for God's sake, far above all earth-bound bowlers. From on high he munches a ring ding and looks with scorn on mere bowlers. Bowlers: fie on them! I soar!

Yeah it was a national guard scholarship that first got me going to college and made undergraduate work possible (first one in my family to ever go to college). Then student loans made the rest possible. Long live liberalism!

just have to say I appreciate what you are doing: thank you.

Well said. A close study of the history of Native Americans long ago disabused me of the notion of American exceptionalism.We need to face our past and current horrors and try to achieve a basic humanity.

your pet peeve is one of mine as well, and you have just summed it up so nicely that I had to say: thank you.

for keeping the light on this. Our country has to face this if it is to survive as a place worth living in and caring about.

Absolutely right: I support the protests against the Olympics in Beijing, but I also think it would be wrong for America to host an Olympics now too, and I would protest an American torch just like I would a Chinese one. One of my colleagues at work the other day said that we ought not be saying Bush ought not go to the Olympics, because Beijing is just where Bush belongs, along with the other leaders who try to justify torture and make it legal. If only he would go there and stay with his like-minded torturing pals.

You said in your comment that you thought all the fuss was about the 2008 election. I hope you are wrong, elephantman. For me, at least, it is not: it is about being ashamed of my country for the way it has acted; it is about the moral repugnance of what has been done by the leaders of my country; it is about what it means to be a human being. If I did not believe that that was also primary in Glenn's thoughts, I would not give his blog an instants further notice. The point now is to protest crimes against humanity, out of a sense of personal integrity; the point now is not to be silent; even if it has no practical effect in the calculus of realpolitik, there is a deeper calculus, I think, that drives me to think of the fact that I will one day die, and will not want to be ashamed of the life I have lived.

"dating the empire's start in the year of the Wounded Knee Massacre seems correct to me."

yes: nicely said. Thank you for your comment. Whenever I speak at Free Tibet events (I sponsor Students for a Free Tibet on my campus) I always make a point to say that what I am criticizing the Chinese for is that they are acting like we did; that one day their descendants will be as ashamed of them as intelligent Americans are ashamed of what their country did to the indigenous peoples.

Always the same battles in each generation. Always the need to stand up to the tyrants.

You wrote: “By the way, John Yoo never recommended nor would have tolerated any torture of any soldiers from any nation.”

But the key point for me is that this was recommended against human beings (whether or not they are soldiers seem irrelevant to me). Over at the blog Humanity Against Crimes,

Ondolette wrote:

“Much of the material coming out now centers around 2002: In January, opinions were solicited from the OLC about whether or not the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT) applied first to al Qaeda, and then to the Taliban. These opinions were available to President Bush in January, as the government sought to figure out what to do about prisoners captured in Afghanistan, and President Bush issued a pair of memos denying first al Qaeda, then the Taliban, both the protection of prisoners of war, and the protections of common Article 3.”

The key phrase to me is : “whether or not the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT) applied first to al Qaeda, and then to the Taliban”

How disgusting that it would be even asked: the conventions should apply to anyone who is a human being, that should be the default position.

You call the actions in wwII that would have mimicked what nazis did “regrettable”. If we did indeed do things that mimicked them, they were not regrettable, they were horrors. The fire-bombing of Dresden comes to my mind immediately as a horror against humanity that should be spoken against.

It is because we are fighting, as you put it, “groups who maintain the explicit goal of the extermination of Jews and who utilize the most massive means of terrorism known in our age” that we should be even more careful to “find such fault with the governmnent of the United States as it fights those terrorists.” We must not let them make us become like them. That would be a true defeat. I would rather die than be like them. The worst thing of all would be to lose my humanity, to lose my soul.

your point about "Military Interrogations of Ulawful Alien Combatants Held Outside of the United States" doesn't address the point: why should we treat any human beings differently? Even if they are unlawful alien combatants held outside the US, they are still human beings. What I at least am protesting is the treating of any human being in those ways. It is wrong.