, and other malfeasance by Bill and Hillary Clinton that garnered unwarranted attention.

Then it was Bush’s turn; war to enrich Bush’s cronies, Haliburton, the draft, detention sites for liberals - all made the greatest conspiracy hits on the left. Whether it was because the internet had become more pervasive, these lefty memes actually hit mainstream sites like Daily Kos, Oliver Willis, MyDD and the like.

Indeed, there are now two conspiracy theories that have gone nearly mainstream and have actually entered the consciousness of American citizens. The 9/11 Truthers - despite enormous evidence to the contrary that debunks every single one of their theories - are coloring people’s attitudes about that event. The pushback against the Truthers has been very heartening to see and it may be that the tide will eventually turn toward rationality.

But what do you do about a conspiracy theory like the Obama “Birthers?” Or the “Trig Truthers?” The former doesn’t believe Obama is eligible to be president because he hasn’t released a “birth certificate” stating he is a “natural born citizen.” The only possible conclusion that can be drawn, according to the Birthers, is that Obama was born elsewhere and there is a gigantic coverup to keep the information under wraps.

As with the 9/11 Truthers, facts don’t matter to these people and indeed, only serve to enrage them. Neither do facts seem to matter to the Trig Truthers whose most prominent booster, former conservative supporter of George Bush Andrew Sullivan, has labored long and hard to “prove” that little Trig Palin is not the child of Sarah Palin but of her 17 year old daughter Bristol. (This hilarious Vanity Fair timeline ices the case, that Trig is Sarah’s baby but Sullivan, weirdly, continues his quest to award the child to Bristol).

Lots of folks are enraged at Sullivan. But Sully has shown his unfitness for rational thought on a variety of subjects besides his obvious disdain for common sense in the Trig matter. Others, like torture, I believe he has been spot on.

But Sullivan telling conservatives that they have to totally cut themselves loose from talk show hosts and pop conservatives like Ann Coulter in order to regain their soul is downright strange. And it shows why he is so oblivious to the fool he is making of himself over the Trig Truther issue:

Take yours truly. I’m not a Democrat and if pushed, I’d have to say right now I’m a libertarian independent. I’m uneasy about Obama’s long-term debt, to say the least, but I’m intelligent enough to know it’s not Obama’s as such, but mainly Bush’s, and I’m also cognizant that the time to cut back may not be in the middle (or beginning) of a brutal depression. On most issues, I side with what used to be the center-right, but the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders - from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

I’m waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism and that decent right-of-center people actually find their vision repellent. And then to articulate a positive vision for taking this country forward, expanding liberty, exposing corruption, reducing government’s burden, unwinding ungovernable empire, and defending civic virtue without going on Jihads against other people’s vices.

If today’s “conservatives” spent one tenth of the time saying what they were for rather than who they’re against, they might get somewhere. But the truth is: whom they hate is their core motivation right now. That’s how they define themselves. And as long as they do, Americans will rightly and soundly reject them.

Sully is “uneasy” over Obama’s long term debt but blames Bush? He is blaming Obama’s predecessor for deficits 10 years down the road?

See what I mean by strange? I believe any reasonably informed individual could easily correct Sullivan by pointing out that the $11 trillion in debt (best case scenario) - the “long term debt” that Andrew is “uneasy” about but that he blames on Bush - is a direct result of the president’s budget proposals for which he, and he alone, is responsible. But Sully’s Obama worship has unbalanced him to the point that he apes the worst blindness to incompetence of the Bushbots he railed against for years. It can’t be his hero’s fault.

Sullivan’s wildly exaggerated, insulting, misinformed, and I suspect deliberately misconstrued critique of Republicans is typical of someone who ignores facts, eschews logic and reason, and abandons rationality while embracing a kooky conspiracy theory about the origins of a baby.

His rant defines Hofstadter’s other major contribution to paranoid political analysis by revealing Sullivan is suffering from the idea of the “First Party System” where fear that the “other party” will destroy the country dominates. Calling Sean Hannity a “neo-fascist” is remarkably silly, on the order of calling Bill Clinton a murderer. Sullivan isn’t just exaggerating. He has allowed hysteria to overtake his faculties so that what appears to any rational human as gross hyperbole strikes him, I’m sure, as reasonable analysis.

He is asking for a “Sister Souljah” moment from leading Republicans who listen to Rush, Coulter, Hannity (a neo-fascist? C’mon Andrew), and the rest of the cotton candy conservative brigade. I take a back seat to no one in urging my conservative friends to wean themselves from these pop conservative’s idea of “conservative philosophy” but neither do I believe it necessary to castrate them. All I and other pragmatists are asking for is putting these jokers in their proper place and take them for what they are; entertainers. Their popularity is a symptom of the dearth of leadership on the right at the moment. And I suspect once that situation is resolved, Limbaugh and his ilk will fade in influence and importance.

Sullivan is not interested in saving the right from itself, of course. His rhetoric has now wholly devolved into the childish mutterings of leftist paranoids who see “Christianists” on a par with Islamists and “hate mongering” from those who criticize liberal policies. It has brought him fame, a good living, and a seat at the table with the big boys.

I wonder if they realize how far out there on the fringe he truly is?

From long time commenter and center left Obama lover Michael Reynolds left on my post yesterday about Reagan’s toleration for moderates in the GOP:

Rick, you’re an atheist living in sin. You’re a rational man. You believe in evolution and understand that gay rights are coming, like it or not. You don’t think torture is fun. You’re not ant-intellectual. Why are you a Republican?

Face it Rick: you’re not a Republican.

You would get no argument from half (or more) of the commenters who shared their thoughts with me on that post. But allow me to answer that and several ancillary questions while debunking some surprisingly ignorant myths and suppositions about what moderate conservatives believe.

First of all, let’s dispense with the term “moderate.” I much prefer “pragmatist” or even “rationalist” although the latter is a belief system all its own and not generally applied to a set of political precepts or principles.

“Realist” doesn’t cut it either because I think that a lot of conservatives are “realists” in the sense that they have created a false reality and define their politics according to a skewed and often paranoid world view. Please don’t try to tell me they don’t exist because they pollute the comments section of this and other blog sites with their “Obama is deliberately tanking the economy so he and his communist friends can establish a dictatorship,” memes.

If you can’t see that’s a false reality which is a little twisted and paranoid, you need a new pair of glasses.

A related question to Michael’s query is why bother? My demise as a blogger and as someone who has lost even the minuscule amount of notoriety as a political commenter that I once possessed can be traced directly to my calling out conservatives for being too rigid, too ideological, and beholden to who I refer to as “pop conservatives” of the Rush, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter variety.

To my mind, I had only one choice; fight for what I believe to be the correct course for conservatism and the GOP. There simply isn’t an alternative. There might be a half dozen Democrats in the country I could ever vote for so switching parties is out. And I am not one to throw away my vote and cast a ballot for libertarians who I find remarkably obtuse anyway. So it’s either shut up or fight. I chose the latter.

So let’s go with “pragmatist” to describe the kind of conservative who I believe is in big trouble in the Republican party. The reason? A lack of “fire in the belly,” when it comes to the ideology espoused by many on the right. It’s not enough to agree with these conservatives; you must “believe” wholeheartedly and beyond that, attempt to destroy your opponents. “No retreat, no surrender,” is their motto and if such an attitude results in harm to the country, so be it.

Now I like a good cock fight with a liberal any day. And frankly, they present such a lovely target most of the time that it is sometimes impossible not to make fun of them - their “riot of conceits” as R. Emmett Tyrell refers to their own ideological excesses. But I have come to realize that neither ideological extreme has a corner on truth nor do the ideological right and the left understand that there is more to politics than the exercise of raw power.

Politics is a means to an end. And for me, that end is applying broad conservative philosophical principles to the art of governing so that a just and moral society is created, which is adequately protected from those both at home and abroad who would do it harm, and that those unable to fend for themselves are cared for.

That last doesn’t sound very conservative. But we as a nation rejected social Darwinism during the last great economic upheaval 80 years ago. Overturning the New Deal (or some of the social programs initiated over the last 40 years) may be the goal of some of the radicals on the right but it will never, ever happen. I firmly believe that most social programs that aid the poor can be improved immensely by applying conservative principles like prudence, self reliance, and fiscal discipline to their operation. Other government assistance programs can devolve to the states where they can be run more efficiently.

Is that apostasy? Or simple pragmatism?

I want a government as conservative as can realistically be achieved without destroying it. And frankly, there are some on the right who scare me with their callous disregard for the effect on ordinary people some of their plans to dismantle the welfare state would bring about.

As a conservative, I don’t think that government should be “empathetic.” It should, however, work as well as any utility we use such as phone, electric, or gas. (A government that operated the way my cable company is run would have experienced several bloody revolutions.) Recognizing that the state has a role to play in the economy, in maintaining social stability, in protecting the weak from society’s predators - all of this fits very comfortably into a pragmatic conservative’s worldview.

We live in a nation of 300 million people - the majority of whom do not agree with many conservative ideologues who think the government is the enemy and should be dismantled to effect what Jefferson wanted; a “government that governs least governs best.”

The Sage of Monticello said that at a time when there were barely 6 million Americans (2 million in bondage). There was no IBM or AIG or any other multinational corporation whose interests sometimes conflicted with those of the American economy. There were no companies who deliberately poisoned the air and the water. There was little crime. There were no unions to hold up small businessmen or companies that would knowingly place their employees in dangerous situations because it was cheaper than protecting them.

There are a million reasons we need government and conservatives rarely offer any rationale for it beyond national defense. Some, like my friend Ed Morrissey, wish to establish some kind of “Super Federalism” where states could handle environmental concerns, workers’ safety, aid to the poor, road building, and other government functions currently handled from Washington.

In principle, I can’t disagree - especially if there was even a chance of it working. But as a practical matter, most of Ed’s vision is unattainable. Certainly a much better effort should be made to find those federal government functions that the state’s could take over. Some programs that aid the poor would no doubt be more efficiently run at the state level. But in the end, most federal programs are run out of Washington because the states are unable or unwilling to take the responsibility.

This is not to say that you cannot apply conservative principles to manage the behemoth. And recognition of that singular fact is what separates the ideologues from the pragmatists.

To say that moderates or pragmatists don’t have a set of principles that guide their politics is just plain wrong. The same principles that animate the ideologues inform the opinions of pragmatists as well. The difference is in how one interprets those principles as they relate to one’s worldview, which is informed by different criteria for all of us. Our own life experiences shape the interpretation of principles and, depends on temperament, personality, and perhaps even how open we are to new and different ideas.

I am not saying there is “flexibility” when it comes to principle in that they are at the core of all of our beliefs and in a semiotic way, their meaning is set in stone. But I think a pragmatist has a more expansive view in relating those principles to how the real world works. Principles are not meant to engender absolutism but ultimately, that is the trap into which the ideologues fall.

I have said before (and will keep making the point) that there is a difference between ideology and philosophical principles. Excessive ideology leads to putting those principles in a strait jacket, where all issues and personalities are judged according to a very rigid set of definitions. When reality proves elusive to these definitions, the rationale to describe them stretches beyond comprehension. Hence, both right and left ideologues are constantly forced to twist themselves into logic pretzels to defend themselves.

We have been taught since high school civics class that compromise is necessary in a democracy. But there are some issues where no compromise is possible; abortion, gay marriage, perhaps war and peace, and certainly most of the statist, collectivist solutions this administration is trying to implement in order to “fix” the economy. For conservatives, those issues are “no go” zones and I agree that a stand must be taken and battles fought to preserve a free market economy not to mention simple, human liberty.

But to posit the notion that no rapprochement with the opposition is ever possible, that compromise is a dirty word akin to being a traitor, and working with your political enemy is a sign that you aren’t a real Republican is ridiculous - as is the idea that if we let liberals get everything they want and the country goes to hell, conservatives will be swept back to power.

That is fantasy, of course. Some Republicans have to act responsibly and help govern the country. Otherwise, you end up with a situation such as we see with the “climate change” bill with the far left trying to compromise with the not so far left and everybody loses.

You don’t win by not playing the game. Yes, there will be instances where the Democrats shove the efforts at bi-partisanship back in the GOP’s faces. So what? And what do I care that the Democrats have fewer pragmatists or “moderates” than the GOP. What has that got to do with anything? Do you want to ape the absolute worst qualities of your opponent? Not smart.

If nothing else, you can recognize the fact that whoever you define as “moderate” (with obvious exceptions) have principles they adhere to just as conservatives do. The ideologues and close minded galoots will never understand this because they “mirror judge” everyone, holding the glass up to see if their own ideology reflects back at them. But for the rest of you, I would hope that you grant us pragmatists the benefit of our convictions.

There are few of us who haven’t made up their minds about whether torture is immoral, illegal, or both/neither. But wherever you come down on this issue, good arguments and thoughtful writing should never be ignored or dismissed out of hand simply because you disagree with it. In fact, I find that reading opposing viewpoints - when they are argued rationally and with a minimum of bombast - help clarify my own thinking and sometimes, even alter my position on an issue.

Not this time. But Commentary’s Peter Wehner has a great piece that tries to set some moral parameters for torture that are well argued and well written. Such clear thinking - even though I believe him wrong - should be commended given all the crap that has been sloughed off as “commentary” on both sides of this issue.

I can appreciate Wehner’s struggle to understand the moral universe he inhabits and seek exceptions and clarifications to the idea of using torture. The problem as I see it is he has adopted the “ticking bomb” scenario that has been thoroughly debunked by people much more knowledgeable than I about terrorism. And there is a troubling detachment on Peter’s part that disconnects what many of us consider the absolute moral wrong of torture as he seeks wiggle room in a kind of moral relativism that I don’t think he would ordinarily embrace.

Wehner’s attempts to “define down” what is torture and what isn’t misses the point that what was done was illegal. Can a moral good (or morally neutral) action be found in breaking the law? It can if, as Wehner attempts to do, you twist the ends/means argument into a pretzel. He also brings up the straw man argument about some of our military going through the SERE program (that I dealt with here) as well as the fact that others have endured it so, he reasons, it can’t be all that bad.

Finally, Wehner employs the argument that because torture “worked,” this should be taken into account when judging the morality of its use during the Bush administration.

To begin, allow me to quote extensively from a Daniel Larison post as he responds to a piece by Jim Manzi who asks, “[W]hy is the belief that the torture of captured combatants is wrong compatible with anything other than some form of pacifism? I mean this an actual question, not as a passive-aggressive assertion.”

Larison swallows hard and lets him have it:

One of the things that has kept me from saying much over the last week or so is my sheer amazement that there are people who seriously pose such questions and expect to be answered with something other than expressions of bafflement and moral horror. Something else that has kept me from writing much on this recently is the profoundly dispiriting realization (really, it is just a reminder) that it is torture and aggressive war that today’s mainstream right will go to the wall to defend, while any and every other view can be negotiated, debated, compromised or abandoned. I have started doubting whether people who are openly pro-torture or engaged in the sophistry of Manzi’s post are part of the same moral universe as I am, and I have wondered whether there is even a point in contesting such torture apologia as if they were reasonable arguments deserving of real consideration. Such fundamental assumptions at the core of our civilization should not have to be re-stated or justified anew, and the fact that they have to be is evidence of how deeply corrupted our political life has become, but if such basic norms are not reinforced it seems clear that they will be leeched away over time.

[snip]

mplicit in Manzi’s entire post is the rejection of any distinction between combatant and non-combatant, which tells me that he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t accept the concept of limited war. For him, unless one is a pacifist, one must endorse total war. In such a view, there would be nothing immoral about the summary execution or cruel and inhumane treatment of POWs, since the latter would have been targeted for death while they were still combatants. After all, if torturing such prisoners is not immoral, as Manzi seems to say it is not, what could possibly be wrong with killing them? That is where one must ultimately end up once the distinctions between combatant and non-combatant are erased or blurred, and it is the barbaric conclusion one will eventually reach if one does not start from the assumption that war itself is a sometimes-necessary evil and that it is morally justifiable only under specific circumstances and within certain limits. One of those limits is that captured combatants are to be treated humanely, and when we go down the road towards easing those restrictions we taint not only the institutions responsible for national security with crimes but we also abandon any real claim to moral integrity.

Larison’s argument might be viewed as the absolutist view of torture. I might disagree with the extent he worries about the corrupting nature of torture but there is no dismissing the line in the sand he has drawn - a line I accept for practical, rational, and moral reasons as well.

Wehner? Not so much:

Critics of enhanced interrogation techniques have taken to saying that Americans don’t torture, period – meaning in this instance that we do not engage in coercive interrogation techniques ranging from sleep deprivation to prolonged loud noise and/or bright lights to waterboarding. Anyone who holds the opposite view is a moral cretin and guilty of “arrant inhumanity.” Or so the argument goes.

Methinks Peter listens too much to liberal bomb throwers and besides, this is a gross oversimplification and something of a straw man. But to continue:

But this posture begins to come apart under examination. For one thing, the issue of “torture” itself needs to be put in a moral context and on a moral continuum. Waterboarding is a very nasty technique for sure – but it is considerably different (particularly in the manner administered by the CIA) than, say, mutilation with electric drills, rape, splitting knees, or forcing a terrorist to watch his children suffer and die in order to try to elicit information from him.

The question Peter leaves unanswered is whether it is legal or illegal? How can you make a moral judgment about torture — and defining down what is torture is irrelevant to whether it meets the definition under the law — without taking into consideration the moral imperative to obey the law? Wehner is pouring quicksand and doesn’t realize the ground is shifting beneath his feet.

I certainly wouldn’t want to undergo waterboarding – but while a very harsh technique, it is one that was applied in part because it would do far less damage to a person than other techniques. It is also surely relevant that waterboarding was not used randomly and promiscuously, but rather on three known terrorists. And of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program, according to Michael Hayden, President Bush’s last CIA director, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey – and of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in the memos on enhanced interrogation.

“Far less damage” as opposed to electrodes and thumbscrews but again, it avoids what Wehner apparently doesn’t want to face; the fact that the civilized world has proscribed the practice in words of unmistakable clarity — unless you are seeking a moral “out” and wish to begin to parse pain and suffering.

US law, the Geneva Accords, and the UN Convention Against Torture all use language that clearly makes the physical and psychological pain of waterboarding a form of torture. The fact that our servicemen are not being held as prisoners and therefore not subject to the law’s protections as well as being volunteers who fully realize the nature of the exercise makes Wehner’s use of the SERE argument nothing more than a strawman set up to excuse torture.

Wehner’s thesis really goes off the rails when he tries to imply that moral relativeness, when evaluating torture, should be employed to blur the ends/means distinction. He dubiously invokes Senator Charles Schumer’s thoughts during a Congressional hearing on torture back in 2004 where the New York lawmaker invokes the “ticking bomb” scenario as one exception to torture. Here’s Schumer:

Take the hypothetical: if we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believe that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most Senators, maybe all, would do what you have to do. So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the fox hole, it’s a very different deal.

Wehner eagerly embraces the hypothetical and runs with it:

Apropos of Schumer’s comments, critics of enhanced interrogation techniques need to wrestle with a set of questions they like to avoid: if you knew using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information that would stop a massive attack on an American city, would you still insist it never be used? Do you oppose the use of waterboarding if it would save a thousand innocent lives? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? What exactly is the point, if any, at which you believe waterboarding might be justified? I simply don’t accept that those who answer “never” are taking a morally superior stand to those who answer “sometimes, in extremely rare circumstances and in very limited cases.”

First, it is an absolute impossibility to know that “using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information” that could prevent an attack. That is sophistry on a stick. We might also “know” that pulling his fingernails out might get him to talk if waterboarding doesn’t work. And we wouldn’t know, for instance, whether this particular terrorist had been specifically trained to resist waterboarding or other forms of torture - at least long enough to fail in our efforts to stop a “ticking bomb” attack.

The whole ticking bomb scenario needs to be dumped by torture defenders. It does their argument no good to posit a hypothetical that is more the product of fantasy than possibility.

A good debunking of the ticking bomb myth can be found in an article published in Public Affairs Quarterly last year by Jamie Mayerfield, associate professor of political science at the University of Washington:

Among the many unrealistic elements of the ticking bomb hypothetical, I give
particular attention to the exaggerated degree of certainty attributed to our belief in the prisoner’s guilt. In the scenario we are fully certain that the individual in our custody has launched an attack on civilians and is now withholding the information needed to save the civilians’ lives. Such certainty is unrealistic. Any realistic approximation of the ticking bomb scenario creates too high a risk that an innocent person will be tortured.

The made-to-order features of the ticking bomb scenario blind us to torture’s
reality. In the real world, torture “yields poor information, sweeps up many innocents, degrades organizational capabilities, and destroys interrogators.”7 Consider the problem of false information, which not only causes delays, swallows man hours, and leads down blind alleys, but can also encourage disastrous choices.

Below I discuss how the Bush administration used false information extracted
under torture to help justify the Iraq war. In this case, torture did not save lives, but helped bring about a great many deaths. Torture also inflames enemies, alienates friends, and scares away informants. And it spreads.

These dangers, purged from the ticking bomb hypothetical, are inseparable from actual torture. Yet public attention is consumed by the hypothetical. Obsession with the better-than-best case scenario warps our thinking about torture. We overlook torture’s dangers and exaggerate its effectiveness. By now, the ticking bomb narrative has acquired its own momentum, but fear and anger do much to keep it aloft.

Mayerfield’s point is well taken; because the ticking bomb scenario has not only permeated our culture through fictional variations found in TV, novels, and films, but also because it has been eagerly embraced by many torture apologists, it has become a rote defense even though there has never in history been a situation that remotely resembles it. Mayerfield, like Larison above, may exaggerate the dangers of torture to America’s soul but that doesn’t obviate his point that justifying torture in one, limited case can open the door to its use in other scenarios as well.

So the answer to Peter’s question regarding whether torture condemners would use waterboarding if it could save “a thousand innocent lives? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?” is irrelevant because its impossible to answer a hypothetical that doesn’t exist except on TV and in film.

And Mayerfield’s point about torture being hugely unreliable is spot on as well. I don’t buy the flat statement that torture doesn’t work, or never works. It wouldn’t have been in use for thousands of years unless it did. The problem with it is its unreliability as a means to accurate information. Those thousands of lives Peter wishes to save by waterboarding a terrorist wouldn’t be worth spit if the bomber lied under torture about everything.

The fact that we simply couldn’t be sure means but would have to act as if the terrorist was telling the truth. Suppose while the authorities were off on a wild goose chase the bomb went off and killed those thousands of innocents? That nice moral house of cards torture defenders have built up would collapse in a heap. Is bad information better than no information at all — or good information that might have been extracted using interrogation techniques other than torture?

Wehner answers this argument by trying to make the case that the good information we extracted via torture saved lives and therefore, the ends justifies the means because saving so many innocents is an absolute moral good in and of itself. It is a strange argument considering Peter’s moral waffling earlier in his piece.

On the substantive level, there is the question of the efficacy of enhanced interrogation techniques. There is an intense debate surrounding this matter, but we can certainly say that respected members of the intelligence world insist that innocent Americans are today alive because we employed a set of coercive interrogation techniques. According to Hayden and Mukasey, “As late as 2006, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those interrogations.” Former CIA Director George Tenet said, “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.” And former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has said, “We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened.”

I will ignore the dubious employment of authority by Peter of people who may go on trial for crimes related to what they are defending and only point out what Peter himself admits later:

It seems unlikely that asking a jihadist his surname, first name and rank, date of birth, army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information – which is what the Geneva Conventions say ought to apply to prisoners of war but not, historically, to unlawful enemy combatants – would elicit as much information as coercive interrogation techniques. Dennis Blair, Obama’s national intelligence director, admitted to his staff that “high value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding” of al Qaeda. (Once Blair’s memo was revealed, he added this caveat: “There is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”

Why does Wehner concoct this strawman of “name, rank, and serial number?” Professional interrogators are masters of putting psychological pressure on a subject without coercive or “enhanced” interrogation techniques. It is a gross simplification to make it appear that the “either/or” options open to an interrogator would be polite banter about al-Qaeda or waterboarding.

But the key here is Blair’s statement that there was “no way of knowing” whether the exact same information could have been obtained through legal interrogation methods. The reason is because they weren’t tried or, more likely, the interrogation regime that involves non-torture wasn’t given much of a chance to work. (See this Heather McDonald piece in City Journal from 2004 where she details the initial, successful efforts of army interrogators who used psychological pressures on prisoners, walking up to the line but never crossing it.)

Thus, the interrogators who used torture became victims of their own success, leaping for the opportunity to employ torture as a short cut when such methods were unnecessary or, at the very least, non-coercive interrogations were given short shrift.

Finally, Wehner tries to excuse and justify torture because we’re at war and moral choices are hard:

There are of course serious-minded critics of enhanced interrogation techniques. But to pretend, as some critics do, that the morality of this issue is self-evident and that waterboarding and other coercive interrogation techniques are obviously unacceptable and something for which our nation should be ashamed is, in my judgment, not only wrong but irresponsible. When a nation is engaged in war, you hope to find in government sober people who are able to weigh competing moral goods and who take seriously their obligation to protect our nation. They may not get everything right at the time – hardly anyone does in the heat of the moment – but they should not have to face a lynch mob years after the fact (especially those in the lynch mob who blessed the activities at the time they were being used). The American public, one hopes, can see through all this. And as Nancy Pelosi might well discover, playing a role in inciting a mob can come at a cost.

“Competing moral goods?” That’s a new one when discussing torture. But here is where Peter and I agree - at least I am moving toward his position that the law is not a concrete edifice with only form and substance. What of justice? What of mitigating circumstances? Unlike the revenge seekers and out and out Bush haters, I grant the administration the benefit of their good intentions in a very difficult and morally ambiguous universe. I think they made the wrong choices - horribly wrong - but recognize that some allowance must be made when the awesome responsibilities under which those men and women were working is thrown into the mix.

It doesn’t excuse their actions. It won’t “lessen their time in purgatory” as we used to half-jokingly use as a catch-all for arguments about ethics and morals with our Viatorian teachers back in the day.

But perhaps, it should keep them out of the dock. And out of jail.

I suppose it is suicidal to pick a fight with a lawyer over the legality of waterboarding but I think John Hinderaker is just plain off base here:

But if waterboarding is “torture,” then it’s illegal. So why is the U.S. military still using it as a training device, last we knew? If we’re going to start prosecuting people, don’t we have to prosecute the many civilian and military leaders who have for decades inflicted waterboarding, or condoned the use of waterboarding, on our servicemen? Just a thought. Actually, of course, no one has any interest in such prosecutions (which would be absurd in any event) since there is no political advantage to be gained.

John is referring to the use of waterboarding in the military’s SERE program - “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.” Some of the program is apparently classified but enough details have leaked out to confirm that the trainees who volunteer for the program go through some pretty horrendous treatment. In fact, according to this Slate piece by William Saletan, there are some who wish to alter some of the program’s training methods, believing them too harsh. Many others disagree.

Hinderaker’s argument has some merit - if one were to forget that the trainees are not being held by the US government as prisoners and therefore, not offered protections under international agreements we have signed that clearly make waterboarding a form of “torture” under the letter and spirit of the definition as outlined in those treaties.

This is the strawman that many who are defending torture are throwing up to distract from a fundamental truth; that regardless of whether waterboarding was experienced by American military personnel, and regardless of whether it was legal or illegal under US law at the time, the fact remains that prisoners being held by our government and who were waterboarded, were illegally tortured according to, at the very least, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and, some would argue, the Geneva Conventions.

The UN Convention Against Torture has a very straightforward definition:

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Was waterboarding “intentionally inflicted” in order to obtain “information or a confession?” Of course it was. A better question is was that the intent of waterboarding SERE volunteers? Of course not.

The catch most often used by defenders of the practice is that waterboarding does not constitute “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” because our own guys go through it and come out of the experience no worse for wear.

Slate’s William Saletan destroys that argument against waterboarding and also punches holes in other arguments that use SERE as a crutch:

The first difference, Ogrisseg noted, is that SERE trains soldiers to defeat interrogation, whereas “the real world interrogator wants to win.” This is a moral difference, as Hitchens observed. But it’s also a practical difference: An interrogator whose job is to extract information will behave more harshly than an interrogator who’s teaching resistance.

Second, SERE pits American interrogators against American trainees. “When dealing with non-country personnel, as in the case of detainee handling, there is greater risk of dehumanization of these personnel, and thus a greater likelihood of worse treatment,” Ogrisseg warned.

Third, SERE offers interventions that relieve stress and reinforce the unreality of the exercise. Instructors and psychologists are available “to watch the students for indications that they are not coping well with training tasks, provide corrective interventions with them long before they become overwhelmed, and if need be, remotivate students who have become overwhelmed to enable them to succeed,” Ogrisseg noted.

Fourth, SERE has “defined starting and ending points. … [T]rainees arrive on a certain date and know that they will depart on a specified date.”

Fifth and most important, SERE is voluntary. “Students can withdraw from training,” Ogrisseg noted. In a report issued four months ago, the Armed Services Committee added that in SERE, “students are even given a special phrase they can use to immediately stop” any ordeal.

Also, the UN treaty doesn’t even try and define who might or might not be protected under its strictures. It simply refers to persons in the custody of the state that is party to the agreement, anywhere the authority of the state is exercised:

Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:

1. When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
2. When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
3. When the victim was a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.

Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article.

This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.

Clearly, this covers Guantanamo, Bagram, and anywhere in Iraq where we were in charge of detainees. And then there’s this stricture against rendition:

1. No State Party shall expel, return (”refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

Did we have “substantial grounds for believing” that Egypt, Yemen, and a few other venues where we transferred custody of prisoners were havens for torture and mistreatment? I would say that’s a “yes” wouldn’t you?

And what about American law? The notion being advanced by torture apologists is that waterboarding wasn’t against American law at the time flies in the face of the definition of torture under Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C, S. 2340 passed in 1994 (minor amendments in 2007) to fulfill our treaty obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture:

As used in this chapter—

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

(3) “United States” means the several States of the United States, the District of Columbia, and the commonwealths, territories, and possessions of the United States.

I am no lawyer but my reading of this statute is pretty simple; waterboarding easily meets the definition of torture in that it intentionally inflicted “severe mental pain or suffering,” that it carried with it the “threat of imminent death,” and that it occurred in the defined jurisdiction - which holds true for most of the other enhanced interrogation techniques.

I will repeat something I’ve written previously; the law is not a straitjacket and liberals who want to throw the book at everyone but the cook at Guantanamo are perfectly willing to rip this country apart in search of vengance. Torture was not carried out to satisfy the sadistic cravings of Bush, Cheney, the CIA interrogators, or anyone else involved. The fact is, I fully grant these officials and intelligence experts the benefit of their beliefs that what they were doing was protecting the country. That has to be a mitigating factor when determining what to do with the perpetrators.

But trying to keep us safe is not an excuse or justification for torture as the UN Convention makes clear:

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Guilty, yes. But I am not at all certain that torture trials of the kind envisioned by many on the left would accomplish anything. Would it “prove” that we are a nation of laws? If that is the goal then one might ask whether there is not also justice under the law and whether throwing the book at those who were trying to act in good faith is really the route to redemption. I think not. Some reckoning must take place but must it involve criminal proceedings? I envy they who possess certainty in this matter.

Greg Gutfeld wonders (parenthetically) if Jack Bauer is dead because the Obama Administration released the memos concocted by Bush era lawyers to justify the use of torture.

Earlier today President Obama said charges might be brought against those evil Bush lawyers behind the just-released memos justifying the harsh interrogation techniques used against folks who wanted to blow up our country. Or more specifically, blow up Los Angeles.

Which is why I brought up “24.” Not only is it about this sort of thing, it’s made in Los Angeles, a place that might have been totally screwed, if it weren’t for those evil lawyers. Writing in the Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen refers to a memo noting that “enhanced techniques” led to the discovery of a Second Wave attack determined to crash an airliner into the Library Tower, the tallest building on the west coast. Thiessen writes that the info culled using these interrogations led to the arrest of those in charge of attempting this attack.

Now, Thiessen was once a Bush speechwriter, but that doesn’t take away from his point: that although Obama released memos revealing the interrogation techniques, what those actions actually achieved is blacked out.

And that’s the scary part. Usually what goes on behind the scenes is what keeps us alive. Now we know, however, that not only does our President find that sort of thing distasteful – as a consequence, he’s open to sharing this info with everyone.

Except the part where it says it works.

Jack Bauer is officially dead.

I too am troubled that the Obama Administration decided to play politics with this issue by not placing before the American people all the facts. If releasing information on how torture was justified while detailing the specifics and not worry about the national security implications then it stands to reason Obama could have released the information that showed what breaking the law had accomplished as far as actionable intelligence. Needless to say, any actions taken against the lawbreakers by the Obama justice department would be extremely suspect at this point. And given that Congress knew about this lawbreaking all along (at least the leadership of both parties and the intel committees) and didn’t object, it makes any kind of “truth commission” as proposed by Pelosi an absolute joke.

Her hypocrisy should make her first in the dock.

The entire bleeding government of the United States appears to have lost its collective head and engaged in practices that are both abhorrent to our traditions and a violation of national and international law. The idea that Los Angeles was “saved” by torturing people misses the point. What certainty is there that other, legal means used on the prisoner(s) might not have yielded the same information? This piece by Heather McDonald in City Journal a few years ago that goes into detail about our early attempts to get information from battlefield detainees clearly shows that the real professional interrogators didn’t have to break the law in order to glean excellent, actionable intelligence from al-Qaeda prisoners. They skated quite close to the edge but never went over, according to McDonald. And these interrogations were taking place at the same time the whole torture issue was roiling the Bush Administration - a bureaucratic battle of which the interrogators were unaware.

In short, we’ll never know if using legal methods would have gotten the same results. And that’s one of the things that bugs the hell out of me. Even the Los Angeles plot was not a ticking time bomb scenario for the simple reason we didn’t know about it until the “enhanced interrogation techniques” had already been used. Hence, retroactive justification for their use is a non-starter.

I made my feelings known about the release of the memos here. But it is apparent that Gutfeld, who claims to be a fan of 24, hasn’t been watching very carefully recently because if he had, he would have known that Bauer had come to grips with his guilt in breaking the law and wanted America to know why he did it. He wasn’t evading responsibility. But he questioned whether anyone who didn’t have the full story could judge him without standing in his shoes.

This is the latest attempt to whitewash history on the part of torture advocates; it worked so why get all bent out of shape? I will be the first to make the case that we cannot judge what went on in a vacuum, employing the premise that the law is the end all and be all - a force into and of itself - and that any slight deviation from the spirit and the letter of the law must be punished severely. This is the absolutist position and I am not comfortable with it. The law was never meant to be a straitjacket. Otherwise, the entire population would be walking on eggshells.

In Bauer’s case, the routine, almost casual use of torture (with the knowledge and approval of his immediate superiors), was, at first, portrayed as a moral good. Even Jack’s more extreme uses of torture like kneecapping a subject or breaking their fingers one at a time (or his famous zapping of his rival for Audrey’s affections, using a cut off lamp cord as electrodes) was seen as right and necessary to save America from terrorists. But the last few years as Americans became aware of what the government was doing in their name and people became more skeptical of the war in Iraq, the situations where Bauer tortured to get information played out in a much more morally ambiguous universe. There were even attempts to give both sides of the issue a hearing. Bauer himself never really questioned his tactics but it was made clear that he was cognizant that what he was doing was against the law. This culminated in his kidnapping by the Chinese during the season finale two years ago and torture was applied liberally to him while a prisoner. Needless to say, the experience gave Bauer a whole new outlook on torture and made him, if not more reluctant to employ it, more cognizant of the moral framework he was operating under.

This season, Jack’s reputation for torture has been widely derided in the government with some scenes actually casting aspersions on his willingness to break the law. “The FBI doesn’t torture,” said Special Agent Larry Moss whose girlfriend Renee Walker adopted some of Jack’s tactics and felt miserable about it. Gutfeld fails to appreciate the yin and yang of Bauer and Agent Walker who both employ interrogation techniques that are far outside the law but the sympathetic nature of Walker’s character shows the audience the psychic cost involved in torture and that those who practice it are wrong. Bauer is able to deal with his moral ambiguity by seeing the world in black and white - a consequence of his job where friends are few and enemies are as ruthless as they come. Torture is wrong but so is blowing up innocent Americans and whatever means are employed to prevent the latter takes priority over any moral judgments that are inherent in the former.

This new appreciation for the diameters of Bauer’s moral universe, rather than killing Bauer off has instead imbued him with more humanity. His contempt for people who have no clue what his methods have cost personally does not override the fact that he is fully aware that torture is illegal and that, as he said at the senate hearing in this year’s first episode, he will gladly take the consequences of his actions as long as the people get the full story. That story includes the machinations of people very high in government who turned the other way and didn’t care how the job got done as long as Bauer kept Americans from being killed in large numbers. Each president Bauer served under was fully aware of what Bauer was doing to prisoners in order to glean actionable intelligence and never once remonstrated against him for it. His bitterness is partly fed by the fact that some of those same people are now trying to put him behind bars for what he believes, in essence, following orders.

I said this two years ago:

The moral choices made by characters on 24 do not necessarily shed light on contemporary America so much as they illustrate time-honored thematic constructs from great literature and drama of the past. By definition, these themes are “conservative” in that they reflect a traditional approach to drama while offering a point of view regarding the threat of terrorism that more conservatives seem to be comfortable with than liberals. But at the same time, the show seeks to redefine the moral universe inhabited by the characters who are asked to sacrifice traditional values for the greater good of saving the country.

But we don’t live in Jack’s world. The world we live in is a many layered, textured nightmare of progressively darker shades of grey. What is torture? Is it right to make someone stand for 12 hours straight? Can you “waterboard” someone? Beyond the moral choices regarding torture, does it work? Is it necessary? The rest of the world is appalled at some of our answers. Shouldn’t we be?

I would argue with Gutfeld that rather than killing him off, the release of the torture memos places Jack Bauer in a much more human light. They allow us to understand that Bauer’s actions cannot be considered “rogue” in the sense that he was going off half cocked. Jack’s torturing was not a reflection of anything necessarily wrong with him as it was a reflection of the times in which he lived and the moral choices made by his superiors. It humanizes Bauer to have functioned in this atmosphere and rather than announcing his death, one might argue that he has been reborn and while still willing to use torture in the process of saving lives, is much more aware of the moral dimensions to his actions.

I was a johnny-come-lately to the idea that the severe interrogation techniques being employed against some prisoners held by the US crossed the line of legality and constituted illegal torture. Chalk it up to excessive partisanship. Or ignorance. Or perhaps fear of going against the grain of conservative opinion in the blogosphere.

The fact is, for more than a year after I began blogging, I either excused or ignored evidence that proved the Bush Administration was guilty of sacrificing our most cherished values in order to protect us. It wasn’t until early November of 2005 that I offered a somewhat rambling discourse on why torturing prisoners besmirched our nation’s good name and made the Bush Administration complicit in violations of American and international law. Despite being troubled by the evidence previous to that, I said nothing, wrote nothing, except the usual talking points still found, it pains me to say, in most conservative and Republican internet salons today.

What changed my mind? I tried to reconstruct my thought process by going through my archives and it turns out that there were two people whose writing finally opened my eyes to the illegalities being practiced by the Bush Administration - two writers who I rarely read today for reasons not related to the torture issues but who I must give credit for forcing me to look at the horror and reach the same conclusion they had; John Cole and Andrew Sullivan.

To those who are now nodding their heads with a knowing smirk on their face I will only say this; outright dismissal of views based solely on a writer’s ideological or even political leanings is the mark of the incurious and the ignorant. A grain of salt or two is helpful to be sure. Skepticism, the philosopher/educator Thomas Dewey remarked, is “the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.” And I am no doubt as guilty as the next blogger of being too quick with the snark when it comes to evaluating the case being made by an ideological opponent rather than using reason and logic to demolish an odious point of view.

Be that as it may, those two gentlemen’s writings were seminal in changing my opinion about what the Bush Administration was doing in our name. The fact that they believed sincerely they were doing it to protect us is not a valid excuse or justification. The idea that American military trainees also are forced to endure some of the “enahanced interrogation techniques” is the reasoning of a sophist. The trainees are not in United States custody and therefore, the officers responsible for these exercises are not subject to the same laws that military and intelligence professionals were required to follow with detainees - as were all officals in the Bush Administration. And whether you believe the Geneva Convention applied in the case of “enemy combatants” is also beside the point; no one repealed American law under which the Bush Administration was required to operate. As the Bybee memo proves beyond any reasonable doubt, the Administration was seeking a legal fig leaf in order to skirt that law as well as international treaties of which we are a signatory that clearly defines torture.

Tom MaGuire:

IN OUR NAME: The newly released torture memos are cold-blooded and clearly client-driven - the lawyers knew the answers they wanted and reasoned backwards.

The same could be said of the Yoo memos when the Bush Administration was seeking legal justification for their torture. Yoo knew full well what the Administration wanted - a sort of “Get out of jail free” card that would cover their behinds if anyone ever found out what they were doing. While this is true, there is another dynamic at work that seems to get short shrift by Bush Administration critics -a dynamic that, in some ways, makes the lawbreaking even more chilling.

Sure, they wished above all else to protect America from another attack. The sincerity of their beliefs must be granted them else one wanders off into territory reserved for kooks who believe Bush was a sadist and enjoyed torturing people. That they displayed enormous hubris in giving the middle finger to the law and proceeding marks them as cynics of the highest order.

Again, Maguire:

The US concern about actually harming someone comes through on every page. In fact, at one point (p. 36 of .pdf) the legal team wonders whether it would be illegal for the interrogators to threaten or imply that conditions for the prisoner could get even worse unless they cooperate. I suppose these memos will provide welcome reassurance of our underlying civility to both the world community and the terrorists in it.

The same holds true when discussing the “insect war” being fought on the internet today. The news that the Administration considered using one detainee’s fear of insects to extract information by locking him in a small box and telling him a stinging bug was in there with him is being derided on the right and used as proof that Bush was inhuman on the left. Both sides are wrong on this one. Using the threat of a stinging insect on someone with a phobia knowing it will terrorize him is clearly psychological torture and violates both US law and the Geneva Convention. But please, let’s not exaggerate or use wild hyperbole to make this any more than it is; one more example of the law being tossed aside - and not a particularly egregious example at that. The technique was never used.

Andrew Sullivan, who ridiculously complained yesterday when, a couple of hours after the memos had been released, some conservative writers had not commented on them, nevertheless reaches into the past to get to the heart of what the airing of this chapter in American history means:

Perhaps you are reading these documents alongside me. I’ve only read the Bybee memo, as chilling an artefact as you are ever likely to read in a democratic society, the work clearly not of a lawyer assessing torture techniques in good faith, but of an administration official tasked with finding how torture techniques already decided upon can be parsed in exquisitely disingenuous ways to fit the law, even when they clearly do not. This is what Hannah Arendt wrote of when she talked of the banality of evil. To read a bureaucrat finding ways to describe and parse away the clear infliction of torture on a terror suspect well outside any “ticking time bomb” scenario is to realize what so many of us feared and sensed from the shards of information we have been piecing together for years. It is all true.

Sullivan and many on the left have raised the specter of the Gestapo and Nazi Germany when discussing the techniques used on detainees but I think that misses the point. As Maguire points out, the Administration seemed torn about actually injuring even the worst of the terrorists they wished to single out for this treatment. Rather, it is the chilling, cold blooded legalese used by Bybee and the others that Andrew correctly judges as “the banality of evil.” It is reminiscent of the minutes that were found after World War II from the Wannsee Conference - the meeting of high level SS officers and Nazi party officials that developed “The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” The bureaucratic language of murder far surpasses in evil what the Bybee memo reveals. But the tone is the same - a detatched, unemotional accounting of various torture regimes, whether they would hurt too much, whether the subject would be in any danger, how much psychological damage would be done by employing these techniques, and what kind of legal exposure interrogators would have. (Another, less apropos parallel but still relevant, would be some of the memos from I.G. Farban to the extermination camp commandants where the mass gassing of human beings using Zyklon-B was touted in language that must be read to be believed.)

No, Bush is not like Hitler nor is his Administration or Bybee fascist or Nazi. But when reading the Bybee memo (I have read only one of the Bradbury memos), you feel unclean - as if you were reading something that might be contagious. What in God’s name got into these people? You wonder what the hell the gentleman was thinking when he wrote it. Did he grasp the fact that he was in the process of justifying the deliberate infliction of pain on another human being? I suppose lawyers can do just about anything - defending Bin Laden in an American court if it comes to that - but Bybee, like a good little bureaucrat, followed orders issued by his superiors and what emerged from his mind and pen puts a terrible coda on Bush era policies that broke American and international law.

President Obama, required by law, released these memos and then appropriately gave a pass to the men and women who operated under their legal guidelines. Overall, he is showing a sensitivity to the issues that most of us on the right are not giving him much credit for. He has not recommended prosection of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other high level Administration officials - yet. It could be he is waiting to see which way the political wind blows. It could be he is reluctant to distract the country from what he considers more important business. It could even be that he may wish to employ some of the same techniques against high value targets in the future and doesn’t want to close down any of his options. I believe, like myself, he really doesn’t know how to proceed. Will there be war crimes trials? A special prosecutor? A blue ribbon, “non-partisan” truth commission? I doubt whether he even wants to make that decision which means he will leave it to the Democratic Congress. If so, I have little hope that anything useful will emerge from anything the rabid Bush haters, who spent 8 years undermining the policies of a Republican president, can come up with.

I am done writing trying to convince conservatives that I am right by arguing nits. I came to the conclusion that despite what I see as clear evidence of lawbreaking, others on the right sincerely believe otherwise. But if there are any conservatives out there reading this who are continuing to defend these actions by President Bush and his people but nevertheless feel troubled and unsure, I urge you to take a fresh look at the issues - if only to buttress your own defense. There is no shame in changing your opinion if you expose yourself to new facts, new insights and look at the issue from a new perspective.

Here we are in April with Opening Day upon us (for the uninitiated, this used to be a holy day of obligation for followers of what used to be called our National Pastime) and Barack Obama has been president for 10 weeks. It has been an eventful epoch in American history with the president taking unprecedented steps to head off a depression, save our financial system, and remake America into a liberal paradise.

He has made plenty of errors, befitting his rookie status in the major leagues of public policy and national politics. So far, none of these miscues have cost us the game, as it were. (Forgive the baseball analogies but I am rounding into shape for the coming season.) The national government is in a rebuilding mode as veteran players and old policies are either traded away or unceremoniously let go while we give the youngsters a chance to prove themselves.

Some of these policies may indeed pan out and make the cut. The president’s new Af-Pak strategy has its drawbacks but, I believe, holds real promise for progress. And if Europe wants to embrace our new president and if that leads to better cooperation, I applaud it. We need Europe and NATO more now that the president is going to unilaterally and drastically reduce defense spending. The outline of an agreement with Russia on further reducing nukes appears to be pragmatic and not based on looking into Putin’s “soul” to discern what kind of a partner he might be. Trouble is brewing in Asia but that would have happened if John McCain had become president instead of Obama. The North Korean missile launch has scrambled our alliances with Japan and South Korea while making even the Chinese a little antsy. This presents an opportunity rather than a set back - as long as the Administration sees it that way and not as another excuse to placate Kim Il Jung by continuiing talks as if nothing has happened.

Domestically, the recession seems to be bottoming out (not surprisingly, no thanks to the Stimulus Bill) and Washington and the financial community appear to be coming to grips with the banking crisis. Whether the Geithner plan will work is a big unknown but just addressing the problem is a good first step. Other policy initiatives from stem cells to Guantanamo are matters of extreme disagreement with the opposition. Not that it matters. The voting public rejected the Republicans and conservatives and elected an almost supermajority of Democrats. They are in the drivers seat and for the first time since 1964, one party is going to get a chance to implement its agenda without needing to bother with what the political opposition has to say about it. In 1980 and 1994, the GOP had to deal with either a large, powerful, entrenched opposition or a president of the other party. Ronald Reagan worked some miracles to get most of his tax and spending policies made into law while the 1994 Republican takeover in the House saw many agenda items adopted, others not. Today’s political landscape is a Democratic one. All the Republicans can do is howl.

But it is Obama’s current foreign trip that is revealing of what kind of person we have elected as president. No one on the right should be surprised if Obama behaves like a liberal. He made no secret of his plan to exchange the “unilateralism” of the Bush Administration that always put American interests first with the unilateralism of the left that grants concessions without reciprocity (Iran) while subsuming American interests in the name of “cooperation” and “unity.”

Obama is making all the right noises and taken the right attitude - if one supports a liberal foreign policy. He has been apologetic, humble, cognizant of what the Europeans consider our “past mistakes,” solicitous of the sensibilities of our allies who, after all, think they should be running the world and not us (despite making a royal botch of things for 500 years), and respectful of leaders who have shone little but disdain for the US.

He has had a few gaffes but this is to be expected for his first at bat on his first road trip. What I find curious is the lack of coverage of many of these faux pas and liberal websites dismissing them as “distractions” or with the euphemistic “Bush did it too, only worse” meme. What’s interesting is that when Bush was president, they didn’t believe these gaffes to be a distraction but rather huge international incidents. One would have thought the world ended when Bush got too familiar with German Chancellor Merkel or he was overheard saying “sh*t” at a state dinner.

Somehow, now that Obama is president, these kinds of miscues that at one time were incidents that threatened the foundations of international order and indicative of the relative competence and smarts of President Bush have suddenly become “distractions.”

Glad we got that cleared up.

Beyond that, it was nice to see an American president lecture Europe about the “casual” anti-Americanism that occassionally morphs into a kind of nutty, conspiratorial idiocy and contributes to attitudes like believing America is a bigger threat to their country than Iran. That kind of stupidity can only be explained by an unreasoning, illogical, hatred of America. And for Obama - as popular as he is with the Euro-young - to lay it out in such stark terms was refreshing indeed.

Did he have to preface that lecture in Strasborg by referring to the US as “arrogant?” I note the overreaction to this statement on the right and while I understand the emotional response, Obama was doing more than simply playing to his audience as the Dixie Chicks and other high profile Americans have done while overseas. The president saw himself in the role of repairman in Europe. The alliance has been strained over our invasion and occupation of Iraq and the news - both true and false - about our government’s support for torture. Before you can fix anything, you must first identify what is wrong. This is what Obama was attempting to do when he said that past American policy had “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” All of those perjoratives have nothing to do with “America” and everything to do with “Bush.” Nations aren’t arrogant. National leaders are. Nor are nations “dismissive and derisive.”

(Tis a pity our president didn’t give any examples of our “dismissiveness” and “derisiveness.” I can’t recall a single incident the previous 8 years where the US government was “derisive” of anything said by anyone save perhaps the North Koreans and the Iranians. Was he apologizing to them? I hope not.)

I guess the words were meant to convey an attitude recognizing the fact that America isn’t perfect rather than apologizing for specific instances of American derisiveness. Obama as supplicant went over very well with those who want to see America brought down a peg or two. These people hold the same attitude toward America as those who reduced our former Ambassador to Great Britain Phillip Lader to tears on the BBC program Question Time a few days after 9/11 by applauding audience members who said the attack was our fault and mocking Lader when he tried to defend American policy. The myth of European solidarity with the US after 9/11 is a powerful one despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Oh sure, they were shocked and horrified by the nature of the attack and the loss of life. And they certainly felt a sympathy for the American people. But it is laughable to believe that on some level, they weren’t extremely pleased to see American power take a hit.

It worries me that Obama might believe in this legend and will seek to further subsume American interests in hopes that this mythical “solidarity” can be found again - a return to a time that never existed and a relationship that has been romanticized by the left. The fact is, Obama may be popular but America is not - not now and will not likely be in the future - unless Obama completely goes native and hands the keys to American foreign policy to the EU. This won’t happen which means European attitudes toward America will remain basically unchanged - as they have remained the same since the end of the cold war. The EU has been looking for a “counterweight” to American power for a long time and the thought that President Obama can do anything except improve our image and meliorate other atmospherics in our relationship is wishful thinking.

So Obama’s European test rates about a “B-” in my opinion. There is plenty of room for improvement but he accomplished much in the time he was there that I believe will end up being a net good for America. As a rule, I think it unimportant whether an American president is liked or disliked by the Europeans. But considerng the worldwide financial mess, the crumbling situation in Afghanistan, our continuing fight with Islamic extremists, and other issues of vital mutual concern with the EU, it certainly can’t hurt that Obama is well liked and apparently got off on the right foot with our allies and their citizens.

President Allison Taylor

First of all, my humble apologies for the tardiness of this summary. I know many of you who can’t stand my politics visit here exclusively for my 24 recaps and I am sorry if you were inconvenienced. About all I can say is that the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. A nasty headcold with a splitting sinus headache made the prospect of staring at the monitor for 14 hours in order to both do the work I am paid to do and write for my own pleasure impossible. All in all, a quite unproductive day.

This has happened only once or twice in 4 years so I hope you will let it slide and continue to join me for a look at some of the issues raised by the show as well as the silly fun we have with some of the characters. Evidently, some poor schmucks on the left have the sense of humor of a potato and believe I am a hypocrite because I am a fat old man who disses the personal appearance of some of the cast members. In fact, as regular readers know, my descriptions are so over the top that they become a parody of themselves - sort of like Larry Flynt describing the late Jerry Falwell but without the gross sexual and bathroom references (no doubt since I didn’t include any scatological humor, the brainless twits didn’t recognize it as parody.). Since it takes more than two brain cells working for the average three year old to figure this out on this site, the numbskulls who believe I have no business taking potshots at any character for their physical appearance can be forgiven their idiocy. Allow their brains to mature a bit before we judge them too harshly.

On a more interesting note, the drama of the President’s ordeal in being blackmailed with the life of her husband unless she called off the attack on Sangala opens the door to a fascinating real life counterfactual; should a president placed in that position invoke the 25th amendment and turn the presidency over to the vice president?

Here’s the relevant section of the 25th amendment:

Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

The scenario in the show is not as farfetched as you might think. Suppose in some alternate universe John McCain had been elected president (yeah, yeah…not the brightest universe in the bunch, I know). McCain’s son is serving in Iraq as you read this. Although we don’t know whether young Jimmy McCain would have been withdrawn from the fight (British royals have gone to war and been exposed to enemy fire) if the senator had been elected, a troubling scenario emerges where Jimmy is kidnapped by Sadrists who demand the US withdraw from Iraq.

What would a President McCain have done? One option would be to invoke the 25th amendment, turn the presidency over to Sarah Palin, and remove at least some of the kidnapper’s leverage. Knowing what we know of the Sadrist street thugs, it is doubtful we would see Jimmy alive again. But the point is that the US government would not be held hostage by the kidnappers if McCain stepped down temporarily.

The 25th amendment was ratified in 1967 and seeks to clarify some fuzzy constitutional language in Article II, Section 1 that never makes it clear whether the vice president, ascending to the presidency following a president’s death, is actually “President” or “Acting President.” In 1841, President Tyler set the precedent following William Henry Harrison’s long winded inauguration speech in a winter rain storm that caused Tippecanoe to catch a cold and die 41 days after taking the oath. There was a sizable segment of the country that believed Tyler was “Acting President” and that a special election should be held for Harrison’s replacement.

Tyler himself believed that not just the “duties and responsibilities” of the office devolved to him but also the title “President of the United States.” In the end, Tyler won the arguement when his enemies couldn’t muster the support to supplant him.

Prior to the 25th amendment, there were several cases where a “Jimmy McCain Scenario” might have proved too real. Abe Lincoln’s son Robert served as an aide to General Grant - fairly safe from being killed or captured in battle but still in danger from kidnappers. Then there were FDR’s 4 sons who served on the front lines in World War II, all of them distinguishing themselves in battle. One can imagine Hitler or Tojo wanting to get their hands on one of them. Finally, there was Eisenhower’s son John who served in Korea and who related a conversation years later with Ike where the president asked him to committ suicide if he was ever captured.

But what of President Taylor? The idea that she would be placed in such a position is dramatic but hardly realistic. Any president worth their salt would have stepped down temporarily and not allowed US policy to be held hostage along with her husband. That’s why the 25th amendment is there in the first place. Still, as a dramatic device (”I can’t ask the American people to sacrifice” what I would be unwilling to do) it works well. It certainly added some drama to the show and gave Jack and Renee something to do.

SUMMARY

The bent Secret Service agent Vossler brings the First Gent to Dubaku’s basement hideout that reminds me of a clubhouse a bunch of us kids set up in the basement of an abandoned house. Except these guys had HD TV, real comfortable chairs and sofas and was spotlessly clean.

At the White House, Jack, Bill, Renee, and the Matobo’s are shown into the oval office. After assuring the Prime Minister that the attack is underway, Maboto excuses himself and we are left with perhaps the most interesting scene on the show to date.

Jack fills the president in on the plot against her and America, a tale made all the more unbelievable by Jack’s kidnapping then rescuing Maboto. Poor President Taylor isn’t sure what to do until Renee steps forward and assures her it’s all true. All this time, Ethan Kamin - suspected plotter - is lurking in the back of the oval office drinking in every word. Jack pours on the charm and sincerity and Taylor relents. Especially after she is told that the CIP module is destroyed.

But is it?

Who found the module on the floor after the firefight in Dubaku’s office nerve center? Who called out to the rest of the crew that it was destroyed? Did Jack, Bill, or Renee actuall see the destroyed module? Who is about to flip sides and rejoin the conspiracy?

Gentle reader, do not be shocked when Tony shows up with Dubaku carrying the undamaged CIP device.

Dubaku then calls the president and gives her the bad news; he’s got her husband and unless she withdraws US forces out of range of Sangala and hands over Prime Minister Maboto, the First Gentleman will get it. To reinforce his threat, Dubaku has one of his goons cut off a First Gentleman finger.

Jack offers to rescue Henry but the president appears dubious. When she asks how she can trust Jack given his apparently dizzying back and forth regarding which side he is on, Jack gets a look on his face that would melt Taylor’s iron corset. “With all due respect, Madame President, ask around,” is all he says. The problem, of course, is that anyone who could testify to Jack’s loyalty are either dead or suspect themselves. Maybe Talyor could give the Chinese a ring…

When Jack asks Renee to search Gedge’s phone records so they can get a lead on Henry’s whereabouts, she convinces Bauer that they must bring Larry into the Golden Circle. The look on Larry’s face when he hears from Renee is priceless - he is one whipped dog, no? However, he won’t do anything unless he can be sure she is not under duress so they agree to meet.

The White House decides to at least appear to be carrying out Dubaku’s instructions so they fake a pullback of the American invasion fleet and get some poor government flunkie to dress up like Maboto and go to the place where Dubaku ordered them to take the Prime Minister.

Back at FBI headquarters, Hillinger is getting too nosy for our own good. The very first hour of the show it appeared he was involved in the plot when Janis caught him fooling around with the server. His explanation seemed plausible and we have hardly given him a thought since then. But the revelation that he is playing around on his wife with Miss Anorexia and his curiosity about the CIP module not being a threat anymore has us thinking once again - is he or isn’t he? Janis is oblivious to the possibility of Sean being the mole but knows that he’s fooling around with Miss Eating Disorder. We’ll see how that plays out as Miss Binge and Purge may play a key role in exposing Hillinger if he is the main mole at the FBI.

The scene in Lafayette Park with the confrontation between Larry and Jack over torture is one of the reasons I love the show. The series has always made a genuine effort to present realistic arguements for and against Jack’s tactics. And Renee, in this case, can be an “everyperson” character who is torn between necessity and her own personal morals. It’s an old dramatic device going back to the Greeks but it still works when done well.

After handing over Gedge’s phone records, Larry is horrified to hear Jack ask about Vossler’s family. Bauer’s plan is to make Vossler think that they will hurt his family unless he tells them where Henry is. Jack makes it plain that he is disgusted with Larry for not seeing the truth - his truth - of the matter:

Jack: When are you people going to stop thinking that they are playing by your rules. They’re not!

He gives them a choice; either they can tell the president that their consciences wouldn’t allow them to rescue Henry or they will “do what is necessary” to get the job done. Reluctantly, Renee sees it Jack’s way but you can tell she is torn. She heads off to Vossler’s home where his wife and 11 month old child are about to receive a lesson in “asymetrical warfare” - Jack style.

As Larry heads back to the FBI office so that he can track Vossler, he calls out to Jack angrily:

Larry: Look at yourself. You have lost everyone and everything you’ve ever had by doing what you think is “necessary.”

Of course, Larry nails it. And his concern about Renee taking up after Jack is well founded. She has already done stuff she never dreamed of doing before she met Jack. His parting shot to Jack is trenchant as is Jack’s response:

Larry: (almost gently): Jack - The rules are what make us better.
Jack: Not today.

Okay. So the “ticking bomb” scenario is a load of crap. I agree. But is it any less likely than a film like Seven Days in May where a conservative general tries to overthrow the government or The Day After that showed a nuclear holocaust? Don’t get me started on the realism involved in left wing films - even recent ones like Syriana. Somehow, the arguement that “it could never happen” doesn’t make it into discussions of those scenarios, only the “lessons” that are to be learned.

After Dubaku calls his American girlfriend who is unaware he is a genocidal maniac, we meet the woman’s wheelchair bound sister who doesn’t like Samuel-Dubaku and wants her sister to break up with him.

At FBI headquarters, Larry is tracking Vossler while Renee takes his family hostage. We can see that Renee is having a hard time threatening a woman with a baby. Larry pinpoints Vossler’s position for Jack who heads the bent agent off by speeding the wrong way down a one way street. Arriving at the intersection at exactly the right time, Jack slams into Vossler’s car, drags the nearly unconcious agent from his damaged vehicle into the foyer of an apartment building, and starts to turn the screws.

He softens him up a bit before he calls Renee who is having no fun at all “doing what is necessary.” When Vossler won’t cooperate even after talking to his hysterical wife, Renee goes after the infant. It is shocking to see and she almost disolves into tears when she forces herself to start choking the baby (we think - not even Fox was brave enough to show exactly what she was doing). The piteous cries of his baby breaks Vossler and he reveals Dubaku’s hideout. Renee brings the baby to its mother, releived she didn’t have to apply any more pressure to Vossler’s family. When an innocent bystander distracts Jack, the former Special Forces member Vossler springs into action with a knife, knocking Jack’s gun away. They struggle briefly before Jack stabs him with his own knife, killing him.

Jack calls Renee with the location of Dubaku’s hideout, informing her that Vossler is dead. Renee is so shaken she almost abandons the entire project but in the end, agrees to continue. She calls Larry who goes ballistic when he hears Vossler is dead and agrees to keep the news of the dead agent quiet. Hillinger is getting even nosier and wants to know why Homeland Security is keeping them out of the loop. Do we detect a slight panic in his voice? If he is the mole, that would make sense in that he is not getting information to relay to the plotters.

Rosa, the sister of Dubaku’s American girlfriend Marika calls the thug and tells him that she knows he is not who he says he is, having received a letter from a source she has in immigration saying there is no record of him emigrating here. The poor woman doesn’t know that she just signed her death sentence. Dubaku leaves - presumably to attend to Rosa. Marika will probably be key to unlocking some mysteries surrounding the plot given her close association with Dubaku over the previous months.

The Maboto look alike and his Secret Service protector arrive at the exchange place but, per their plan, refuse to get out of the limo. When informed of this development, Dubaku orders the limo destroyed and then calls his hideout, telling them to dispatch Henry. The limo is hit by an RPG, killing both the look alike and the agent.

Jack and Renee arrive at Dubaku’s hideout. They force the Korean grocer to unlock the door to the terrorist’s basement clubhouse and, after Renee is discovered coming down the steps, the second good firefight in two weeks erupts with Jack accounting for 4 of the bullies while Renee knocks off the other two.

Unfortunately, the last terrorist standing makes it into the back room where Henry is being held and despite getting one in the back from Jack, is able to get off a round that hits Henry in the stomach. The episode closes with Jack administering aide to the stricken First Gent, screaming for an ambulance.

BODY COUNT

Jack the Knife takes out Vossler
The Maboto look alike and his guardian pay the price.
Six terrorists are history at the Clubhouse with Jack accounting for 4.

Jack: 12

Show: 311

This is pretty surreal. There have been dozens of posts on the discontinuation of PJM’s ad network and the majority of them seem to think that PJ Media is going under or has gone under.

It re-confirms a longstanding suspicion of mine - one that I’ve shared with other “long form” bloggers and essayists on the web. The fact is, the majority of people do not read what we write. They either skim the piece and choose one bone to pick with the author or, even more commonly, don’t even bother to do that and simply glean the subject matter from the title of the post and say any old thing in the comments about what we wrote.

This becomes painfully obvious when some commenter throws 200 words at me, complaining I didn’t raise this point or that one when, in fact, the point was raised - sometimes repeatedly.

Now, I will be the first to say (although I can guarantee you it will appear in the comments at least once) that I am pretty full of myself if I actually believe most people want to read a 1500 word blog post from some guy named Moran - at least on a daily basis. No doubt, some of what I write is indeed worth reading from beginning to end. Other posts, not so much. My beef isn’t necessarily with those who think I’m a crummy writer but rather with those who comment on what I write pretending to have read and absorbed what I’ve written. If I demand honesty from myself when writing, shouldn’t I hold my readers to the same standard?

A few years ago, I actually took to banning people who played that game but in the end, realized it is a function of the internet that very few have the time or interest to read an essay - unless it’s by Bill Whittle, Mark Steyn, or some other brilliant writer. So I relented and allowed all the banned folks back in. (I will do the same on “Blogroll Amnesty Day” this week. My list of banned IP’s over the last year runs to less than 2 a month.)

So it is not a shock that people have substituted their own interpretation of the news regarding the demise of PJM’s ad network, pulling from it the erroneous information that PJ Media is toast, that the website is kaput, that PJTV is on the ropes (or a hopeless cause), and that the company will be out of business in a few months. Some of this is surely wishful thinking on the part of long time critics. Some of it may be jealousy or hurt feelings (lots of that over the years). Some of it is political partisan warfare as the left universally celebrates the “downfall” of a conservative media platform - not recognizing because they never read it, that the range of opinion on the PJ website so far outstrips anything on “progressive sites” that it is obvious lefty detractors don’t have a clue what kind of site PJM actually strives to be or they wouldn’t reveal their ignorance so proudly.

We have had liberal writers in the past contribute to the site and I hope we can increase the participation of the left in the future. We have featured many dozens of articles that were highly critical of conservatives, Republicans, and Bush with many dozens more supportive. We have had religious conservatives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, and moderate liberals write on every political and public policy topic you can think of. I am sorry but the idea that The Huffington Post or any comparable site on the left has one tenth the range of opinion and thought featured regularly at the PJ Media site just doesn’t hold water. And liberals would realize that if they bothered to visit every once and a while. The fact that the demise of the ad network has smoked them out of the walls and has them trying to outdo one another in snarky tropes, gloating at the perceived “failure” of PJM without even being familiar with what regularly appears on the webpage reveals PJM’s critics to have the intellectual shallowness we’ve come to know and love.

This becomes painfully obvious when the reader of these screeds is informed that PJM is a “far-right” website. (Since most liberals believe anyone to the right of Che is “far right,” I suppose it makes sense - in a twisted sort of way.) Even if you were to stop by the site and read a couple of articles once a month, anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence would realize immediately the falsity of that statement. If one wants uniformity of opinion, go left, young man, go left.

I doubt whether any left wing site would have featured a pro-con argument at the top of the webpage that defended and criticized a controversial decision made by the parent company and yet PJM did exactly that regarding the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel. (There were also a couple of other articles that examined the issue and criticized the decision.) PJM has featured other writers that went entirely against the grain of conservative thought on torture, immigration, the war, health care, and other policy prescriptions. We have featured several articles highly critical of Sarah Palin, John McCain, the Republican leadership, and yes, the far right of the movement.

To refer to PJ Media as a “far right” website is ludicrous. Worse, it is ignorant. It reveals the writer of such nonsense to not know what they are talking about - something that is not unusual even among the largest lefty blogs. And to top it off, gloating over the demise of a website that will not be demising adds a little schadenfruede right back at ya. To spend 1000 words doing a verbal sack dance over a foe that is still on its feet and has just tossed a 50 yard bomb for a touchdown only makes the writer look silly indeed.

I have taken some time to defend PJ Media not just because I work there but because the amount of false, misleading, and just plain dumb information that has exploded on the net as a result of the news that the blogger network has been discontinued requires a response. Setting the record straight is not my job (what I write here is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thinking of PJ Media’s management or employees). But long time readers of this site know I take particular pleasure in showing the right’s critics to be shallow, stupid, obstinate, and without honor. And the inability of PJM’s critics to even get the elementary facts of the story correct continues to prove my point.

ADDENDUM:

I didn’t mention that there will be a new approach to bringing revenue in through the website. One model has been discarded and another will take its place. To be completely accurate, one could say that the original model has indeed failed but how you can stretch that notion and say the entire enterprise is a failure is beyond me.

As surely as a moth is drawn to  flame and Democrats to bailout money, I am pulled by some unseen force to this website and forced by dint of habit - and out of a desperation born of ennui -  to catalogue my thoughts about the world as it is revealed to me by our new President, Head of State, Commander in Chief, and, we are informed by a doe-eyed, worshipping media, our hero and savior Barack Obama.

The outpouring has been astonishing. About all that’s missing is laying palms in his path as he rode on the back of an ass into Washington. No, Robert Byrd was feeling poorly so he ended up riding in a monstrosity of an automobile nicknamed the “Obamobile” or, more prosaically, Cadillac One.

Now I love Caddies - the older the better. My dad bought a new Cadillac every two years for the last 12 years of his life and let me tell you, it was like riding in the most comfortable bed you’ve ever slept in. Going 90 MPH up US 31 to Michigan, gliding over pot holes as if they weren’t even there, it was like flying in space. You were almost weightless. A doctor could have operated in the back seat so smooth it was.

That was then. Compare this beautiful monster of a Sedan DeVille with the pug-like face of the Obamonstrosity. It almost makes me ashamed to be an American to think what GM has done to the Cadillac. If cars were dogs, we would have euthanized most American autos years ago.

American cars used to be big, smelly, swaggering, get the fu*k out of my way, powerful, unbelievably comfortable, and virtually indestructible machines of glory. So what if they only got 8 miles to the gallon? About 95% of your trips were going to be less than 8 miles anyway so what’s a gallon of gas when you can ride around in a Chariot of the Gods? Then government got into the business of designing cars and the result is what Obama is forced to ride around in - something that looks like a French interior designer with a taste for cubist art might come up with.

I remember when the first Toyatas started to appear on the roads. It was like frightening - for the person driving the American car. You were afraid to pass the little Celicas on the highway for fear of blowing them into a ditch. In the city, pulling up to one of those tin death traps at a stop light was to elicit a sneer or a giggle. Of course, Toyota has the last laugh today and Detroit is designing cars that look like the old Trabants that belched smokey oil and puttered around the streets in East Germany 20 years ago. Same boxy, useless look about them.

So our hero and savior no doubt wishes he could at least have something really kewl to ride around in but got stuck with a car that can withstand bomb and chemical attacks but lacks any style or elegance whatsoever. What’s a Messiah to do?

It certainly hasn’t stopped the press from piling on the hero worship and granting our new president Hall of Fame status before even throwing his first Major League pitch. Imbuing a politician - even a good one - with superhuman qualities is not a healthy thing in a republic. As this video shows, some even have taken to pledging to be a “servant” to The One. I think supporting Obama is just fine, a truly patriotic thing to do in this crisis to be sure. But I think it is unamerican to kneel in service to anyone - especially a politician and most especially a politician who has only been in office two days.

Two freaking days! Already the press is swooning. “HE’S DIFFERENT!” Oh my God, he’s working in his SHIRTSLEEVES in the Oval Office! He’s already “overturned the entire architecture of the Bush Torture Regime.” Democracy has been restored! Good has triumphed over evil!

Meanwhile, his tax dodging Treausry Secretary (Turbo Tax has denied he could have possibly missed not paying the taxes he owed) is elevated to the status of Wizard. He is Gandolf the Green, Holy Arbiter of the Sacred Scrolls of Bernanke, High Priest of the Bailout. Depending on which genuflecting senator you talk to, he is either “irreplaceable,” or “uniquely qualified.”

I don’t care if he’s an alchemist who can turn pork into gold, just give me an honest public servant please. Or are we to use crooks and liars to get us out of this morass? If that’s the case, get me Michael Milkin on the double! Anyone who can sell the crappy paper he ended up dumping on the unsuspecting rich twits on Wall Street is the kind of guy we need running this bailout thingy. I bet he has the economy humming along in no time.

Glad to see Hillary made it. I would send her first to Russia. There she could respond to the leader of the Liberal Democratic party in Russia who said that Condi Rice needed sex - badly. The reason for our Secretary of State’s “anti Russian statements” were because she was a single woman and hadn’t had a man in a while.

There is absolutely no doubt that anyone would say something like that about Hillary. First, who would have the nerve? Secondly, we know Bill Clinton and the idea that Hillary is lacking anything in her sex life is ludicrous. So I hope that Hillary makes even tougher anti-Russian statements just to tell of that sexist pig who insulted Condi.

Seriously, it hasn’t been a bad couple of days for Obama - quite good in a couple of respects. But are we to endure 4 or 8 years of this over the top, out of control, masturbatory media overkill? Everything about him his so perfect that any criticism at all seems harsh. Obama doesn’t necessarily invite this sort of thing but it seems to happen anyway. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to examine this phenomenon as the months pass and reality sets in.

Until then, I guess we’ve just got to make fun of it whenever we can…