Perhaps the best moment of Halperin's career, one where the shrieks of "liberal bias" reached a new pitch... Remember when he wrote his memo, subsequently leaked to Drudge, saying:

"We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/004886.php

I guess, Glenn, your formulation is a more absolute distillation of what Halperin was saying there, but at least credit to Halperin for putting this memo together in the heat of a presidential race.

Just re. Jon Stewart, earlier this year he interviewed Cliff May, where they talked, mainly, about torture. And at the end of the interviewm, Stewart said how he thought pro- and anti-torture advocates were really not very far apart.

Was one occasion, I think, when Jon Stewart had it utterly ass-backwards. Just don't know how or where one can find anything approaching common ground with the pro-torture faction.

Professor Rove? Are you kidding me? Since when has a four-college dropout been qualified to teach?

For the record: Utah, Maryland, George Mason - where he was investigated by the FBI for dirty tricks during the campaign to rule the CollegeYoung Republicans - and Texas.

What's next? An honorary doctorate? Oh right - Liberty University, 2004. In the Humanities yet.

Talk about lowering the bar. How low can we go? (See: Bush, George W.)

Shepard repeated the comparison that "some" equate abortion with terrorism.

She arrogantly repeated the "25 years of journalistic experience" as some form of credential or invocation of expertise to dismiss criticism without engaging it.

And worst of all, Shepard dug in on attacking motives by saying that "some want NPR to take sides" in a political dispute.

Finally, the Shepard conception of "objectivity" and the role of the media is highly irresponsible and ethical, and as the UC Berkeley prof stated "spineless". It would be laughable if not so outrageously shameful.

Shepard should be fired

(note how she opened with a statement that preempted further and responded to criticism: "I know what my role as Ombudsman is")

but how about asking this to anyone and everyone who writes on this subject: in six months, if USAF and USN fliers are bombing Iran and killing its citizens, and the Iranians capture some of said fliers and waterboard the shit out of them or sting them up in ungodly positions and keep them awake for days on end to get some intel on the bombing operations, would you call what was being done to them torture?

Let the equivocating asses answer that one.

Sooo Glenn,

You have the last word in the use of the word "Torture"! Nice to know you are on top of the issue and leading us all to the moutaintop.

Here is my answer to the problem of interrogation of young jihadists (they can't be called terrorists or enemy combatants since that might revive the hated term "war on terror")

The US needs to develop standards of Simple Humane Interrogation Techniques. (SHIT)

• Make him comfortable (heal his wounds, feed him, clothe him, give him water in a bottle (not on a board)

• Give him a holy book, prayer rug, and a compass

• Delay questioning until his lawyer arrives

• Ask him if he wants to help us by ratting out his friends

• Allow him to invoke the 5th Amendment rigth even though he is not a US citizen

• Return him to his room

• Repeat the process tomorrow

I say we "mirandize" and "shit" each warrior of God!

Would you agree that interrogation of an individual without advising him of "shit' is "torture"? (Right On!) The captive is aprehensive about the possibility of abuse so we allay his fears, promise to treat him nicely and then he spills his guts to us in gratitude for applying "shit" to him.

"Good Cop / Bad Cop" plays on aprehension which is mental stress which we all agree is "torture" Right? Of course right!

The only problem with this suggestion is that the opposition will eventually demonstrate against the program with placards that read:

No Shit!

Lehrer: I don’t deal in terms like "blatantly untrue"... There’s always a germ of truth in just about everything...

Who says Almond Joy is better than Mounds? Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. Sometimes we like the truth hard and cold, sometimes we like it euphemized. But to those naysayers who claim you can't have it both ways, I submit that what Lehrer said can be aptly described as: enhanced bullshit technique.

See? There's always two sides.

Would it be better to, say, describe the technique and then say some call it torture? I do not think enhanced interrogation techniques is acceptable either. That's why I come down on describing the technique and adding that some call it torture

This evasion, which Shepard repeats over and over again in each of her appearances, is simply incoherent.

NPR is not grinding its narration to a halt every time the subject comes up. They do not say "President Obama again today defended his Administration's decision to withhold memos about prisoners left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees throughout which time the prisoner is doused with cold water, prisoners bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet with cellophane wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him causing extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage or, if uninterrupted, death..."

They just say "enhanced interrogation techniques."

I almost wish I believed in Hell, in hopes that there'd be a special circle reserved for such people as Alicia Shepard.

Just substitute these phrases instead:

"...so called 'enhanced interrogation techniques'..."

"...survived the waterboarding, an intentionally distressing method of physical and mental coercion, long considered torture in treaty and in law..."

"...died during waterboarding, a questionable interrogation technique defended by some government hard-liners..."

"...questionable information from waterboarding, undisputedly considered torture before Bush administration officials controversially decided to subject GWOT detainees to the treatment..."

"...repetitive waterboarding, which defenders of the controversial procedure refer to as an 'enhanced interrogation tactic'..."

"...haunted by memories of waterboarding, an 'inhumane and illegal form of torture' say critics of the unprecedented interrogation method..."