Category: The Dish

A reader dissents:

It’s misleading (seriously so) to say that McCain opposes Bush’s use of torture.  McCain has supported nominal bans on torture, and speaks out against torture in public, but he has also supported legislation (most notoriously the Military Commissions Act) that allows Bush to continue using torture in practice.  The MCA specifically says that foreign detainees designated as terrorist suspects cannot challenge the conditions of their confinement in a US court.  That is to say, the MCA blocks courts from enforcing the legal prohibition on torture.  It leaves detainees to the tender mercies of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  Thanks to the MCA, if Bush and friends say that water boarding isn’t "torture," courts are powerless to stop them.  You know and I know that Bush and friends are taking full advantage of the elimination of habeas corpus in order to continue using torture.  That’s one reason why they pushed so hard for the elimination of habeas corpus in the MCA and the earlier Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. 

McCain not only voted for the MCA.  He also voted against an amendment to the MCA that would have preserved habeas corpus.  He voted against the recent bill to restore habeas corpus.

But worst of all, at the time the MCA was being debated, he pulled a "bait and switch" maneuver that caught the Democrats off guard.  By leading initial opposition to the bill, then supporting it after wholly inadequate alterations had been made, he guaranteed its passage.  (I’m not excusing the Democratic leadership, who should have combated the bill more loudly from the start, but the fact is that McCain genuinely bamboozled them when he unexpectedly and unjustifiably dropped his opposition to the bill.)

Why do I stress this so hard?  This is not just a symbolic issue.  We’re talking about real people who have been tortured and are still being tortured — their bodies broken, their spirits shattered — thanks to the path that the MCA cleared for the administration.  And this is not even to mention the indecipherable language of the MCA that leaves it unclear whether water-boarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, long-time standing, hypothermia, etc., are "cruel and inhuman treatment."

Why do you give McCain a free pass?  Yes, he’s far better than most of the other Republican candidates, but that doesn’t mean his position is anything close to acceptable.  To me it seems like you’re succumbing to a "good cop, bad cop" strategy designed to make McCain’s foul behavior somehow appear fair.

And, finally, why do you slight Ron Paul?  Paul not only adamantly and vocally opposes torture.  He has always opposed the MCA and the elimination of habeas corpus.  McCain does not deserve to be put in the same company as Ron Paul and the Democratic presidential candidates.

A depressing fact: a sitting Supreme Court Justice is to go on Rush Limbaugh’s show on Monday.

This headline was just on KTNV ABC Channel 13 in Las Vegas:

Local Man Says Marijuana Is Important To His Religion

He says "he is looking for a youthful, energetic, spirited attorney to step up and defend the cause."

More than half of New Hampshire voters have yet to make up their minds.

The junta hired a lobbying outfit, of course.

Cheery couple, aren’t they? But the surprising turn of events in Britain has led the gruff, boring, earnest Gordon Brown seem quite conservative in temperament and affect, especially compared with the Blairite, hipster style of the young Tory leader, David Cameron. Maybe Thatcher’s surprise visit to Number 10 earlier this month was a sly rebuke to Cameron who has pitched himself as Blair’s heir. Old warhorse and Thatcher ally, Norman Tebbit, a man who makes John Derbyshire look like Graham Norton, has made the point explicitly, just to piss off the current Tories:

"I’m quite sure that Margaret Thatcher knew exactly what she was doing. She is first too well mannered to rebuff the Prime Minister and second of course the present Conservative leadership has been at great pains to distance himself from her and she is after all a woman."

Lord Tebbit also criticised the Conservatives for being out of touch with half of Britain’s population.

He said: "What a lot of people will suggest is that they don’t know how the other half lives.

"David and his colleagues – the very clever young men they have in Central Office these days – are intellectually very clever but they have no experience of the world whatsoever.

"He has spent much of his time in the Conservative Party and as a public relations guy. Well it’s not the experience of most people in the streets. That’s the real attack and its damaging to him."

So the neocons are warming to Hillary and the old guard Tories are warming to Brown. Interesting …

(Photo: Alessandro Abbonizio/AFP/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I’ve been reading your blog for some time now, and thoroughly enjoy it, even when I don’t agree with you. Tonight I’ve read the quotation from Oliver Sacks about music, and I’m writing because I find it fascinating to read non-musicians writing about music. While I can tentatively agree on some of the things he says (well, despite being a church musician amongst other things myself, I don’t buy the notion of composers as taking dictation from above), one of the things he totally misses is that, at least for people who make music, music at least in part represents the actions taken to make music!

When I hear a great voice singing, I thrill at the thought of what it must feel like to open one’s mouth and make a sound like that, knowing what it feels like to sing. And it’s not hard to extend the ideas to various sorts of instrumental playing. A big shift has occurred over the past 100 or so years with the advent of electronic distribution and reproduction of music in that most listeners now are physically divorced from the making of music, and in fact have never taken any serious efforts in making music themselves. This leads to the sense of separation of music from the physical world that Sacks is talking about. I’m not judging whether or not this is a good thing, but it certainly represents a marked change in the experience of music since the 19th century.

A reader writes:

Just in case you might have missed it, there was a pretty telling little piece of the debate Wednesday night, tone-wise, and it related to the debate over torture.

This bit is being commented on as revealing Clinton’s independence from Bill, but more importantly, it showed that she brawls. This was the only really noteworthy exchange in an evening of boilerplate, and made Obama’s dull performance even weaker in comparison. Everyone I was watching with – mostly Obama leaners like me – started laughing at Tim Russert’s punctured pomposity. The two comebacks in a row were spot-on in tone, and really evidence a rhetorical fluidity and willingness and ability to attack with a grin on her face.

This is exactly the kind of thing that I’m looking for in a candidate for the general, and no one else really showed it. The whole bit was so far from the clearly practiced and woodenly inserted humor note we’re all so sick of. She was really a cut above, and I almost hate that I’m starting to like her.

One move like this in the general with a big audience and the whole narrative of Hillary as a shrew or a pill will be revealed as silly. Just like Russert’s stupid schtick.

Yep, it was all over the cable shows last night. Even I had to smile.

They still don’t have much of a clue, do they? Did you know that the New York Times now has 40 active blogs. Me neither. I guess it’s a step forward that they’re not charging you to read them.

Here’s the archbishop of Mozambique claiming that some people have infected condoms with HIV to kill Africans:

"I know of two countries in Europe who are making condoms with (the) virus on purpose, they want to finish with African people as part of their program to colonize the continent," Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told Reuters.