Letters to the Editor

Have Republicans given up on FISA and telecom amnesty? A huge blow to telecoms, and the lobbyist-dominated Beltway process, appears likely. Glenn Greenwald [2008-04-10]

• Glenn was right about McArdle

  If it happens, it's better we don't know about it.

  "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

  Babs Bush

  McArdle (aka Mindles H. Dreck, aka Jane Galt, both real pen names she has blogged under):

  Torture: Yea or Nay?

  Mark Kleiman has emailed asking me what I think about torture, and I suppose I should weigh in, although I doubt my contribution will be very useful...

  To some extent, I believe in the hidden law. Which is to say, the choice that some citizens make, under some circumstances, to break the law as it is written...

  (...)

  If terrorists must be tortured -- and I am unwilling to state that there is no circumstance ever under which I could condone it -- then it should happen in dark rooms, at risk to the lives and careers of the men who carry it out, so that the hidden law will only trump the written law when times are truly desperate enough to call for such desperate measures.

  Posted by Jane Galt at March 17, 2003 4:03 PM

  http://www.janegalt.net/archives/004028.html

  Greenwald:

  One could write media criticisms for the next several years and not come close to capturing the essence of our Beltway media the way Cohen did in this single paragraph:

  With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

  That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, "it is often best to keep the lights off." If that isn't the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.

  http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/19/cohen/

  -- L.W.M.
  [Read L.W.M.'s other letters]
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