Some results for the bank stress tests are due out today. Ryan Avent gives a preview:
He writes that the Senate Report’s inclusion of him in a meeting on the Bush torture program is untrue:
Despite my first impression, and after some poring through the record, he has not been very vocal in defending the interrogation practices of the Bush administration in which he served. I regret that error and withdraw it with apology. The factual question of his attendance at a meeting on interrogation techniques remains a matter of dispute between him and the Senate Committee’s report.
It's worth recalling what the 
A total of 62 percent want to see either a criminal investigation or a fact-finding independent panel. Only 34 percent favor Peggy Noonan's preferred option for her friends in high places. There will be a new Gallup poll soon, which may reflect the media campaign trying to turn the idea that war crimes should be punished into some kind of partisan game. Or it may not. But beware of the punditocracy declaring that the public doesn't want accountability. It's the elite that doesn't want accountability. Because it's their asses on the line.
"For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, ‘enhanced interrogation’ is not only immoral and illegal, it’s ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn’t hold water,” – Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard.
A reader writes:
The reader who wrote "Oh please" in response to another's concerns about marijuana addiction needs to get a clue. I spent a couple of very real, very sad years hung up on weed. My life revolved around it: I woke up, and getting high was the first thing I thought about. I went to work and was desperate to get home to smoke; then I started getting high before work, occasionally. (Before that job, I waited tables and smoked on the job with my coworkers in the employee bathroom; those days too, I was usually desperate to get home to get high — before I'd remember that I already was.)
On my days off, instead of going out and doing things, I'd plop myself in front of the TV with a bowl, and frequently devour a couple thousand calories of junk food in well under an hour. Needless to say, I wasn't exercising anywhere near enough to offset that.
My girlfriend had made it clear from early in our relationship that she didn't want to be married to a stoner, so I told her I only smoked once in a while and then planned our time together so that I'd have plenty of time to hit the pipe at home and sober up again before we went out. Of course it would have been easier just to not smoke, but that simply wasn't an option — I'd throw away my stash, last a few days, and then call my dealer up. While I waited for him, I'd sneak into my roommates' room and steal some of their weed. I felt awful — until I took the first hit, after which my guilt would melt away.
No, it wasn't horribly debilitating in the sense that meth or cocaine or alcohol can be. And when I finally stopped smoking and got some help, there were no awful withdrawal effects beyond a couple weeks of not knowing what to do with myself and confronting a lot of difficult emotions. It turned out I was depressed, of course, and the pot was an easy way to avoid dealing with it. Things worked out fine for me, and could have been much worse, but I still wouldn't wish the feelings of helplessness I had on anyone. I remember so vividly telling myself over and over I shouldn't smoke because I had important things to do, and at the same time knowing I was going to crumble eventually. It just brought me lower.
Despite all of this, I'm very much for legalization, because I think the arguments for it make sense and because I think it'll help dispel the myth that weed isn't addictive. ("Not physical" shmysical — if you find yourself up at 3 a.m. desperately scraping resin out of your bowl for the second time in a week, you have an addiction.) Too many people's attitudes are like the reader's, whereas they'd never so offhandedly dismiss the pain of someone admitting to a drinking problem. That's troubling, because I suspect there are more people going through what I did than most of us would guess.
Another writes:
I believe that marijuana should absolutely be legalized. But it has been really psychologically damaging to me. I'm a senior in high school and for the last two years I have been smoking pot pretty regularly with my friends and at parties. It was fun at the beginning of my junior year as my friends and I took our first few tokes. Then, over the course of the year, for reasons unrelated to marijuana, I became depressed and anxious.
One of my regular self-abuse mechanisms was to look in the mirror and find all the asymmetry in my face and think about how I was actually the ugliest person in the world. As this depression and anxiety developed within me, the fun of smoking pot declined. I would leave my friends, go stand in front of the mirror, and find new asymmetry and faults in my face and hate myself even more. I would spiral into my own thoughts and find thousands of reasons as to why I would never be happy.
I continued smoking pot until about three days ago. Even when I've made progress on my own issues, marijuana always brings me back down and allows me only to see bad things about myself. Why would I ever want to smoke again?
Another:
I am a 22 year old recent college graduate. After smoking marijuana nearly every day for about 3-4 years, I am currently trying to quit the leafy green plant, or at least go on a break of a few months. For at least the past couple months, every time I smoked I became intensely depressed. But I kept the habit up anyway, because it's the only thing I know.
I've been adjusting to this new 9-5 grind, and part of that adjustment had been coming home (to the parent's home, while I save money) and lighting up. But, as a formerly creative person, I'd found I had also been unable to create, though I'm realizing now, this isn't really the sole fault of pot. However, for a variety of reasons I am trying to give up this substance which had brought me much happiness for a few years, before I am hopelessly beholden to it.
Another:
While I agree that marijuana should be legalized, especially for medical purposes, I don't think it's completely harmless. During a period in my life after college but before finding a job, I smoked multiple times a week. I was getting high to escape feelings of uncertainty about my future. It worked: while I was high, I did not feel these uncomfortable emotions. Because of this, I was not motivated to do anything to prepare for my future.
Fortunately, I finally realized that I was in a bad downward spiral; smoking pot was getting in the way of living a full and productive life. I cut back on smoking, but I never stopped completely. As I got my life on track, I came to realize that in moderation, I could enjoy pot but still be in charge of my life.
James Taranto who fully backed a president who claimed the right to suspend the First and Fourth Amendments, habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and domestic law against torture, and who seized an American citizen without charges on American soil and tortured him, now offers his view as to the small possibility of prosecuting the perpetrators of war crimes. Drum roll, please:
No, you couldn't make this up.
It's a sign of trouble for her nomination from a Senate Democrat – and it's ostensibly about her strong commitment to abortion rights.
Paia, Hawaii, 9.30 am
This may break through the denial:
(Don't you love that last formulation, by the way? Why can Jake Tapper not write "brutal interrogation techniques that the International Committee of the Red Cross has unequivocally called torture"? Because that would be true but not "balanced"?)
I guess the jaw can drop some more. Here's Cliff May arguing two things at once. The first thing he argues is that you can do something called "torture lite" which isn't torture but has its effect. And what is its effect? Over to Cliff:
So the test here is whether a prisoner reaches the limit of their ability to endure the pain and suffering imposed upon them. I see no way to understand this except to grasp that the pain and suffering is so severe that it can no longer be endured. This, if Cliff would like to educate himself on the subject, is the definition of torture.
If you rough someone up or make them uncomfortable or remove them from the familiar or engage in grueling interrogation without coercion, you can make it easier for a captive to come clean. That is how intelligent interrogation operates. It takes time, but its results are immeasurably more reliable than torture, and it allows the prisoner some small zone of choice and freedom to tell us what he knows. But forcing people by physical coercion to the point where they have no effective choice and can endure it no longer is torture. Think about it: what could be more severe than reaching the limit of what you can physically and/or psychologically endure?
So Cliff is for torture. He has crossed the Rubicon in a way that will lead to more torture by regimes far more toxic than the United States. And he actually implies in some bizarre way that the victim – if he is a radical Islamist – wants it. It gives him the excuse to tell all. So this is torture designed specifically with Muslims in mind – just as so many of these techniques – forced nudity, religious abuse, sexual abuse – were crafted to exploit aspects of Muslim faith and culture. Does Cliff begin to understand what it means for us to fight a war for the hearts and minds of the next generation of Muslims when we have designed torture techniques specifically to target their faith?
It's evil. All of it. And fatal to the West. It must be investigated from top to bottom at length with great care; and then the rule of law must be restored.
The Dish 