The idea that euphemism is a way of manipulating debate is not in any way speculative or controversial. I'm not really sure why you're making this wildly counter-intuitive argument, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding you.

He's the new face of the GOP. A passive aggressive concern troll. First he makes a statement saying words are so important that NPR likely got advice from lawyers to not use the word "torture." He claims to be a lawyer and, when asked to cite exactly how NPR would be legally liable, he ignores the question and completely flip-flops to say words aren't a big deal. ;) The last conversation I remember having with this guy was on the issue of indefinite detentions of people declared "too dangerous to set free and unable to be prosecuted in our courts" by the President. I pointed out that such a program would be unconstitutional, to which he responded with the genius assertion that I was making a "subjective" argument, and needed to give Obama more trust. LOL!

Missing in the discussion of your frustration with NPR's ombudsperson is the tightly defined neutrality of her role. If I was her, I wouldn't grant any interviews with anyone -- left, right, or center -- unless it was to just discuss the role of an ombudsperson.

Interview anyone else from NPR: reporters, executives, writers. Leave the ombudsperson alone. She got your feedback.

After all, isn't it good NPR has an ombudsperson? Does Salon?

Hassle anyone else at NPR, but leave their in-house arbitrator alone.

Missing in the discussion of your frustration with NPR's ombudsperson is the tightly defined neutrality of her role.

An ombudsman is specifically supposed to be an advocate for the listeners, not neutral and certainly not an advocate for management.

An ombudsman (English plural: conventionally ombudsmen) is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some external constituency while representing the broad scope of constituent interests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman

For example, would there be a similar outcry over the use of the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" if that was always preceded by the word "illegal". No, I don't think so.

Does the word "torture" need to imply "illegal" in order to connote "evil"? No, I do not think so.

whose own gloriously exploding comet like columns leave self perpetuating gaseous fiery post thread tails that stretch as far as Neptune and back, writes of some poor sap whose own dreary missives never create a post tail long enough to even reach the fucking water cooler:

I wrote a critique of that column which was widely cited, and the comment section to her column was filled with hundreds of angry criticisms -- many times the number of comments her column typically attracts (usually in the range of 10-20).

Oooh...you bitch!

I have never understood why the simple quoting of dead (or alive, for that matter) authors lends any credibility to any point.

You probably say that to everyone who quotes the Constitution as well, don't you?

As a lawyer, perhaps you could explain how your above statement should be applied to the "authors" of historical legal opinions.

So you agree with me that the use of the word "terrorist" should be barred at NPR and elsewhere?

You're driving along, listening to a story on NPR. Suddenly, you find yourself at your destination, so pissed off that people this fucking stupid have the nerve to charge $100 for a branded tote bag--and no I don't want Carl Kasell's voice on my answering machine-- that you sit in your idling car, screaming at the radio.

That's a Driveway Moment.

So when Bob Herbert calls it torture from the editorial pages of the NYT, and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC does the same, it doesn't matter, and when NPR does it will? Even Obama has called waterboarding by it's name.

Obama said he was comfortable with his decision to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techiques used at Guantánamo Bay and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secret detention centres around the world under his predecessor George Bush.

It wasn't my intention to claim Bob Herbert, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or NPR were the arbiters of when something is torture or not. In fact from what Jonathan Turley claimed, the Red Cross would hold this title. When the Red Cross calls something torture, it is torture. And that's what they did in fact do in the report they wrote. So the issue of whether we committed torture has already been settled. It's just that no one has been prosecuted for committing it yet except a few like Grainer and England.

The reason torture isn't settled for organizations like NPR and Fox News, et al is because Obama has failed to lead on this subject. And in fact I would claim he has mostly done things to undermine and muddy up the discussion of this issue and block investigations of it.

So one of the primary reasons we are still having to debate the "labeling of torture" with the likes of NPR and others is because Obama himself has been almost absent on this topic and isn't leading at all, So I also don't blame "the lawyers" either even if Obama is one. If you want to see a firm and final exclamation point put on this topic, Obama could have done this a long time ago. If Obama had claimed our country committed serious war crimes and that he would hold everyone accountable who was involved in committing these crimes, do you really think NPR would still be calling all of these practices"enhanced interrogation techniques?" But what did Obama do instead? He went to the CIA and told them that none would be charged with any crimes. He also refused to release the torture photos. He also has been trying to get cases dismissed that involve us torturing and renditioning people. So despite the fact that he called waterboarding torture, this wasn't nearly enough. In fact I would argue it focused the media's attention on debating whether waterboarding was torture ignoring much more serious acts of torture we did commit that lead to death or serious disfigurement of detainees.

There is little doubt in my mind that either of us if we had been President could have put an end to this debate so the only people left defending torture would have been the lunatic fringe of the right - the worst of the neocons and Cheney.

Once a prosecutor was told by this Administration to investigate torture as a war crime, that's how most Americans would be labeling these acts.