Why would congress need to pass a law to make waterboarding illegal? Because it is torture, it already IS ILLEGAL. Do we have to pass a law to make the rack illegal? If the dems even attempt to pass such a law, it will go down in veto flames and essentially uphold the notion that waterboarding is currently legal.

...that she didn't just come right out and ask him if he'd like oral sex from Ahmadinejad if he had a tonge stud. It seems to be what she's getting at.

I will continue to believe that 'Adam's Rib' is a long-forgotten euphemism for his penis. (his bone, ya know?) The story, then, is that god 'used Adam's penis' (had sex with him) to create Eve. So god is either a woman or a gay man with procreative powers.

I've heard two basic arguments for why Mukasey can't say waterboarding is torture:

1) he doesn't really know what it is;

2) the US won't disclose whether it does or does not use any particular interrogation tactic.

Don't both those arguments apply to any torture tactic (e.g. the rack, cattle prods, etc.)? If he can say whether those are torture or not (and I bet he can), why not waterboarding? Quite obviously, unlike those other torture techniques and contrary to arguments 1 and 2, it is because he does know what waterboarding is and knows we do it.

It makes no sense to expect the president to bear responsibility for the terrible shape our country is in. It does make sense for him to pretend the country is in great shape and take credit for that fantasy.

1) Kudos to Bob for pointing out the obvious that I haven't seen much of: Mukasey cannot say waterboarding is torture or he will have to prosecute the people who he would work for. I don't know how any nominee will get out of that trap, but it's fun to watch them try.

2) A staged waterboarding could never demonstrate the terror that the real thing would instill in a victim, the fear that the people doing it to you are actually on their way to killing you. And when it occurs, it is also part of a package of stress-inducing tactics (sleep-deprivation, etc.), which 100% of Americans would label torture if they ever have to experience them.

Conservatives like to say it's about being thrifty with a nickel, nostalgia for better days and patriotism. However, those are pretty labels for selfishness, fear, hate, and authoritarianism. From Puritans in 17th century England to modern Nationalists in Japan, those are commonalities. It's all the dark elements of the human psyche turned into an ideology.

Yes, the over-all style and quality of Boylan's email reminded me instantly of student letters to the campus newspaper.

"I feel I have to defend Huckabee on this one because I didn't see anything in this article that contradicted the *philosophy* of intelligent design."

Yes, he does. He says that he doesn't think he came from a monkey. That's typical anti-evolutionary cant, and it doesn't square with I.D., which admits that yes, there were monkeys in our past, but an omnipotent designer played match-maker with them to arrange everything to lead to humans.

As the previous poster points out, hundreds of years ago even the Catholic Church began to move beyond the "science must always bow before god" argument. It was a little thing called "The Enlightenment." Would he have us still believe the sun goes around the Earth? That's what his Bible says, in conflict with what those "always changing their minds" scientists say.

Because they don't talk so good.

"We now return you to our regularly scheduled ignorance"

I wish your ignorance were more regularly scheduled, then we could make better plans to avoid it.

"Is the point that so-called Christian conservatives knew, or should have known, that Duke Cunningham et al. are hypocrites?"

Yes.

"That their endorsement or high rating of any particular politician is automatically suspect?"

Yes

"Exactly HOW should the common people of this country divine the scummy nature of any particular person BEFORE any proof actually surfaces?"

They're called 'republicans.'

"it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

How long do we think we can contain "knowledge"? Do we think we are in charge of what goes into the brains of Iranian scientists? I hate the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran as much as the next person (assuming the next person is against that sort of thing), but it's clear they're gonna get it. It's like thinking 75 years ago we could prevent a country from aquiring the aeroplane. In a generation every government with a high-speed internet connection and a spare billion $ will have a nuclear bomb. See subject line.

Under what sequence of events will my debt be cancelled? That's what I'm looking for.

Anonymous, despite my suspicions that you are The Anonymous Troll that most terrorizes this site, that was pretty damn funny.

My mind did a lot of gymnastics over this figure this morning when I read it in the paper. Aside from the potential of it just being basic AP misreporting, I wondered about the effect of China, where it's possible that close to 10 of 10 women have abortions before the age of 45, and there are a large number of Chinese women in the data set.

How about Ford? Or Reagan? Or Bush-the-first? Once republicans are done screwing the country from the Whitehouse, they're done with public service. It's golf and ranchin'. Carter and Clinton have shown how it should be done.