The President's Weekly Address

The text can be found here.

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Wash your hands.

Lil Mayor Luke Apologizes for Campaign Ad Lie Boo-boo

Apparently there's some sort of kerfuffle over one of Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's campaign ads.

I've seen Logs's Luke's spots and don't really have a problem, but judge for yourself:


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Mulef*cker Neal Horsley Running for Governor of Georgia

Four years ago I posted about anti choice extremist Neal Horsley who not only doesn't want women to control their own bodies, he also liked to control the bodies of farmyard animals. And by control, I mean Horsley admitted to raping a mule (What? With a name like Horsley, you'd think he would have mounted a pretty, pretty pony).

Anyhoo, the pervert also wants Georgia to succeed from the US and he'd be willing to kill his own son to make it happen.

Oh, and by the way, he's now running for governor of Georgia.

Back when I first posted about him, I made this illustration to accompany the story:


So what did I see while I was reading the comments in a Daily Kos post on Horsley? This video:


Notice anything familiar?

I swear, if I had a nickel for every time someone on the intertoobz used one of my graphics...
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One Political Junkie On OffQ TONIGHT

I'll be filling in for my buddy John McIntire tonight on OffQ.

We'll probably be talking about some issues of local and national importance; Luke, the Swine (flu), David Souter and Arlen Specter.

I'll probably get to plug the blog a few times, too.

GO WATCH!

Ronald Wilson Reagan On Torture

You probably won't hear it from the nattering nabobs of negativity now currently known as the GOP, but the UN Convention Against Torture was signed by the 40th President of These United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan in April 1988 (that's more than 20 years ago, by the way).

Sending it to the Congress for ratification, The Gipper wrote:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

And then finally:

By giving its advice and consent to ratification of this Convention, the Senate of the United States will demonstrate unequivocally our desire to bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture.

It was finally ratified by the Congress in 1994 (that's 15 years ago).

Article 2 of the Convention says:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

It's the law. And it has been for some time now.

I feel as if I've written on this before.

Good golly, I have!

Investigate and prosecute the torture.

Obama and Torture At The News Conference

First, let's start with Glenn Greenwald:

As for Obama's answer to Tapper on whether he believes the Bush administration "sanctioned torture," what is most significant is that Obama flatly stated that waterboarding -- which Bush officials acknowledged that they ordered -- constitutes "torture." That means that Obama is currently and simultaneously advocating these positions:

* Bush officials ordered torture.

* Torture is a crime.

* Nobody is above the law.

Unless you're David Broder, Fred Hiatt, Peggy Noonan or Tom Friedman, those premises of Obama's, as a matter of logical reasoning, all necessarily lead to one conclusion (hint: it's not: "This is a time for reflection, not retribution"). Greg Sargent has similar thoughts about the significance of Obama's torture answer.

And here's Greg Sargent:

The key moment came at the end of an exchange with ABC News’ Jake Tapper. After Obama acknowledged that waterboarding is “torture” — a word he and his aides had shied away from using of late — came this:

TAPPER: I’m sorry, sir, but do you believe the previous administration sanctioned torture?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe that waterboarding was torture. And I think that the — whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.

Obama implicitly acknowledged here that the previous administration used “legal rationales” to justify “torture.”

This underscores yet again how dicey this is for Obama politically: He’s acknowledging that the previous administration created “legal rationales” to allow itself to engage in behavior that’s outlawed by international treaties. At a minimum, this would seem to give some pretty powerful ammo to those who want some kind of noncriminal probe into what happened.

Then there's this from an interview Sargent did with Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY):

“President Obama said, `They used torture, I believe waterboarding is torture,’” Nadler said, speaking of Obama’s comments about his predecessors. “Once you concede that torture was committed, the law requires that there be an investigation, and if warranted, a prosecution.”

Nadler and other House Dems have already called on the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to look into potential torture crimes. Yesterday’s comments from Obama, Nadler says, make it clearer still that this is the only legal path open to the administration — in part because Obama seemed to acknowledge that his predecessors had violated “international law.”

“The president stated in so many words: Waterboarding is torture, the previous administration has admitted that it waterboarded, and torture is a violation of international law,” Nadler said. “Once this is admitted, there must be an investigation. It forces the Justice Department on this path.”

Investigate the torture. It's the law.

Justice Souter to Retire

From the Times:

Justice David H. Souter plans to retire at the end of the term in June, giving President Obama his first appointment to the Supreme Court, four people informed about the decision said Thursday night.

Justice Souter, who was appointed in 1990 by a Republican president, the first George Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. One official said the decision might be announced as early as Friday.

The departure will open the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama’s plans for reshaping the nation’s judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.

My understanding is the nominee would have to make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the news of earlier this week (oh you remember! Arlen Specter switching parties? You remember, right??) has shifted things in the Judiciary Committee just a tad.

With his switch Arlen is no longer the "Ranking Member" of the committee as that member is, by definition, the highest ranking member of the committee from the party NOT in power in the Senate.

And when he crossed the aisle he kept his seniority - and he outranks the most senior democrat in four of his six committees. Something that doesn't please some high ranking (though not as high ranking as Arlen) Senate Democrats. But on the Judiciary, he wouldn't out rank Senator Leahy.

In any event, CQPolitics has a piece on why this isn't the best time for the committee:

Here's why having Specter no longer in the role of ranking Republican creates disarray in the GOP.

Ranking Republican isn't just a courtesy title. It's a management job.

That's the person who runs the staff of legal professionals who evaluate legislation and handle the behind-the-scenes work of vetting each judicial nominee. As you can imagine, going through the paperwork on a Supreme Court nomination -- and dealing with the politics of a Supreme Court nomination -- is a very big job.

Will the experienced staff that Specter assembled continue to work for the committee?

And that also brings up another question. The as yet un-updated webpage for the committee shows its make up to be 11 Democrats (including the Chair, Leahy) and 8 Republicans. With Specter's move to the D-side, I presume one of the Democrats on the committee will have to leave.

Which one will it be?

They're Going After Hannah Montana??

From Americablog:

On the heels of the hate crimes vote in the House - a vote where the religious right claimed that laws against murder would somehow stop them from verbally criticizing gays - the religious right has just launched a campaign against Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus simply for saying that Jesus loves everyone, including gay people.

The story has something to do with someone called Perez Hilton, the Miss USA Pageant and that twitter thing.

By way of the Gay Rights section of change.org, we learn that Cyrus was tweeting Hilton:

Miley: I believe that EVERYONE deserves to be happy. That’s all I’m saying ;)

Perez: A lot of controversy over your answer, which is silly. I think you answered the question better than Miss California!

Miley: What was her answer??? Cause what I said is the truth. Everyone deserves to love and be loved and most importantly smile :)

Miley: thx! U know what I get crap for whatever I do but you asked me an honest question and I gave an honest answer! So whatevs!!! :)

Perez: I’m sad that people use God and religion as an excuse 2 hate, discriminate and deny gays & lesbians full equality under the law.

Miley: ya thats lame! God’s greatest commandment is to love. And judging is not loving. That’s why Christians have such a bad rep. <3>

Sparking Michael A Jones, the blogger at change.org, to write:

I love it. Now let's wait for the American Family Association or the National Organization for Marriage to start boycotting Hannah Montana. I'm sure it's coming.

Well, here it is. Monica Cole director of OneMillionMoms (a Project of the American Family Association) sent this out:

Such statements will send the wrong message to our children who are influenced by this teenage megastar. Parents need to realize that Cyrus is not the positive role model she was once thought to be.

Followed with a link to "Take Action" and send Cyrus a letter.

C'mon. MILEY CYRUS??

Condoleezza Rice: No Torture

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was taped at Stanford University recently in off-the-cuff discussion of torture. The video:


The full text can be found here.

I'd like to start about 4 minutes in to the video. The discussion is swirling around torture and the questioner points out that the US didn't torture any German POW. To which Secretary Rice says:

And we didn't torture anybody here either. Alright?

When it was pointed out that there was torture at Guantanamo Bay, Rice became rather patronizing:

No, no dear, you're wrong. Alright. You're wrong. We did not torture anyone. And Guantanamo Bay, by the way, was considered a model "medium security prison" by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe who went there to see it.

Dear? Oh, to be called "dear" by an accused war criminal! Anyway, while Rice instructs her interrogator to "do your homework," she evidently hasn't done her own.

Here's the report about how Guantanamo is a "model" prison:

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison are treated better than in Belgian jails, an expert for Europe's biggest security organization said on Monday after a visit to the controversial U.S. detention center.

But Alain Grignard, deputy head of Brussels' federal police anti-terrorism unit, said that holding people for many years without telling them what would happen to them is in itself "mental torture."

"At the level of the detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons," said Grignard.

And here's OSCE's "clarification" about Monsier Grignard:

The OSCE Spokesperson said that, in the light of these reports, he wished to make it clear the Organization itself had not sent an expert to Guantanamo: "The person quoted in several of the stories as "an OSCE expert", Professor Alain Grignard, accompanied the delegation despatched by the Parliamentary Assembly, based in Copenhagen, but he was not employed or commissioned by the OSCE."

Without commenting on the views expressed by any members of the delegation at the press conference in Brussels, he added that the statements should therefore not be taken as being made on behalf of the 55-nation body, which is headquartered in Vienna. [emphasis added]

In fact, Anne-Marie Lizin, Special Representative of the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, issued a report on June 30, 2006 that notes:

...that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility is continuing to seriously tarnish the reputation of the United States in the world and enabling its enemies to devalue the fight against terrorism by substantiating the idea that it is incompatible with respect for the rule of law and for human rights. (page 18)

And:

In consequence of the foregoing, [Lizin] recommends to the US authorities that they announce as soon as possible the disbandment of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility by publicizing in July 2006 an accurate and detailed timetable for the transfer of the detainees and for the organization of the practical modalities of the closure. (page 19) [emphasis added]

And yet Secretary Rice said the OSCE said it was a "model" prison.

Perhaps, dear, you should do YOUR homework.

Then there's this:

Now, the ICRC also had access to Guantanamo, and they made no allegations about interrogations at Guantanamo.

Interesting, here's what the ICRC DID say about Guantanamo bay:

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

And finally when asked whether she considered waterboarding torture, she replied:

...by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.

There you have it. Didn't work for Nixon. It shouldn't work for Bush.

Investigate and prosecute the torture.

The Inhumane Pain's On The Dock In Spain

From the Huffington Post:

A Spanish judge opened a probe into the Bush administration over alleged torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, pressing ahead Wednesday with a drive that Spain's own attorney general has said should be waged in the United States, if at all.

Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain's most prominent investigative magistrate, said he is acting under this country's observance of the principle of universal justice, which allows crimes allegedly committed in other countries to be prosecuted in Spain.

He said documents declassified by the new U.S. government suggest the practice was systematic and ordered at high levels of the US government.

And look at this:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking with reporters in Berlin before the investigation was announced, did not rule out cooperating with such an investigation.

"Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it," Holder said.

"This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law and to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately-created court, we would obviously respond to it," he said.

Asked if that meant the U.S. would cooperate with a foreign court prosecuting Bush administration officials, Holder said he was talking about evidentiary requests, and would review any such request to see if the United States would comply.

I'll bet there'll be some back-peddling on this last part.

Don't Know Much 'Bout History (Part II)

Remember when Representative Michele Bachman thought it "interesting" that the previous influenza outbreak occurred under a "Democrat President"?

Even though it took place under the previous REPUBLICAN President.

Well on the same day, she made another gaffe. And our friends at Talking Points Memo bring you the video:


Here's what TPM posted (be sure you're sitting down when you read this, the uncontrolled giggles might make you fall). The set-up:

On Monday night, our friends at Dump Bachmann reported, Bachmann took to the House floor and paid tribute to the economic policies of Calvin Coolidge and the "Roaring 20s" (the era that ended with a massive monetary contraction and the Great Depression). One particular line really does stand out, though -- saying Franklin Roosevelt turned a recession into a depression through the "Hoot-Smalley" tariffs.

And then the analysis:

Here's what really happened: When Franklin Roosevelt took office, unemployment was already about 25%. And the tariff referred to here was actually the Smoot-Hawley bill, co-authored by Republicans Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon, and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover. [emphasis in original]

Hoot-Smalley, Smoot-Hawley. What difference does it make??

No wonder the GOP's devolving into a regional minority party

Keep Specter Honest Facebook Page

An astute reader just sent me this from the dailykos. Seems that there's a new facebook page out there. It's called Keep Specter Honest. The description:

Now that Sen. Arlen Specter's switching to be a Democrat, let's keep the pressure on him so he votes like a PENNSYLVANIA Democrat and not a "conservadem" from Nebraska or the South.

What They're Saying

CNN:

Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party on Tuesday, saying he has found himself increasingly "at odds with the Republican philosophy."

"This is a painful decision. I know I'm disappointing many of my colleagues," he said at a news conference announcing the move. "The disappointment runs in both directions.

O'Toole of the Post-Gazette:

Sen. Arlen Specter has represented the Republican Party in the Senate longer than any other Pennsylvanian in history. His decision to abandon the GOP, while greeted with a collective "good riddance" by many conservatives, is the latest blow to a party battered by repeated losses in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

"I don't have to say anything to (my constituents)," said Sen. Arlen Specter in an impromptu Tuesday gathering outside his Capitol Hill office shortly after releasing a statement that he would leave the Republican Party after 43 years, become a Democrat and slink away from a certain and humiliating defeat in next year's GOP primary against Pat Toomey.

"They said it to me," the five-term senator of Philadelphia said.

That's right. Republicans told Arlen Specter to go to hell. And by all accounts, that's where he's going -- to an expected filibuster-proof Senate that, thanks to one of the most unprincipled men ever to serve in that august body, now will have carte blanche to further its dangerously socialist agenda.

Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Sen. Arlen Specter's announcement yesterday that he will cross the aisle to join the Democrats was the latest expression of independence that has been his hallmark as a legislator.

For the Democratic Party, starting with President Barack Obama, it was a show of confidence on Mr. Specter's part. For the senator, it was his decisive support for the president's economic stimulus package that was probably the watershed. That measure was passed only because Mr. Specter and fellow Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, endured their party's wrath and a threatened loss of GOP campaign funds. Mr. Specter, however, clearly saw the action as necessary if the economy was to get the sharp push it needed toward recovery. It was the right position for the country and definitely right for Pennsylvania.

The Republican response to his vote was probably the other half of the genesis of Mr. Specter's decision to leave. For many in the GOP, not only had Mr. Specter committed a sin, but he also had given them a chance to eliminate him in the 2010 primary. The very party whose latest presidential nominee tried to market himself as a maverick is now at a fork in the road -- does it seek a return to the majority or a bid for ideological purity?

Erik Kleefield of Talkingpointsmemo:

So Specter's problem wasn't that he's not a conservative, but that he's not conservative enough for a shrinking GOP. And if he's not a complete right-winger, his only real choice is to be a Democrat.

And that's where politics seems to be right now: The right-wing nuts versus everyone else. Specter is on the more conservative end of the "everyone else" category, but being a Democrat now offers him more chance for political success (and sane, rational discourse) than the other option.

Dan Balz at the WashingtonPost:

How much more can the Republicans take? Demoralized, shrinking and seemingly lacking an agenda beyond the word "no," Republicans today saw their ranks further thinned with the stunning news that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties and will run for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat.

Specter is worried about his own survival -- and particularly a primary challenge from the right. Many in the GOP might say good riddance. After supporting President Obama's stimulus package, Specter was persona non grata in his own party. So it may be easy for some Republicans to conclude that they are better off without people like Arlen Specter.

But his defection is a reminder that the Republican Party continues to contract, especially outside the South, and that it appears increasingly less welcome to politicians and voters who do not consider themselves solidly conservative. Northeast Republicans have gone from an endangered species to a nearly extinct species. Republicans lost ground in the Rocky Mountains and the Midwest in the last two elections. That's no way to build a national party.

Rush Limbaugh:

This is all about the fact he faces a strong primary challenge. He wouldn't be changing parties if there were no Pat Toomey out there, if there weren't anybody challenging him on the Republican side. He doesn't want to lose his upcoming election. This does not say anything bad about the Republican Party.

This is good. This is good. Toomey doesn't have to spend a lot of money now on a primary, a bruising primary. Specter -- I mean, there's no guarantee Specter's going to get the Democrat nomination in the primary. He's got to -- he's got to secure that. So it's -- it's -- any time you have, you know, liberals leaving the Republican Party, rather than trying to change the party to become liberal, it's a good thing! I wish more people who are not really Republicans, who claim to be liberal Republicans, do the same thing!

Senator Olympia Snowe in the New York Times:

Senator Specter indicated that his decision was based on the political situation in Pennsylvania, where he faced a tough primary battle. In my view, the political environment that has made it inhospitable for a moderate Republican in Pennsylvania is a microcosm of a deeper, more pervasive problem that places our party in jeopardy nationwide.

And:

We can’t continue to fold our philosophical tent into an umbrella under which only a select few are worthy to stand. Rather, we should view an expansion of diversity within the party as a triumph that will broaden our appeal. That is the political road map we must follow to victory.

However wise those words are, I can't imagine the call to expand the diversity of the GOP coming from a moderate New England republican (and how many of those are left??) will get any traction in the Limbaugh party.

George Bush on March 17, 2003

War crimes will be prosecuted, war criminals will be punished and it will be no defense to say, “I was just following orders.”

(h/t to Think Progress)

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE

Tell me that when The Powers That Be promised Arlen Specter that they'd clear the way for him to win the Democratic primary in 2010, that they also got some promises from him -- and that they made him sign it in blood -- cause Arlen is real good at pulling that football away at the last moment.
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Don't Know Much 'Bout History

Representative Michele Bachman said:

I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.

Uh...not so much. From the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages:

A quick look at the swine flu scare in the 1970s brings up some interesting facts Bachmann seems to have missed that discredits even this "interesting coincidence". The first cases that spurred the swine flu vaccinations actually happened in 1976 under Republican President Gerald Ford when some Fort Dix soldiers became ill. Carter continued the vaccinations when he took office.

(h/t to Talking Points Memo)

Oh, the irony!

First, it took a Republican to switch parties for Pennsylvania to get a pro choice senator.


And speaking of choice, once again, Pennsylvanians will have little to no choice in their Democratic primary vote for US Senator -- the fix is in.

[sigh]
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Shribman on Torture

This weekend David M. Shribman, the executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette posted a column on torture.

Well not exactly on torture, but on why the Obama Administration should "look to the future, not to the past" and just let it go.

He begins with some historical precednts:

When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek to put members of the Adams administration on trial. When Warren G. Harding followed Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1921, he did not put Edith Galt Wilson on trial for usurping the office of the presidency after Wilson's stroke. When Bill Clinton ended a dozen years of Republican rule in 1993, he did not try to prosecute Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush for deceiving the Congress over the Iran-Contra affair.

For the record, as far as I know none of the above list was accused of torture.

In any event, while Shribman fails to mention a specific charge that the Jeffersonians could have charged the Adamsians with, the rest of his argument rests on the notion that since Harding failed to charge Wilson's widow with "usurpation" (or whatever the charge would have been) and since Clinton failed to prosecute Bush and Reagan for Iran-Contra (and so on), then the Obama should let George Bush and Dick Cheney get away with torture. He sums it up with a creatively constructed and properly punctuated alliteration:

Here presidents and parties do not criminalize the policies of their predecessors.

Implying that elsewhere, presidents and parties DO criminalize their predecessors' policies. A banana republic perhaps? That's a cheap shot, as we all know.

What Shribman fails to recognize (or perhaps what he's avoiding) is the simple fact that torture is a crime. A big one. A violation of federal and international law whose punishment is, and of right ought to be, severe.

I find this next sentence unintentially funny:

That is why the nascent effort to investigate and perhaps prosecute members of the Bush administration is a dramatic departure from American tradition.

Bill Clinton was impeached for the very serious charge of perjury as he was caught in a lie about the fellatio he'd received from a woman who wasn't his wife. The Bush administration is accused (at least in the court of public opinion) of okaying the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the International Committee of the Red Cross has already deemed "constituted torture."

Perjury about fellatio was serious enough for multi-million dollar investigation but "American tradition" demands that serious allegations of torture get a pass.

Perhaps if Monica Lewinsky were waterboarded...

That snarky digression it leads me to the fundamental flaw in the next section of Shribman's column:

This is no defense of torture nor of the tactics the Bush administration may have used in recent years; press accounts of those episodes that emerged late last month were shocking. But far below the surface of the noisy Washington and cable-television conversation is a quieter but very serious debate, sparked by the circulation in elite legal circles in recent days of an Internet version of a forthcoming article in the Yale Law Journal that argues that "all interrogation methods allegedly authorized since 9/11, with the possible exception of waterboarding, have been authorized before."

This article, by William Ranney Levi, is significant as much for its intellectual provenance as it is for its contents. Mr. Levi, part of one of the most distinguished legal families in the nation, exposed his argument to the rigorous review of several leading legal minds, conservative and liberal, some of whom doubtlessly disagree with him.

He cites consultations with Jack L. Goldsmith, the conservative Harvard law professor who resigned from the Bush Justice Department and later expressed qualms over the Bush anti-terrorism legal rationale; Harold H. Koh, the dean of the Yale Law School and a leading human rights activist who has been nominated by Mr. Obama to be legal adviser to the State Department; Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, a Stanford law professor in the Obama inner ring; and Martin S. Lederman, a Georgetown law professor and fierce Bush critic who is the president's choice for a leadership position in the powerful and prestigious Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.

The meaning of all of this is not that the Bush policies were smart, prudent, moral or effective. They may not have been any of those things. The meaning, however, is that the Bush policies were legally plausible. [emphasis added]

I bolded and italicized the phrase regarding waterboarding in the event it would have been missed otherwise. Now look at Shribman's argument again while telling yourself: But they did waterboard.

So Shribman's whole argument of letting it slide because there's been enough precedent for Bush's policies to be legally plausible are crushed under:

They waterboarded.

The US has already prosecuted waterboarding (in Texas recently and against Imperial Japan 6 decades ago). How's that for precedents?

And he insults his audience (meaning you and me) by insisting on calling this a "policy" dispute. This is not about taxes or spending or who'd make a good Supreme Court nominee.

It's about a crime. One that happened hundreds of times. One that happened in our name and one that to "protect" us.

There's a reason the UN Convention Against Torture exists. We can't have the high moral ground if we let the torture go. Indeed, we're in violation of international law if we do.

Arlen Specter's Statement

From PoliticsPA:

April 28, 2009

Statement by Senator Arlen Specter

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary.

I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank specially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

I am not making this decision because there are no important and interesting opportunities outside the Senate. I take on this complicated run for re-election because I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and I believe I have a significant contribution to make on many of the key issues of the day, especially medical research. NIH funding has saved or lengthened thousands of lives, including mine, and much more needs to be done. And my seniority is very important to continue to bring important projects vital to Pennsylvania's economy.

I am taking this action now because there are fewer than thirteen months to the 2010 Pennsylvania Primary and there is much to be done in preparation for that election. Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.

While each member of the Senate caucuses with his Party, what each of us hopes to accomplish is distinct from his party affiliation. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation. And no Senator, no matter how loyal he is to his Party, should or would put party loyalty above his duty to the state and nation.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords' switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy's statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

Update on Specter's Switch

From The Politico:

Republican Senate leaders Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Jon Kyl of Arizona are in an emergency meeting in the Capitol right now discussing the party switch, which would be a devastating blow to a party barely hanging on to a 41-vote minority in the Senate. Specter has long been a moderate Republican and a thorn in his party's side, but his move to switch parties is a surprising maneuver. Specter trails badly in GOP primary polls and he may have a better chance to win as a Democrat in his home state.

Poor guys. The minority party in the Senate just got minority-ier.