Congress hasn't exactly been secretive about their indifference to torture, has it?

People like Reyes tacitly support torture because they think that's what the voters want.

Meanwhile, the American public is continually treated to torture fantasies by "24" and other crap like that which reinforce the absurd notion that torture is not only an necessary evil, but it is also effective as a tool for getting to the truth.

In truth, torture is an effective tool for getting people to say enough to justify the use of torture. Truth is a casualty in this pursuit.

Torture needs to be challenged not only on moral grounds, but also on the grounds of its efficacy. As long as they myth of its utility persists, people like Reyes are going to continue to turn a blind eye to its implementation.

Somehow, the lesson of 9/11 became not "we have to find out who these people are and why they did this" but rather "we really need to torture more people". But I guess that means that terrorism, just like torture, is a tactic borne of frustration, anger, and sadism and itself has little efficacy.

Pages and pages of irrelevant bickering.

But a disability? On the one hand, that just seems out of bounds -- period. But to avoid Patterson's blindness (or, say, Max Cleland's wheelchair) is to treat him differently from his own political peers and, in an odd and even unintended way, therefore accentuate his disability, doesn't it?

This is quite some twist of logic, Mr. Schaller. So, if SNL doesn't mock Patterson's blindness, they are causing him harm by "accentuating the disability"?

Somehow Eddie Murphy had no trouble playing Stevie Wonder without ever raising the ire of anybody. It really is possible to make fun of a blind person while acknowledging his blindness and yet not basing the humor on the blindness.

Is this so hard to figure out?

I am always baffled at the people who say "The Constitution is not a suicide pact!" I have to wonder "Why the hell would you think it is?"

We must be clear and loud as we say that people who violate laws and constitutional principles based on their seat-of-the-pants moral reasoning are attacking the fabric of our legal system. These are people who plainly do not believe in our system of government.

Our system of government was not created in a vacuum. It was created in response to real-world pressures, and represents the consensus opinion of a lot of smart people about the best way to handle crisis situations. People who think all of that should be tossed away the moment their knees start shaking are anarchists at heart.

I am sick and fucking tired about lawmakers "expressing regret". This bailout plan was a piece of crap from the start. It was presented with scare tactics in the middle of a campaign race and was presented as a ticking time bomb.

It was a good old-fashioned stick-up.

People involved in this robbery should be tried for crimes against the state.

The South seems to be unique in that politicians from other regions of the country must try to please or placate Southerners in a way that is never required by the North, East, or West.

When was the last time we saw an article of this sort about New England? Or the Mountain West?

For 24 of the last 32 years we've had Presidents from Southern States. Indeed, the only elected non-Southern Presidents in my lifetime were both from California. We haven't had a President from the East Coast since JFK was shot.

The South got an exaggerated sense of power by being swing states who were in transition from the Democratic party to the Republican party. But now that they've swung to the Republican party and, essentially, completely taken over that party, they will inevitably lose clout on the national level. Aside from Florida, which is culturally a special case, there are no swing states left in the South.

So at this point, who cares what they think?

It's really hard to fathom how, in a city that has turned a blind eye to crimes committed by Presidential administrations (esp. Republicans) since Nixon, how continuing to ignore abuses of power will in any way deter future behavior of the same time.

He's inclined to have sex with "every beautiful woman (he) sees"?

And this guy is supposed to be a spiritual leader?

People like Warren have childish understandings of what sexual impulses are. For them, they need to have a doctrinaire control of their sexual boundaries, and without that, they fear chaos.

He really cannot discuss homosexuality without discussing promiscuity, can he? When did they become the same thing?

it is, however, how the Pledge was originally written. "Under God" was added during the Eisenhower administration. It's clear from reading the language of Ike's speech at the time that the change of the Pledge was a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.

I'm wondering - do the apologists have any argument other than "it's impolitic to point out that there is currently a lot of mixing religion and politics, and a lot of people like it that way". We know that a lot of people like it that way.

But it's still unconstitutional.

And a bad idea to boot.

After 8 years of watching "faith-based government" in action, wouldn't it be nice to see the government function as a secular entity, as it was originally designed to do? Pandering to the popular religion of the day is not a legitimate purpose of government.

If Obama wants to piss away his current high level of public support in favor of Cheney's single-digit approval ratings, then by all means he should think about "What would Dick do?"