Real Soldiers Oppose Torture

An encouraging editorial from the conservative Armed Forces Journal, directed to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey:

Let AFJ be crystal clear on a subject where these men are opaque: Waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II.

Waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue.

Taking Taranto’s Temperature

A reader notices something:

I know he’s not your favorite pundit, but he is a good measuring stick.

Lately, he’s been going after Huckabee and propping up Romney.  Yesterday, Taranto stated that, "Huckabee put his foot in his mouth in 1992, and he is still trying to extract it."  He later went on to prop up Romney against an editorial in the NYT against "an utterly mindless statement" but refused to mention the mindlessness of "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."

Methinks the Rudy Right is really, really scared of Huckabee and has Romney as their firewall in case Rudy isn’t viable after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Every complacent secular Republican who has scorned those of us worried about the fundie right is beginning to squirm in the face of Huckabee’s surge.

Quote For The Day II

"It might be too late for Hillary. This is all over the black blogs and on black radio. Her campaign was wrong to do this. It’s tacky to go after him for using drugs in high school and college. It’s another thing to claim that somehow, that makes him a drug dealer. Of all the politicians who have come out and admitted experimenting with or using drugs at some point in their life, I’ve never ever heard of one being assued to have also been a drug dealer. Liberals love to rag on the Republican party and their use of the “southern strategy”, but how is what Hillary’s people doing any different. It’s not different at all. In fact, it’s worse. At least the republican party doesn’t pretend to be friendly towards people of color.

From what I’m hearing, this is hurting her in the black community. This apology means nothing. Her guy never should have said what he said and implied what he did, period," – a commenter on the NYT blog, The Caucus.

The Money Moment In Des Moines

Many readers have responded to the money moment in yesterday’s Democratic debate:

I was undecided up to now, but forty seconds of YouTube has decided me: There’s a sword at Obama’s throat. Hillary grabs the sword and brandishes it, gloating.  Obama reaches out, takes the sword from her hand, and runs her through.  What an aphoristic moment.  Or as the YouTube commenters put it, PWNED.

In the larger context, this was a grievous unforced error on Hillary’s part.  In my eyes, her crowing reaction damages her as much as Obama’s comeback benefits him.  All she needed to do was listen politely as Obama squirmed, and the moment was hers. Instead, she reacted like a comic book supervillain and handed a superhero moment to Obama. I don’t know who’s got an exact count, but I suspect her team this season has racked up the most errors, both forced and unforced.  In sport, that has a lot of significance.  In politics, I think it’s about to.

Then this:

I saw the clip you link to on TV this morning, with Obama being asked about all the old Clinton people advising him. You would hear Hillary’s laugh rising loud and fake about the rest of the people there. It was stunningly typical of her, and the only way she’ll get my vote now is if she’s the nominee and McCain isn’t.
Well: I think that says more about the awfulness of the GOP choice than the virtues of Senator Clinton.

Liquidating Logos

Liquidatedchanel

Street art meets silly anti-corporatism in the work of Parisian artist, Zevs. I love logos myself, the good ones anyway. Some context here. Perhaps it’s not so preachy:

Zevs’s work primarily plays with and explores visual effects. Re-painting the logos in their own colours, the artist pours paint over them, liquidating one logo after another. Through the parallel lines of the drips, the logos dissolve in front of the viewers eyes, drawing attention to, and visually disturbing the recognizable and omnipresent trademark as illustrated above. By doing so, Zevs investigates the logo’s visual power.

Suck On This Correction

No Mike Huckabee was not involved in this:

In a news story Friday ("Spectrum holds Condom Olympics to educate on safe sex," page 3), it was incorrectly stated due to a reporting error that health and wellness educator Beth Grampetro and Tim Hegan, an ORL area director, said Fruit Roll-Ups are adequate protection against STDs. No health officials said or advocated this use at the Condom Olympics.