Government spending on the military - good; for healthcare and education - bad.

Government spending on roads - good; for rail and bus transportation - bad.

Government regulation of public amenities (financial institutions, airlines, etc.) - bad; government regulation of your private life (sex, drugs, etc.) - good.

If you understand these three simple propositions, it's really all you need to know about why we don't have the things Europeans have. Don't bother to try and find a logical thread running through it, either. It's just an unfortunate cultural legacy - some combination of Puritanism and Horatio Alger.

I thoroughly agree with the point that prosecutions need to happen. My concern in cases like this, however, (much like what we saw with Abu Ghraib) is that lower-level people will be the ones targeted, while the Yoos and Addingtons, not to mention the Rumsfelds, Cheneys, and Bushes will continue to enjoy some sort of magical immunity.

Yes, I understand that the excuse of "my superiors made me do it" is terribly insufficient with regard to the magnitude of these crimes. And the dilemma is compounded by the fact that in this case the lower-level people are likely the very ones who did the torturing.

Nonetheless, similar to what's been going on in the financial world (taxpayer-subsidized awards and protection for the high and mighty, layoffs for everyone else), it's very clear that "responsibility" in our morally bankrupt culture never applies to the people who actually have decision-making power. It's just a cudgel used to beat people who don't have the financial or legal means to defend themselves. When things go wrong, the search for a scapegoat goes way down the chain of command.

Thank you for the links and excerpts of the quote from the "unnamed Bush aide" who may or may not be John Yoo.

They really demonstrate in no uncertain terms the intellectual emptiness or even downright stupidity of these people. From what I read in summaries of the memos, many of the techniques are no different from standard methods of torture that have been employed for decades, if not centuries. How exactly are we compromised by revealing something that's been common knowledge among torturers perhaps since the Spanish Inquisition?

I was really struck by the example of torture by insects. Remember how Senator Durbin was practically booed off the Senate floor for suggesting that U.S. torture was more or less equivalent to that practiced by the Nazis and the Soviets? Well, he's been proven correct by these memos. One need read no farther than "The Gulag Archipelago" to find a catalog of torture techniques used by the NKVD. These include locking people in boxes infested by bedbugs.

And what we're seeing is the mass mediated rehabilitation of the Palin clan. So we get yet another puff piece on a family member of a demonstrably awful politician in an effort to lend more humanity, if not respectability, to said politician's presidential aspirations.

Didn't we learn anything from 2000, when the media fawned over the "humility" of George W. Bush and his doting wife Laura? Wasn't she pretty and nice compared to that ball-buster Hillary Clinton?

Unfortunately, Americans love the fantasy of "ordinary people" running their government, despite the plain fact that these supposedly everyday people are often inveterately corrupt and authoritarian. In their behavior towards the public, they exhibit only venality and greed, in Palin's case even extending to bullying librarians.

I wonder if, in the author's frenzy of homoerotic worship of Mr. Palin, it occurs to him to press his subject about anything concerning his wife's kooky views on various subjects? I have no doubt he would say, "That's not my role."

Shabby Chic -- the company, not the interior design style -- was never huge, but it was a solid and successful business, with eight stores, all but two in California, generating about $10 million a year in sales.

Re: the type of people who seriously contemplate a $5,000 sofa purchase, need anyone say more?

I think you're absolutely correct in your assessment that the anxiety we're seeing displayed is due to concerns much larger than which lawyers may have endorsed torture and who in the Bush administration and military brass ordered it.

What many people in government and in the press are no doubt afraid of is a scarlet "T" that will get branded to their bosoms should more and more of this dirty laundry get aired through investigations and, potentially, prosecutions. Obama's release of the legal memos clearly indicates that, unlike Abu Ghraib, this can't be blamed on low-ranking nobodies who would serve as convenient scapegoats. This cat is definitely out of the bag, and the only question remaining is whether the Attorney General will allow others to escape.

In other words, there's the potential for really powerful people to get their comeuppance, with collateral damage to the sanctity of American Exceptionalism, the unconscious assumptions of which are the MSM's stock in trade. It could even lead to a cultural reassessment (read: recognition) of our global empire, something the corporate and military establishments would be horrified to see put into motion.