The government requires any firm that does business with them to monitor the blood chemistry of their employees to ensure that they are not apostates of the state religion.

The government flies aircraft over your neighborhood with infrared detection systems to measure the heat output of your home to make sure that you have no rooms that are too warm, since that would possibly indicate that you are apostate of the state religion.

The government colludes with the electric supply companies to make sure that you are not using too much electricity for your size and style of home. Again to make sure that you are not apostate of the state religion.

The government intercepts and reads/listens to all of your electronic communications.

The police shoot unarmed persons dozens of times and are not punished for that behavior.

The police perform break in raids on private residences, once again to assure that you are not an apostate of the state religion.

Your nation has a higher percentage of its citizens locked in cages than any other on the planet.

You might be a redneck if your minister uses Quaker State when he anoints you with oil.

What I wonder about is the unyielding administration support by RW Salon readers and LW’ers. Some of them apparently seem to understand and acknowledge, that this is happening; yet can’t depart from the RWA talking points.

I agree with you but LW'ers has me scratching my head..

With all due respect, one would think that the more educated party of a conversation would have the tools to communicate down to an elementary audience. But alas, I suppose not.

You have apparently never raised children.. You can tell a child that the hot stove will burn and hurt them until you go hoarse and they will not listen and will continue to try to touch the stove.

Once they actually touch the stove and burn themselves most children then understand and will not touch the stove again.

Adults are really just large children, they have to touch the stove also to truly understand that to do so causes pain.

There is a Chinese aphorism which goes like this: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.

My point being that simply telling people something is extremely unlikely to make them truly understand it. Why do you suppose that school children are given homework? It is so they get practical experience in solving the problems without someone standing over their shoulder and telling them exactly what to do.

A passive audience learns almost nothing, it takes actual engagement and two way communication to foster the development of understanding in the student.

The fact that many of my posts are in the form of a question is an attempt to engage others in discovering what I consider to be truths. My simply telling people things is rarely productive, they have to figure them out for themselves.

That which we figure out for ourselves is far better understood and far longer remembered than that which we are simply told.

Quoth Kitt: It's infuriating to watch them ramble all around the periphery of every question, subject, answer.

And yet you continue to utterly refuse to answer my simple question..

What else am I wrong about?

Perhaps now, since you admit to being infuriated by a refusal to directly answer a question, you can understand my irritation at your refusal to answer my question that you yourself precipitated.

I predict you will not reply.

You make MY point very nicely. Did the leadership truly appreciate the ramifications of accepting the presentation? I don't think so. I can't believe any of them had been asked to condone torture before, but I CAN believe they would do everything possible to protect the country, and worry about the consequences later.

I don't entirely disagree with you.

However, anyone who thinks that terrorists are a truly existential threat to the USA has such a severe case of cranorectal inversion that they are looking out their own navel.

That they did not fully understand the ramifications of their decisions is not an excuse. It is codified into the law that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

As has already been explained, the US has signed and ratified treaties which forbid the use of torture. If the legislators were ignorant of that fact, something I find impossible to believe anyway, then that still does not excuse their actions.

Furthermore, to a man the legislature of the USA is made up of theists, the overwhelming majority of whom are self professed Christians. It should be patently obvious to any follower of the Christ that He would have condemned the use of torture on one's fellow human beings. After all, it is considered the "ultimate sacrifice" for the Christ to have willingly undergone torture unto death in order to save the souls of humankind.

This dichotomy between the self professed beliefs and the actions of our legislators makes it patently obvious that they are hypocrites of the highest order.

It's not a mere accident that the sin which the Christ most often and vociferously condemned was that of hypocrisy.

As I have just shown, not only are our legislators guilty of knowingly breaking the law, they are also guilty of knowingly violating the precepts of their own, often vociferously professed, code of morality... That of the Christian faith.

That our legislators are hypocrites is totally unsurprising, that they should be such guilty of such incredibly blatant hypocrisy is worthy of a raised eyebrow.