......AlQaida planned on flying a plane into a building where your wife or you, or your parent, or your adult child.....worked. And aggressive techniques (that you call torture) were a means to get the information to learn about the plot? What would you do if you had to make the decision? "

or, what if the only way to get the information were to sacrifice a goat at the dark of the moon then use a ouija board?

that the republicans bite me.

Well, it's pretty close. Going to 21 instead of 20 from 13 would actually be statistically significant at the magical .05 level.

All meaningless in real life, of course.

they could make Bush generalissimo for life.

then why are they doing it?

well, let's look at it another way.

for 90% of the earth's history, billions of years, there was a lot more carbon dioxide in the air, it was about 10 degrees C hotter, and correspondingly more humid. then, during the Devonian period, about 400 million years ago, plants progressed from primitive items into recognizable modern forms, and colonized the land. this led to the carboniferous period for the next 100 million years or so, where the plant life was so lush it sucked most of the carbon from the carbon dioxide out of the air to make cellulose, so fast that it couldn't decay back into the air when they died and the majority of it got buried and turned into fossil carbon, i.e. fuel.

Bear in mind that the only land animals you might recognize at this point were insects, like those giant dragonflies you see in time travel movies, along with those big scorpions, giant millipedes, etc, happy with the absence of any other animal competition and with all that new oxygen liberated from splitting the carbon dioxide. By the end of the period, some primitive reptiles have started to appear.

At the end of the period, carbon dioxide was down to current levels, as were temperature and humidity; under these conditions, pretty much every animal you'd recognize except those early bugs (and sharks, in the water) has evolved. Including humans.

Now, the optimistic theory is, that we can dig up all that carbon that got buried over a period of a hundred million years or so and put it back in the air over a century or so, without the climate snapping back to where it was the last time there was that much carbon dioxide and had been for 90% of the earth's existence, because somehow all that carbon dioxide will all find a way to get absorbed, even though we have no idea where or how that absorbtion might work, because to a human being a century seems like a real slow gradual process that the earth can adjust to, as long as we don't think about it having taken a million times as long to pull it out of the air and it still affected the climate.

how much would you bet on that little scenario? i've heard more likely tales from 6 year olds explaining how the cookie jar just fell off the counter by itself. it's like betting that you can set the spring on a bear trap, and there's no evidence that if you step on the trigger it will snap shut on your leg, because maybe the spring's energy will just be dissipated somewhere, who knows.

oh yeah, and like everybody else says, the Jurassic doesn't enter into it, that was already 100 million years after the carbon dioxide got removed. like i said, you wouldn't recognize any animals that lived in the CO2 soup, dinosaurs included.

i may be old, but i'm still Left and I'm still Hard! or some such.

that maybe all the "nobody except my religion gets to heaven" folks are going to have their own little sectors of heaven where nobody else gets in and they don't get out, just so's everybody else can actually experience paradise?

because you can pretty much guess that if Barton had evern spoken to Madoff, he'd have handed over the famiily farm. (note to republican congressmen: those last couple of words are a metaphor, i don't know if barton has a family farm)

everybody all together now:

two state solution!two state solution!two state solution!

i look forward to a manful republic of manly men, doing manly things together in a manful fashion, with other men!

"the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom"

IN MY PANTS!!!!

A lot of us are grateful you couldn't.

with a global pandemic about to break out, do i feel safer with obama's crew at the helm rather than the Defenders of Katrina? Gee, i dunno. i'll have to think.

"Torture is illegal. Except when you want to do it."

I thought he was at least smarter than that.

if that were the rationale, nobody would be tortured after a day had passed since their capture. that aint' the case.

secondly, if torture worked to get info, you wouldn't exactly have to waterboard somebody 180 times, would you? clearly torture doesn't work by the proponents' own experience, at very best no more often than once out of 180 times.

how does flu get from mexico to, say nova scotia, among other states and provinces reporting cases? why, it's from impoverished illegal immigrants, who presumably become confused after crossing the Rio Grande and continue north until their feet freeze to the ground.

it certainly couldn't be from hordes of spring breakers and vacationers who descended on mexico a month or so ago then flew back to their homes all over the USA and canada.

no, it's those damn immigrants. i should mention that i do have a grudge against immigrants; i've only been in this country for a week and already some damn immigrant stole my job.

i mean, anybody who can still love W at this point has to be one hell of a superior person. maybe laura, but that's about it.