Here we are in 2009 and numerous high ranking - as in the highest ranking - officials openly admit to torturing prisoners.

And now we would like to engage in a discussion about the usefulness of torture? We have already had these debates many times before and the torturers lost - that would be why we have laws saying torture is illegal, and all that inconvenient legal stuff that powerful people like to ignore.

So sorry guys (and gals), but this argument is reserved for future attempts to change our international treaties and US laws. Call your Congressman and raise bloody hell if you wish - "give us torture! We need more torture!" Perhaps there are even some new reasons why the old rules don't work - I am not seeing it, but go ahead and make your argument.

But, for now, torture is still illegal. These individuals are clearly on the record giving the thumbs up to torture - not once, but repeatedly over a very long period of time. There was no ticking time bomb here, just a group of sick people who wanted to spread their cancer to the world. There has been many years to engage in debate - and quite simply that debate didn't happen because the high ranking officials in the Bush Administration worked on the claim of the Unitary Executive. They are on the record saying they didn't have to obey the laws of the country. For this, they must be put in jail - and quite frankly, I don't give a damn whether or not they can provide some evidence that torture worked in some cases. It's irrelevant to the case at hand.

It's great that Obama says he doesn't support torture - a great reason to like him very much. Nevertheless, nothing has been done to stop this from happening again. In the very same way that the people perpetrating these crimes are clear descendants of unfinished business from the Nixon and Iran-Contra eras, so too will their evil offspring arise again a few presidents down the line. Our legal system either applies to everyone or it is just one more way for the ruling elite to control the masses.

"But it won’t have the airy texture, tender crumb and crisp edges of the stuff produced by the undercapitalized, low-tech operators otherwise known as mom 'n' pops."

As far as I am concerned, this one sentence is as close to the perfect explanation of what plagues America today as anything teams of TV analysts have been able to conjure. With appropriate adaptations, the same could be said for all of our restaurants. But it could also be said for our pharmacies and banks. Our farms and hardware stores and clothing stores.

Throughout the US, towns have slowly been homogenizing to the point of reducing traveling to a series of tiresome hops between fast food chains. We anxiously await the opening of the newest chain in our town - and give exorbitant tax breaks and incentives, allow plowing of natural areas, and undermine our own locally run businesses to recruit these parasites. Meanwhile, all of this materialistic desire feeds into our deficit building lifestyles and is directly related to why our economy is currently tanking.

Oh wait, we were just talking about pizza. Sorry.

I guess I am confused by the necessity for pardons. Ever since the revelations of "torture" surfaced, this administration has repeatedly spoken to us like adolescents that simply don't understand - the US doesn't torture, never has, never will. Water boarding, stress positions, endless sensory deprivation - all of these activities are well documented and the administration has both admitted that these tactics were/are used and repeatedly claimed that they are not torture, but "enhanced interrogation" techniques. They have been completely clear in their arguments - they have done absolutely nothing legally wrong, so they say. The Executive Branch is free from the legal scrutiny that we normal citizens must fear.

Their current lack of confidence that these morally repugnant arguments won't stand up to new legal scrutiny shows what the naysayers have known all along - the US has completely institutionalized torture, the amount of ongoing past and present torture is massive, and the cover for their activities ends in January.

Regardless of their current legal predicament, we have much bigger problems as a country. Our Constitutional system was not able to effectively drive the enforcement of laws over an entire branch of the government. As a Democratic President takes over the reins, policies will temporally change, but the shadow, defense-related government that actually drives much current US policy will not disappear until it is exposed and removed like a cancerous tumor. At the heart of the problem is the American ability to see and appreciate the many wonderful and unique strengths of our Constitutional system while simultaneously demonizing those with the temerity to point out its shortcomings. What does it say about our system that people are calling for a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission?" At the very least, it says that we have known for some time that our Executive Branch is breaking the law and our system was unable to make it stop.

To admit this truth is to be a true Patriot who desperately wants to see his/her beloved country return to its ideals.