World

Dick Cheney, surely now confirmed as the worst Vice-President in American history, produced a cracker, even by his miserable standards, during his interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace on Sunday. The subject was “harsh interrogation techniques”: WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you’re OK with it. CHENEY: I am. Well, you can’t get much clearer than that, can you? The contempt with which Cheney views the rule of law is quite breathtaking. Not that, given everything we know about the Vice-Presidents’ term in office, it should really come as any great surprise. But still… Now that George W Bush has retreated to Crawford to

Ann Althouse argues that Critics of “harsh interrogation techniques” — they, of course, call it torture — bolster their moral arguments with the pragmatic argument that it doesn’t even work. How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone! Responding to this, Publius reminds her that these “non-torture” techniques have killed people and Lindsay Beyerstein picks apart the Washington Post story that Althouse claims vindicates Dick Cheney.  All of which is all very well and good. I don’t doubt that torture – or whatever euphemism you want to give it – can work. But so what?

I really don’t know what to make of this. As politics it’s bizarre, as a kind of performance art it’s mesmerising. And popular. More people watch Glenn Beck than Mad Men. He reaches three million viewrs, which makes him Fox News’s biggest star. As Dave Weigel points out, he’s influential: Beck’s ramblings are helping drive the opposition – he might say resistance – to Obama’s healthcare reforms. It’s not just Obama of course. There’s an entire conspiracy determined to destroy the American republic. It’s made up of Obama, Left, International, Graft, ACORN-style organizations, Revolutionaries, Hidden Agendas. These words are not chosen by accident. Take the first letter of each word

Patty Murray, Herb Kohl, Johnny Isakson, Michael Enzi, Mike Crapo, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Carper, Daniel Inouy, Thad Cochrane, Blanche Lincoln… You need to be a pretty keen political junkie to know that each of these men and women are current members of the United States Senate. Nor have I cheated by including recent arrivals such as Roger Wicker who are still freshmen and, consequently, justifiably unknown to the rest of the country, never mind internationally. Still, its remarkable how many Senators make no impression whatsoever upon Washington. (Of course, one often has cause to regret the impression made by those that do insist upon making waves, news and bad legislation.

The loathsome Peter King is at it again. Speaking to Politico, he’s up in arms that some people think torturing prisoners is wrong. King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee’s family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday. “You’re talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him — but never doing it,” King said.  “You have that on the one hand — and on the other you

Well, sort of. If one only paid attention to what Hillary Clinton or (some of) the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing said, you might gain the false impression that his possible release (or transfer to a Libyan jail) was some kind of admission that he is in fact innocent. It’s important to remember that this is not the case. If – or possibly when – Abdebaset Ali al-Megrahi is released, it will be on the compassionate grounds that he is a dying man whose cancer is inoperable and terminal. It is not an act of clemency* pardon or commutation. Even so, one can see why such a