The only people in the Guantanamo "justice" system who we know with near-certainty committed crimes are the torturers themselves.

(I include under the rubrics of "Guantanamo system" and "torturers" both the underlings who carried out the acts and the higher-ups who justified and authorized them; and I note, as few journalists have, that many detainees ended up in G'mo on the basis of unreliable third-hand testimony -- i.e. they were handed over to US troops in exchange for a bounty.)

The torturers thus have a clear motive for lying about the results of their torture in order to justify their crimes after the fact.

Any self-aware and self-respecting journalist would recognize the basic fact of a conflict of interest on the part of CIA/White House sources, anonymous or not, and would therefore question the factuality of any information such sources offer.

"According to Ben Smith in Politico, one such [right-wing] activist is circulating a memo that brands Sotomayor a "hard left activist" judge with extreme views on affirmative action, and pillories her for saying that her life as a minority woman influences her judicial thinking."

Implying what?

a) Roberts' and Alito's lives as white men have not at all influenced their judicial thinking; or

b) Roberts' and Alito's lives as white men have influenced their judicial thinking -- and that's a good thing?

Please, someone, explain right-wing logic to me!

1. The country is more or less evenly divided between liberals, moderates, and conservatives (define those however you will). So, obviously, if you add moderates to conservatives, you get a "center-right majority." Just as obviously, adding moderates to liberals gives you a "center-left majority." Yet all we ever hear about is the "center-right," as if the phrase "center-left" is an inherent contradiction. Obama's election proved that wrong.

2. McCain will always be seen by movement conservatives as a "moderate," but that does not mean that moderates will automatically see him as one of them. He tacked hard, hard right to win the GOP nomination, and his actions and statements during the campaign (Sarah Palin? gimme a break!) shot down his chances of winning in the general election. Mr. Wingnut does not even acknowledge this dynamic, much less address it.

3. If the GOP, like Mr. Wingnut, think that their problems will be solved by "winning back the 'Joe voters,'" they may end up as the minority party for another generation. Someday they will figure out that "the Joes" -- the angry white males who have become not only the core but the virtual entirety of today's GOP -- are not a majority voting block any more. Until that day comes, and until the further day that they figure out what to do about it, they will continue to lose election after election everywhere but the deepest South.

just hilarious! Thanks for the laughs.

Thanks to fkeppler for expressing the reality of taking care of your own kid as a father. I remember holding my baby while shopping, and getting a knowing nod from another father who commented, "Mom's day off, huh?" How was I supposed to answer that? "No, you idiot, I do this every day" would have come across a bit harsh, so silence had to do....

The thing about kids is that they do grow up. Our baby is now a well-adjusted college grad, soon to turn 23, and finding his own way in NY. I have no regrets about taking six years "off" to raise him while my partner, his mother, got her career started. But I do regret the way that our society has, if anything, moved backwards over these two decades. "Mr. Mom" -- ick. Maybe the Obama years plus the recession will provide us a collective space to change attitudes.

One irony of the current empathy kerfuffle is that the conservative "original constructionist" justices are by no means immune to empathy, if one can judge by their comments from the bench (as reported on NPR). They frequently show empathy with employers, corporations, the rich, and socially conservative parents; they make comments and ask questions that show that they put themselves in the shoes of those with power and money; and their rulings tend to reflect this.

...must not have to deal with the existing healthcare bureaucracy (private insurance companies, private hospitals) that the rest of us contend with. The rest of us who are insured at all, that is.

"Glenallen Walken" worries about how many people die unnecessarily because of waiting times in the Canadian or European national healthcare systems. Why, then, no concern about the people who die for lack of access to any kind of healthcare in the US? Why the bellyaching over procedures that might be denied by "government bureaucrats" and not one word about the procedures that are in fact denied every day by our existing private insurance bureaucrats?

Has Mr. G. Walken ever had occasion to call his medical insurance company? I'd like to hear how that went.

Yes, the US health system is very advanced -- if you can pay for it. But most of those who can pay for it out of pocket now would still be able to pay for it just as well if we have a functioning single-payer system.

I've been hearing the "Social Security Is Going Broke!" canard for well over thirty years. Back in the 1970s, Republicans were screaming that Social Security wouldn't make it to the 1990s. When I was a teenager, they had me convinced that it would be gone long before I retired. Well, surprise. Here we are decades later and insolvency is still somehow right around the corner.

GG: "...bequeath their website with..."

I think you mean "endow their website with." (Or perhaps "festoon their website with.") "Bequeath" means "leave [to]," as in "I bequeath my .edu web domain to my grandchildren." Unlike "endow," it is never used with the preposition "with." Otherwise, a great post, as always.