Category: Awards

The Dish is a finalist in the Best Political Blog category this year. There's a People's Choice option for voting. If you feel like it, you can vote for the Dish (and all your other favorite blogs) here.

"Is Obama rushing another attack? … That’s the working M.O. of this administration: no matter what we do, we’re going to eventually get hit again. The Obama administration views the seven years after 9/11 as more a fluke than a successful strategy by George Bush to prevent domestic terror attacks. So if the working theory is that we’re going to get hit again, what is the best response? After all, the public does credit George Bush with keeping us safe at 9/11. The best strategy would look something like taking a band-aid off quickly. Get the pain over fast. And if an attack happens quickly enough into the new administration, they can blame Bush.

So the Obama administration is working hard to release all the memos on interrogations, change all the policies Bush implemented, and clear out the old as fast as possible. Never mind that if it were done slowly over time, our terrorist enemies might not be so incited to attack.

If your working premise is that they are going to attack anyway, get them incited quickly, get it over with, and blame Bush.

There is no other justification for so quickly making us less safe," – Erick Erickson of RedState, arguing that the president is aiming to get al Qaeda to kill Americans early in his term of office.

I really don't know what to say in the face of this, except to note that the Republican right is so deranged at this point, I blame no one for wanting to get out of the same party that these creeps and monsters belong in.

"Statements like "thanks for the swine flu" or "I hope Susan Collins' kids get swine flu" are crazy responses to her opinions and the reality of the current funding situation. Just asinine. Same as actually calling or writing Senator Collins. Why? Why are you doing this? Schumer went so far as to call the pandemic prevention funding a "little porky thing," are you calling him? Are you yelling about him? Additionally, the money has been appropriated, so what's the point?," – Addison, Daily Kos.

""I personally believe torture is wrong. We shouldn't do it. Even if it means me, my husband, and my two sons get blown up. Seriously, if I had to choose I'd say: Death is common to us all; torture is a choice," – Maggie Gallagher.

"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.

"Plan B—the drug that allows guys to breathe a sigh of relief the morning after using some chick for selfish pleasure—will now be available to 17-year-olds without a prescription.

Who cares that she’s not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes legally? Get her drunk on wine coolers, get what you want, then the next morning, take her to CVS to get Plan B and make sure there’s no chance the slut will show up in a few months talking child support payments and DNA tests.

So guys, if you screw a 17-year-old and “forget” to use a condom, remember: Nothing says “thanks a lot, you cheap whore” like the gift of Plan B!," – Robert Stacy McCain, in a post titled, "What next? Over-the-counter roofies?"

(hat tip: Jesse Taylor)

"Rightly considered, the memos should be a source of pride," – Rich Lowry, National Review.

The NYT today offers a glimpse of the Bush administration’s attempted defense of its full-scale adoption of torture tactics developed and finessed by Communist regimes bent on producing false confessions. They had no idea, we are now told, of the history of torture, no grasp of where the torture techniques they adopted came from, and no willingness to find out:

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

Let us first note that if this is true, the decision to abandon the Geneva Conventions was based on literally criminal ignorance. Anyone with a degree in history or a Google account could have found out any of these things if they had wanted to. I did, as soon as the cascade of evidence of abuse and torture unleashed by Bush came to light. And let us note secondly that this is not a defense. For Tenet to have proposed a criminal torture technique without inquiring as to its history and past use is a function of criminal incompetence. For that, a man who presided over the worst attack on the homeland in US history and compounded it with destroying the moral standing of the US was awarded a Medal of Freedom.

Is it too late for Tenet to give it back?

"New York has one of the highest gay populations in the nation, and they vote and pay taxes. Giuliani always did quite well (for a Republican) with gay voters. It’s hard to imagine that he, or anyone, could afford to alienate them directly and win," – Lisa Schiffren, bemoaning the thought that New York State might legislate marriage equality.

"It shows somebody down in the bowels of that organization is either a convinced left winger or somebody whose sexual orientation is somewhat in question. But it’s that kind of thing, somebody who doesn’t think that we should have abortion on demand, is labeled a terrorist! It’s outrageous" – Pat Robertson, ascribing the DHS report on right-wing extremism to gay government officials.