Torture is fine, but forget gay marriage

Power drills and threats of rape and mock executions, not to mention actual (“authorized”) torture. Meanwhile Karl Rove was back here stirring his base with the moral outrage of gay marriage.

A nation of barbaric hypocrites.

Christian torture

So if you go to church, especially a Christian church, according to the Pew Forum’s survey you’re more likely to approve of torture than if you don’t.

Maybe, like those aggressive children who watch a lot of violence on TV, it’s because they grew up looking at those gruesome crucifixes.

Dear President Obama (Letter #2)

President Obama, I know you believe the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” were torture, because you had to outlaw them in order to say without lying, “We do not torture.”

President Obama, I know you believe that torture under any circumstances, ticking time bomb or no, is wrong; and that if it turns out they really tortured to gin up a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, it’s evil.

President Obama, if you insist we need to move forward without the “distraction” of finding out what happened, you will have prioritized political means before moral ends. You, yourself, will be condoning torture.

Dick Cheney and Philip Markoff

There’s a debate going on about how, or when, Cheney turned into Darth Vader. Did all his heart attacks do something bad to his brain? Or did the burden of keeping the country safe after Bush ignored the 9/11 warnings just cause him to lose perspective?

I think he’s always been like that, but it’s also beside the point – it’s like wondering whether the craigslist killer murdered because he needed money for gambling.

They’re both sociopaths. The only difference is that one’s in jail and the other is still pontificating.

And when we’ve gotten to the point as a country where the New York Times can proclaim the key issue is whether or not the torture worked, then it’s we who have lost perspective.