Sure, there will be those who say we shouldn't arrest Randall Terry and his followers and send them all to Bagram, but that's pre-5/31 thinking.

Off-topic, I guess:

"What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people?"

I'll make it multiple choice:

A) A shining city on a hill
B) A fascist military-security state

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

REMOVE JAY BYBEE FROM THE 9TH CIRCUIT BENCH, call pelosi @1-202-225-0100. I called today, Now its YOUR turn.

SteveB. Torture for some and not for others STILL ends up as torture. Same old "some are more equal than others". Its leftism, NOT progress, and that's ALL it is.

"Obama failed to torture people, and now we've had a terrorist attack...."

Well, I wish the first part of this sentence were true.....

QED.

oarwell, ever think that maybe the shining city on a hill IS a fascist military security state?

it's interesting to me how the right wing goes nuts when the Dems are in power, but not so much when the GOP is. all this pro-life violence dropped off markedly when W was in power, but it was there with Clinton and now it's back with obama. the numbers i've seen reported are striking

i assume the higher decible level of the wingnut hate machine when Dems are in power is part of the explanation, but i wonder if there's anything else going on too

Its the search lights on the guard towers sparkeling off the broken glass and razor wire on top of the walls that make that city on a hill shine.

Are we talking about the late-term abortion doctor or the shooting at the recruiting station?

Cause I've heard the word terrorism a number of times in reference to the latter, and not at all for the former on the HDTV news.

Yo, NE, Mike Meyers beat me to the punch. What can I add?

Those Dark Satanic Mills just might be making Keebler cookies.

Sorry to hog, but I just saw the funniest thing over at the NYT:

"Readers are sharing their images of their GM automobiles."

I'm speechless.

But the comedy writers at the Times actually top it with this write-up, under the subheadline "Happy Days:"

"At 45, I have neither house nor car, and I have never had a credit card or health insurance, which is very risky, I understand. The other day, one of my teeth simply fell out. Needless to say, I haven’t seen a dentist in ages. Economically, my life is one long depression, punctuated by rare episodes of relative affluence, which to me is the cash to buy any entrée costing more than 10 bucks. But am I unhappy?

Absolutely not."

Hey, who needs teeth, anyway? Chewing is so...bourgeois.

oarwell: Why shouldn't the poor pay a happiness tax? Damn it! Listen to them bragging about how they don't have this, and they don't have that, and they never had this, and they'll never have that. I wish they wouldn't rub it in like that.

And the "nouveau poor," they're the worst! Do they even know what it is not to be able to live without servants? There's an indecency the way they go around, "Hey, look at me, I haven't eaten in 2 days!" Well, I don't have that luxury, you know: I've got to eat 3 times a day (sometimes 4). But noooooo, don't expect any sympathy from them. OK, this is America, no class envy here: I don't resent the happiness of the poor. I just say, Tax it!

"Why shouldn't the poor pay a happiness tax?"

Bernard, dead on. Trickle up, is what's needed. Share the joy! If the cachectic prole had ANY inkling of how grindingly miserable the rich are, they'd have the common decency to wipe those smiles right off their impecunious faces.

happiness tax? i don't think we've overlooked that. it's called capitalism.

"In the electronic world, children smile only when they are using products."
John Carroll 8 Jan 1997

angryman, thanks for the heads-up about the recruiting station shooting.

Funny how not a single story about the assassination of Dr. Tiller raised any question about whether his killer was acting alone, even given his documented participation in a highly organized, ongoing, long-term campaign of harassment and terror against Tiller, his co-workers, and the clinic.

But a guy who lives near a recruiting station shoots two soldiers outside it, and "it's not clear whether he was acting alone." Also:

Mr. Muhammad will be charged with one count of capital murder and 15 counts of terroristic acts, one for each person who was hit or endangered by the shots he fired. Thirteen people were in the recruiting office at the time.

Think the assassin in Wichita will be charged with anything but the murder of George Tiller? I don't.

Mike Meyer, with your permission, I'm going to put that line straight into my quotes file, with full attribution. I hope you don't think me too presumptuous in making a couple of tiny edits:

It's the search lights on the guard towers sparkling off the broken glass and razor wire atop the walls that make that city on a hill shine.

A gem, truly.

NomadUK: Go for it.

Nell, I'd thank you for pointing that out if my head hadn't exploded in frustration when I read it, rendering speech impossible.

I wonder if the fact that Roeder seemed to be making a lot of calls to Operation Rescue a while back during Tiller's trial (i don't know about recently) will prompt any consideration of the possibility that he had some help, or at least encouragement

From tomdispatch, alfred mccoy on torture:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175080/alfred_mccoy_back_to_the_future_in_torture_policy