Author: Andrew Sullivan

Joel Wing updates us:

The next Iraqi government is…going to look a lot like the old one. After a long drawn out process the two main Shiite lists, State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance merged together in May 2010. That was done to keep them in the leadership of the new government, and prevent Allawi from becoming prime minister again. They are expected to join with the Kurds, and eventually Allawi’s Iraqi National Movement to form another national unity government, made up of almost the exact same groups that took power in 2005. The Shiite parties will still hold onto the premiership, a Kurd will end up president, and the Sunnis and secular nationalists will be playing third fiddle.

What do you do when as a new government, you inherit a security service with a plausible record of torture and abuse? Do you pull an Obama and whistle onward? Or do you do the right thing?

A judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said tonight. The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners and may put pressure on the Labour leadership candidate and former foreign secretary David Miliband, who was accused by Hague, while in opposition, of having something to hide. Miliband has repeatedly rejected the accusation and broadly indicated that he or his officials may have been misled by foreign intelligence agencies about the degree of British complicity…

Hague will come under pressure to ensure the inquiry is public and comprehensive. He first called last year for an independent judicial inquiry into claims that British officials had colluded in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo detainee and a UK resident. Mohamed claimed that he was tortured by US forces in Pakistan and Morocco, and that MI5 fed the CIA questions that were used by US forces.

Yes, a conservative against torture. Because he is a conservative and believes in the long tradition of decency in Anglo-Saxon treatment of prisoners in wartime. Scott Horton comments here.

A reader writes:

A few years ago, I went on a little weekend trip with my Dad, his wife and my husband. My dad's wife had arranged for us to get lavish accommodation at a beautiful luxury resort, because she is a conference organiser. The only caveat was that for the duration of the weekend I had to pretend that I was a client of hers. In practice that meant that I had to pretend not to be related to my Dad. (I'm not proud of this, by the way…)
 
For the first couple of hours, it was fun. We got a tour of the facilities and I got to play the part of temperamental client. But amazingly soon it started to get really, really hard. I had to call my Dad by his first name, which I kept forgetting to do. So I wound up hardly speaking to him at all, and whenever I did I would blush. When I was asked any questions about my life, I would pause for ages before answering – thinking "if I say this, will it give me away?" Not being able to be open about such a basic family relationship made it impossible for me to ever relax, and the tension kept building hour by hour so that despite the 3 star meals, spa treatments and wall to wall luxury, I hated every minute of it and couldn't wait to leave. 

I can't imagine doing that every day. Yeesh.

It did already. More comment on it this weekend, but the piece is really another nasty attack on former colleagues, this time Peter Beinart and James Wood. Notice a pattern here?

Greenwald praises the new government:

Can anyone even imagine for one second Barack Obama standing up and saying:  "My administration believes that the American state has become too authoritarian"?  Even if he were willing to utter those words — and he wouldn't be — his doing so would trigger a massive laughing fit in light of his actions.  While Nick Clegg says this week that his civil liberties commitments are "so important that he was taking personal responsibility for implementing them, and promised that the new government would not be 'insecure about relinquishing control'," our Government moves inexorably in the other direction. 

I don't want to idealize what's taking place in Britain:  it still remains to be seen how serious these commitments are and how genuine of an investigation into the torture regime will be conducted.  But clearly, what was once a fringe position there has now become the mainstream platform of their new Government:  that it's imperative to ensure that their country is not "a place where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question." 

My similar thoughts here.

Weigel shrewdly observes:

Before the younger Paul became a Senate nominee, he was an emissary for a brand of Republican politics less threatening than the Dick Cheney kind — anti-Fed, anti-war, pro-drug legalization. (Paul is not personally pro-drug legalization, but many of his supporters are.) After he won the nomination, it was open season on his more extreme politics.

We saw this happen in 2008 with Ron Paul. In December 2007, the New Republic ran a piece on Paul by Tucker Carlson, the most glowing of several fun pieces it ran about him. Weeks later, the magazine ran an exposé by Jamie Kirchick of racist passages in newsletters that went out under Paul's name. "If you are a critic of the Bush administration," Kirchick wrote at the top of his article, "chances are that, at some point over the past six months, Ron Paul has said something that appealed to you." Hint, hint — it was fun to indulge the libertarians for a while, but the time had come for good liberals to take them seriously.

Chely Wright, the first openly gay country singer, appeared on Oprah this week. When will Washington catch up to America? Not during the homophobia-phobia of the Obama administration's closet.

America's Got Talent:

Buzzfeed notes that he also does Saved By The Bell, Ducktales, and Charles In Charge.

Suzy Khimm senses a political shift in New England.