Month: April 2009

The Torture Report

It's been another huge day of data-gathering in the years-long bid to get to the bottom of the secret and illegal torture program set up by Bush and Cheney as their central tool in the war on Jihadist terrorism. You can download the leaked – and devastating International Committee of the Red Cross report here. You can read about the chilling similarities between the Bush-Cheney techniques and those used by the Soviet gulag here. You can read more details of how doctors were implicated in monitoring and measuring the torture of human beings here. If you need confirmation that this new data is real and dispositive, then go read the partisan right blogs. Their total radio silence tells you something.

But Mark Danner's superb piece, after years of superb reporting, comes to an important conclusion that we should not miss. It is that we need to put all the data on the table – including both the precise techniques and who authorized and perpetrated them and also the alleged intelligence gains from the program. Danner sees why this latter point, which I have also endorsed, is so important. Until we can examine the claims from Cheney et al. that torture saved lives, we will never be able to remove the danger of a president reinstigating torture on the same basis in the future. The GOP is not ashamed of using this as a political weapon. Cheney has all but declared that without torture, America cannot be safe. Gingrich is reiterating that. Rove tried to run the 2006 election on the question of who has the balls to torture terror suspects more brutally. Unless we have clear data that can judge these claims, we cannot dispositively prevent a recurrence.

I should be clear. I oppose all such torture as illegal and criminal and immoral even if tangible intelligence gains were included in the morass of lies and red herrings that we got. But if torture advocates really do insist that America needs to embrace this evil if it is to survive, then we need to see and judge the evidence that they keep pointing to off-stage. We need a real and thorough and definitive investigation. If Cheney is right, he has nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. And the Congress should move to withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, withdraw from the UN Torture Treaty, amend domestic law to enshrine torture, and allow future presidents of the United States to torture suspects legally.

More sunlight please. Let us have this debate in full and in detail. And soon – before it is too late.

A Question Of Equality

Dreher pushes this article by law professor Paul Campos, a marriage equality proponent who found the Iowa decision distasteful:

 …the court said it was interpreting the equal-protection clause of the Iowa constitution, which, like the U.S. Constitution, guarantees the state’s citizens that they will be treated equally by the law. Yet, just as in the case of the federal constitution, this phrase is, as a practical matter, meaningless. It’s meaningless because a legal directive telling the government to treat people equally in and of itself decides nothing…

That’s because the concept of equal treatment requires treating things that are sufficiently alike in the same way—but that concept tells you nothing about whether the things you’re analyzing (such as opposite-sex and same-sex marriage) are sufficiently alike.
It should be unnecessary to point out that the question of whether same-sex unions are sufficiently like opposite-sex marriages to merit equal treatment is a political and moral question, which lacks any specifically legal content whatsoever.

But that is why so many of us who support marriage equality have spent years providing reasons for the similarity between the relationships now accorded the status of civil marriage and those that are not. We have discussed the question of procreation, of mutual financial support, of longevity, and the variety of arrangements which now come under the same civil rubric, among a whole variety of topics. These are arguments – and the Iowa court went over them in great detail and with great care. You can try and counter these arguments, but to dismiss them as meaningless is bizarre.

I might also add that it's perfectly clear that Rod has never actually read Virtually Normal, since so many of his objections were dealt with at great length in that book, and he seems oblivious to them. Could he do me a favor and give it a try?

Marriage Passes In Vermont!

BOAJustinSullivan:Getty

The House just over-rode the governor’s veto by 100 – 49. So marriage equality is now the law in another state. This is the first purely legislative decision to enact equal marriage rights in one state and thereby a truly historic day for American liberty. Marc comments here. A reader writes:

It’s snowing right now. There are so many things about this place that never cease to amaze me. Snow in April is one. The decency of so many people is another. My partner and I awakened this morning, resigned to what we felt was inevitable. I was too nervous to check the web for the news.

He called me to let me know: We still live in a magical place.

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty.)

Still Haunted

BUSHLEAVESPaulJRichards:AFP:Getty

The remarkable thing about today’s partisan Republicans is their capacity to forget instantly and entirely anything that went on for the past eight years. And so suddenly we are rushing toward socialism, even though by far the biggest jumps in state power and debt occurred under a president they worshiped and worked hard to re-elect. There were no tea-parties to protest the $32 trillion Medicare prescription drug benefit. There was no Randian rumbling as Bush took over local schools. There was no defense of the Constitution as Bush and Cheney secretly suspended the fourth and first amendments. But put a moderate Democrat in office tackling a historic collapse in demand – and spending must be frozen! Reading the partisan right blogs, this ability to disappear the past is striking, and it helps explain base GOP loathing of Obama (even if the base is much smaller than it was). But the broader public, those with eyes and ears and functioning short-term memory, are not so cocooned. Greg Sargent:

…the economic crisis, by prompting debate about who’s to blame for the mess, has frustrated the GOP’s hopes of leaving Bush behind. The economic mess all but ensures that Bush’s policies will continue to loom large in defining the GOP in the public mind.

The new New York Times poll [pdf] tells the story. It finds that fully a third, or 33%, of the public blames the crisis on the Bush administration far more than anyone else. Wall Street is a distant runner-up, with 21%. Only two percent blame Obama.

(Photo: Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty.)

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

They’re laughing at us, Andrew.  Isn’t that obvious?  The premise of this skit is that homosexuality is inherently ridiculous.  Why are you so gleeful about it?  You reacted the same way to “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck,” and made the same basic error.

Aww, c’mon. It’s making fun of how homoerotic a lot of male-male bonding in high testosterone movies is. And there’s a reference to “getting married” as if the whole concept of marriage equality is part of the cultural furniture. And it’s not dumb-ass Adam Sandler gay stuff where his own deep discomfort is on the surface. These two are not uncomfortable; in fact they’re comfortable enough as straight guys to have some gayish fun. Lighten up and enjoy the cultural change.