Yeah, this one made me proud.

Does a few months of sleep deprivation count as "torture"?

Does the fact that we kept an FBI informant imprisoned suggest that denying prisoners counsel, or any semblance of due process, just might inhibit our ability to assess those who really are, and are not, threats?

Is this what people want America to stand for?

Come on. Everyone knows that the Iraqis don't understand any other way--without a strong hand to guide them, how will they ever find their way to democracy?

And if a few Americans (or Brits or whatever) have their "rights" temporarily limited, well, they should have expected it for getting mixed up with those people over there. Really, what were they thinking, wokring with Iraqi gun traders?

(a) It does seem particularly stupid
(b) No.
(c) Yes.
(d) No. I would prefer we be more competent.

S_A_M

Bush Administration censors former official for having the wrong views.

If S_A_M's right that it's not torture, I think the people in the White House who did this should be deprived of sleep for a few months.

We argued for pages and pages about something. You kept defending Ellen Taucher's (and other conservative Democrats ) vote against CAFTA. You spent a lot of time writing about why CAFTA was bad and didn't really promote free trade. If you said CAFTA on balance, was a good thing, there would have been no argument.

You critisized the Governors proposition for redistricting. I kept trying to say that if it is flawed it is superior to the status quo, but you refused to accept that logic. If you had acknowledged that on balance, it was a good thing then there would have been no argument.


I supported both CAFTA and the governors proposition on redistricting. Did you not take positions different from that, and if you didn't what were we arguing about?

Under what definition does three months of sleep deprivation not constitute torture?

Would denying food and water be torture?

You really think intentionally depriving someone of sleep for extended periods of time is not torture?

You forget -- the same people who redefined "torture" to exclude anything done by the US military have redefined "treason" to include anything critical of the Bush Admin. Thus, they were preventing treason.

You don't support treason, do you Ty?

I think I actually just heard a chorus of angels.



NB: They used country music to deprive him of sleep. That has to be torture.

I think my bottom line on CAFTA was that I didn't know enough about the details. Note that this post here makes a different statement than the one above that I said I could agree with ("CAFTA made trade freer in the Caribbean and Latin America (and opponents to CAFTA were serving protectionists interests regardless of their claims to the contrary)").

If I recall correctly, I said that I had my own approach to redistricting that was even better, and I worried about the wisdom of California adopting that sort of redistricting without obtaining like concessions from (e.g.) Texas.

I see that while most of our politicians are settling into the warmth of the holidays, Our Man Newt is out on the trail doing his best to bring back the crazy.

• Gingrich cited last month's ejection of six Muslim scholars from a plane in Minneapolis for suspicious behavior, which included reports they prayed before the flight and had sat in the same seats as the Sept. 11 hijackers.
  
  "Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists," Gingrich said. "And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens."

...and if they float, they should be burned as witches.

I guess this is just my pre-9/11 mindset talking, but I think these dudes were assholes, but I think it might be more productive to focus on real terrorists than on pretend terrorists. On the other hand, how can you argue with logic like this?

• "If you give me any signal in the age of terrorism that you're a terrorist, I'd say the burden of proof was on you," Gingrich said.

Well okay then.

Having dark skin is a "signal", right?

I just want to know before I fly to the Carribean to lie in the sun.

I know of two separate art projects that have been called dangerous by various officials around here. (One reported here, the other was rejected for a group show called "have a seat" because it had a replica bomb in a backpack left on a chair. The artist is a Londoner who was in London at the time of the Underground bombings last year. She was told to expect a call from Homeland Security by the guy who rejected her submission to the show. Ours is a vigilant populace.

Just recently you told me that I was in error when I said you did not support CAFTA. That was when I said it was ripe that you would critisize Bush for his lack of committment to free trade when you didn't support CAFTA. So where do you stand? Did you support CAFTA? Or to really boil down the issue, if you were in Congress would you have voted for it?



Did you are did not not support the Governor's proposition?

(Of course I remember you had a version you thought was better but on planet earth your version was not an option. But that was irrelvent to the discussion. The question that everyone faces when they have a chance to vote on something is do they believe a vote of yes would improve the situation. If you waited for a perfect bills and propositions you would never vote for anything. Voting against something, even though you think it would improve the status quo, because it is not perfect is just plain stupid. In politics, when something is up for a vote you can either support it or not. These are not ethereal policy questions, we are talking about a bill that went before the American congress and a proposition that went before the California voters. The options are yes or no - it is really not that complicated)

Sometime silence is golden...
 

Is it just me, or sometimes shouldn't the government just shut the hell up. If we are happy with the elections in Iran shouldn't we just keep it to ourselves. How does it help the guys that won when the US says we support them?

Ahmadinejad 'thwarted' in Iranian elections: US

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks to have been thwarted from keeping his ultra-conservative allies in control of key offices despite efforts to "cook the books" in weekend elections, the State Department said.

The elections for municipal councils and a powerful religious assembly saw Ahmadinejad loyalists suffer setbacks at the hands of more moderate candidates in a number of key races, including for seats on the Tehran city council.



"It would seem that they are not the results that President Ahmadinejad would have hoped for," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said when asked to comment on the vote.

"I think, despite the regime's efforts to cook the books in terms of an outcome, they seem to have been thwarted in that regard," he said.

While noting the high voter turnout in Friday's election, McCormack said there had been "some fundamental flaws" in the polls, "in which there were numerous candidates that were excluded from even running."

"So the people didn't have that choice to make," he said.

The United States has declared Ahmadinejad's regime to be one of its principle international adversaries for its alleged plan to develop nuclear weapons and his frequent statements that Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Washington also accuses Tehran of supporting Islamic militants responsible for unrest in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

The voting for Iran's municipal councils and the Assembly of Experts -- the body which chooses the country's supreme leader -- was seen as the first popularity test for Ahmadinejad since he swept to power in 2005.

In one key race, centrist ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani overwhelmingly won a seat on the Assembly of Experts, thrashing a cleric seen as Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor.