I'll be as happy as anyone when "Rummy" leaves, but even if Bush waits till after Dec. 29, he won't be the longest-serving SecDef. McNamara served from 1961 into 1968, more than seven years. Rumsfeld would have to serve into 2008 to beat that record. Of course, he's already competing with McNamara's record of supervising a failed, dishonest, ill-advised war....

This is a fascinating interview, and I certainly want to read more by Barbara King. I was disappointed, however, toward the end when the dialogue veered toward issues of atheism vs. religious belief, that King seemed to facilely avoid the stark choices there, and to take a cheap, undeserved swipe at scientific atheists. After rejecting Richard Dawkins's argument that one must choose between scientific and religious approaches to the world, and also rejecting Stephen Jay Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" theory (which Dawkins showed is quite incoherent -- for one thing, no actual, major religious movement has ever abided by its side of this purported philosophical bargain), King settles for a third approach -- for which, unfortunately, she offers only the haziest explanation. And she draws a false comparison. She compares "a biblical literalist" with "an arrogant scientist who tells everyone else what to think," as if these archetypes represent equivalently offensive or dogmatic extremes. Because she had just mentioned Dawkins (often accused by religious people of being "arrogant") this seems like a thinly veiled swipe at Dawkins. But what makes Dawkins "arrogant"? He certainly doesn't "tell people what to think." He makes rational, fact-based, scientific arguments, and challenges others to defend their views in similar scientific terms. He simply asks that people DO "think" (instead of accepting certain ideas on rote obedience to authority or blind faith). It is, of course, "biblical literalists" (and many other religious people) who are actually the ones who "tell people what to think." It's sad that even a respected scientist like King plays into popular anti-intellectual stereotypes of the "arrogant scientist"!

I generally admire Farhad Manjoo's thoughtful writing, but as a constitutional law professor quite familiar with the issues involved here, I must agree with the other commenters who protest that the article misses the point -- bigtime, in a scary way. Only in the last, brief paragraph, does Manjoo admit the obvious: that even stipulating this kid intended to make trouble or get attention, even assuming he taunted the police and acted like a total jerk, that does NOT, and CANNOT, justify the use of a cruel torture device like the taser.

Tasering was OBSCENELY unjustified and excessive in this situation, just as it was in the notorious UCLA library tasering not long ago. The risk is far too great that cops (who are only human) may lash out in resentment at being taunted, and indulge in the fearsome and cruel power that the taser confers. We need to have strict rules, sternly enforced, limiting the circumstances in which cops use tasers. There need to be harsh consequences when they are misused. And we must categorically reject cheap "blame-the-victim" excuses to dodge the real issues here.

It is frightening that our society has become one in which copes use tasers so routinely, and in which so many citizens -- and even otherwise thoughtful commentators in liberal journals -- can suggest that a young college student somehow "deserved" to be tortured because of an incident that was, at worst, nonviolently disruptive. If he was such a threat that he had to be tasered, why not first use the resort of grabbing him by the arms and marching him out of there under arrest?

I am appalled.