The Dish

"Jamilah notes in the Open Thread that the census might allow you to check "Negro." Let me say with all the force that I can muster that, as black person/African-Americans, as someone whose father fought to secure our rights in this country, as someone who's suffered the cruel bite of racism, I am absolutely appalled…that the census hasn't done this sooner," – TNC.

Charles Murray goes to Paris and in one day confirms the diagnosis of Chris Caldwell and Mark Steyn that Islam will soon define Europe and that Eurabia is the future. How did he do it? By counting non-white faces on the street. He assumes all such faces are "non-native French". Clive Davis wrily notes this in one of his last blog-posts.

It's right there on National Review, a magazine that once defended moral and Christian principles, once regarded torture as abhorrent and now publishes lie after lie about the illegal torture program run by Cheney:

Of course, we have not endorsed the brutal, barbaric torture of any American citizens.

I love the 'of course', a sign of the total denial inside the proto-fascist Cheney circle that has taken hold of conservatism. No one disputes that Jose Padilla is an American citizen. No one disputes that he was seized, denied any due process, and put in total isolation for four years, with much of that time being subjected to total sensory deprivation, with ear-muffs, goggles and a permanent leg and arm and belly shackle. His lawyer described what was done to him under Cheney's orders:

Mr. Padilla was often put in stress positions for hours at a time. He would be shackled and manacled, with a belly chain, for hours in his cell. Noxious fumes would be introduced to his room causing his eyes and nose to run. The temperature of his cell would be manipulated, making his cell extremely cold for long stretches of time….

He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution. He was hooded and forced to stand in stress positions for long durations of time.

He was forced to endure exceedingly long interrogation sessions, without adequate sleep, wherein he would be confronted with false information, scenarios, and documents to further disorient him. Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake, and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla.

As a result of this treatment, he was turned into a mental case, as the tortured often are:

"During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body," Mr. Patel said. "The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel."

Now for Thiessen, it is obvious that this is not brutal, barbaric torture. Obvious. The plain meaning of domestic and international law define torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession." The sadism inflicted on Padilla adds something to the picture.

But of course this was torture. No American subjected to this treatment by a foreign regime would ever say otherwise and no sane person would either. But in order to justify the evil he propagated and the disastrous weakening of national security he aided and abetted, Thiessen must lie.

Let me tell him something: however many lies you tell yourself and others, one day, Mr Thiessen, you and those you worked with, will be brought to justice.

Another story worth mulling:

Tsutomu Yamaguchi has died at the age of 93.  He was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped.  After suffering radiation burns, he heard that there was a train leaving to the town where his family lived, so he crossed a river that had no bridge by crawling across hundreds of bloated, floating dead bodies to the other side where the train station was, and headed back home . . . to Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb was dropped days later.  He is the only officialy recognized survivor of both bombings.   

"Being the first sucks," Amanda Simpson, the first openly transgender presidential appointee.

Not all conservatives have lost their minds:

The real economy also responded to the massive stimulus but remained heavily dependent on it. In the United States, growth during the second half of 2009 probably averaged about 3 percent. Absent temporary fiscal stimulus and inventory rebuilding, which taken together added about 4 percentage points to U.S. growth, the economy would have contracted at about a 1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009.

Don't they realize that it is an item of doctrine among today's GOP that TARP hurt the economy and that the stimulus achieved nothing – in fact made things worse? Well, anyway, it's most refreshing to see reality creep back into conservative discourse. It's been a while.

Newsweek's Maziar Bahari suggests he might:

As for conservatives, while they're putting up a united front in public, their distaste for Ahmadinejad is growing. Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, recently complained that if Iranians had a proper place to express their discontent they wouldn't take to the streets. Another former Guards commander, Mohsen Rezaei, recently apologized for the fact that "because of legal constraints, my friends and I cannot do anything to put an end to this situation except advise those in power." Sources close to conservatives say that some leading figures are now pressing Khamenei to dump Ahmadinejad in order to preserve his own position.

Rasmussen-free data on Independents: