Rush Limbaugh said:

"Mrs. Pelosi, you asked for this, here ya go. Adolph Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate."

Those of us with a democratic mindset may find this an odious comparison, but that's just because we worship the myth of Obama as Holy Messiah. From a reich-winger's perspective, ruling by dictate is a mark of distinction; it's what a real Decider does, a Commander-in-Chief. This is Rush's good-ole-boy way of giving Obama a hearty slap on the back while rubbing Pelosi's nose right in it. He's gloating over how Obama, like Bush Jr., has already joined the ranks of the Big Boys who aren't afraid to flirt with fascism.

Chuck Todd babbled:

"Is it healthy for our reputation around the world ...that we have to do what other countries... so-called democracies that struggle with their democracy, and sit there and always put the previous administration on trial - you don't think that we start having retributions on this going forward?"

Personally, I'm all about the retribution. The only thing these corporate flacks fear is losing their privileged spot at the imperial feed trough.

GG wrote:

"People can decide for themselves what meaning to draw from the fact that one of Obama's most mindless, obedient, gushing worshipers is a young German eager and desperate for a dictator to rule over her life."

At this point, I think most young people's impression of Nazi-era Germany is largely based on Indiana Jones movies.

Once memories of WWII have faded out, I expect people will retire the "good German" archetype, and refurbish it with support-the-troops Americans of the Bush era.

A rarely discussed aspect of these gulags is that all of the captive targets of US military brutality have been men. It is sobering to recognize that had women been subjected to the barbaric treatment these men have endured, the American use of torture would be cast in a heinous sexualized context of rape and depravity.

Obama and his Congressional cohorts are not just blowing smoke here. The contents of the photos cannot be the point, as the images will no doubt eventually be leaked to the media. My hunch is that the photos provide an actionable link to treason not yet exposed, and to war criminals not yet indicted.

100 days is enough time for a ruler to establish his priorities. For Obama, it looks like this:

1. Reinforce the entrenched economic dominance of the investment banking cartel; indemnify major players from financial loss.

2. Consolidate the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; neutralize Iran and prepare the foundation for expansion into Pakistan.

3. Clamp a lid on political excesses of the outgoing regime; ensure loyalty of military and CIA via guarantees of immunity from prosecution.

4. Stonewall on health insurance reform to give major insurers time to distribute congressional campaign donations.

Even if we accepted Cheney's words as true:

"We resorted to waterboarding... with only three individuals. In those cases, it was only after we'd gone through all the other steps of the process... The way the whole program was set up was very careful, to use other methods and only to resort to the enhanced techniques in those special circumstances."

None of these claims refute the damning accusation that is boiling beneath this debate: that the Cheney cabal's prime motivation for torturing its prisoners was not to extract information of impending terrorist attacks. It was instead a series of relentless attempts to coerce fabricated confessions that could be used to link Iraq to Al Qaeda.

What I'm wondering is if any explicit attempts to extract false confessions of this type have emerged from the documentation released so far? While we know that nothing useful was actually obtained from the detainees in these waterboarding cases, the lines of interrogation used by the torturers may expose far more revealing confessions of intent.

Rahm Emanuel said on behalf of Barack Obama:

"This is not a time for anger and retribution..."

Oh no, that time is long passed, Americans are ready to move on. The time for anger was August 2002, when brutal torture by the CIA was unleashed on illegally abducted and imprisoned detainees. And the time for retribution was March 20, 2003, when the unprovoked lethal fire of the US Military was unleashed on Iraq.

Yes, the time for anger and retribution is when suitably defenseless scapegoats are cornered and savaged for sake of collective vengeance. It would be no more appropriate to prosecute the instigators of those acts than to hold the American people collectively responsible for restitution to their victims.

Let us not dwell on the regrettable excesses of the past, but forthrightly vow not to repeat them and move on to more productive endeavors.

Kitchen Girl wrote:

Issue number one is a fairly cut-and-dried case of second-degree murder. So far, everyone in this thread has been happy to agree that Andrade's ultraviolent reaction to his discovery that Zapata was actually physiologically male was wrong by every standard that defines a civilized society.

This is exactly what I mean by a self-righteous liberal apologist. Rationalize it however you like, straight girl, but you've just told us queers that in your mainstream mind, killing a trans girl only rates as second-degree murder.

Why? Because to nativists like you, she can never be anything more than a second-class woman, not just her sexuality but her whole life is an artificial pretense based on deception. The heterosexist presumption you betray is that your predatory chauvinistic culture is what's inherently natural and that it is queer people's responsibility to play by your rules.

Go ahead and deny that you ever wrote or implied any such thing. It's all empty words and it won't change a goddamn thing.