the argument, that is.

Apparently nobody talks about whether Citibank or BofA are on their way out, because they are supposedly "too big to fail", even though fewer people would lose their jobs if they did than if 2 or all three of the US automakers bit the dust.

If the banks went out of business the government would have to pay off account holders, per decades-old legislation that created the FDIC-- i.e., the laws were already on the books mandating that shareholders would be protected, before any of the bailout shenanigans started.

I also note this is yet another article about the domestic automakers that criticizes them without noting their economic disadvantage relative to competitors that aren't supporting many thousands of retirees.

How many retired US employees of Toyota or Honda or Nissan are 75 plus and needing often expensive medical care? Hell, how many US retirees do they even have?

hi Andrew Leonard,

are you familiar with Express Scribe by NCH software? (And no, I don't work for them.)

is due, I think, to our collective memories being longer than we generally acknowledge. Our awareness that right-wing nuts generally target mainstream left political figures, like 80s lefty radio shock jock Allen Berg, or the "what's-the-frequency" non-lethal attack on Dan Rather, or even the murder of Sweden's Olof Palme runs deep. These are old events, but more recently the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey in 2007, even if it was by a black man, nevertheless fits the pattern.

I'm convinced that even if we don't remember the details, events like these register with people and get filed away in a corner of the brain.

By contrast, the homicidal radical left has been largely nonexistent in the US for over 30 years, as far as I can see.

Norms are formed by consensus, and the steady drumbeat for violence on talk-radio and TV serves the same purpose for a small segment of their audience, as respected media authorities essentially give them permission.

Yes, violence is a predictable byproduct of our winner-take-all economy. Nevertheless, this is a pretty useless piece, adding nothing you wouldn't see in a B paper for an Intro to Sociology class offered at a community college. Salon still publishes useful articles, but this isn't one of them.

That sounds like your the gist of your argument. I don't doubt that Alistair Horne believes the French found torture effective, but your citing his belief still doesn't prove it.

Nor, I might add, have you proven that the "ticking bomb scenario" is valid. You say that it "cannot be easily be dismissed", but fail to provide even one concrete instance in which it was successfully employed, not even one from many decades or centuries ago.

I don't buy any of it. And I have to wonder if you believe your own thesis, that we shouldn't torture because it's intrinsically wrong. Partly this is because you don't offer the strongest concrete arguments against torture: that it often yields credible but false results and that it turns possible allies (and informants) away from us in disgust.

Frankly I detect some ambivalence, and wonder if you've really figured out how you regard torture.

in my previous letter, I realize that in the cutting and pasting I failed to be more specific. It's tempting to blame the browser or the keyboard, but it's my fault--

1.when I assert you don't provide one concrete instance of the effectiveness of torture, I mean a demonstration that the information could not have been extracted otherwise. If torturers have never done systematic studies to compare tactics objectively(ironically, these could include so-called "double-blind" studies), I suspect it's because torture advocates often have excess certitude of being on the side of right-- presumably this is a psychological coping mechanism borne of the need to not question their own behavior. (Then again maybe such a study has been done, and the documentation exists somewhere in the bowels of one nation's intelligence agency, but we'll never be privy to the results.)

Of course it's that same certitude that yields false confessions that seem more credible precisely because they came from tortured persons-- when in fact a torture victim's reasonable desire is to figure out what his torture wants to hear, and say it, irrespective of whether it's the truth, especially if the torturer is already predisposed in a certain way.

"Link between al-Qu'eda and Saddam? Sure, but it might take a few hours."

If you need somebody to confess to something.

That's what torture is good for.

2.You do note Kennedy's nonsupport of the French. Fair enough. I'm thinking also of the dearth of Arabic speakers working in US intelligence, even after all these years. The CIA even has pop-up recruiting ads on Arab-American websites like Al Bawaba, but millions of Arab-Americans who do have the requisite skills don't want that dirty money.

"Why is it that these right-wing family-values guys are always the worst sinners?"

Even though I sometimes think this same thing, I don't think it's entirely fair. Lots of conservos are against gay marriage but supportive and accepting of their gay children, or otherwise avoid being Larry Craigs or Ted Haggards, per se and never make the headlines. I'd try to save the schadenfreude for a case-by-case rather than globally-applied basis.

Besides, when exactly did Gibson start seeing the Ukrainian lady? If he's been booted out of the house since 2006, I fail to see how his shacking up with one of the Oksanas since then is so terribly hypocritical.

Yes, Catholics should be able to divorce. Or become Episcopalians, the Catholic-lite denomination that allows it.

But I'd say that it's more important that nuns and priests should be able to marry, even as individual orders might prohibit it.