Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Salon.com has a nice discussion of sensory deprivation torture techniques, which are likely to replace waterboarding.  On the surface, sensory deprivation doesn’t sound as bad as torture techniques that, well, leave marks.  But the descriptions in the article should put an end to any such illusions.  In a nutshell, it causes insanity:
“The first thing [...]

Over at the Straight Dope boards they’ve turned The Oldest Game (from the Sandman graphic novels) into a real pastime.

The Paris Hilton prison diaries are funny, but not as funny as George W. Bush’s meditations on Camus’ The Stranger, which Julian Sanchez published last year.
Paris Hilton prison diaries via – Julian Sanchez.

Everyone declares that Turkey has not – not – launched an armed incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Agence-France Presse. AP and those lovable losers at DEBKAfile said the opposite, with the latter source claiming that 50,000 Turkish troops were already in Iraq as the spearhead of an invasion. Anywhere from zero to “about 600″ [...]

Eric Martin casts a skeptical eye on “the hapless – but well-intentioned” Mr. Nour al-Maliki. (Well-intentioned of course means “sincerely desiring to do what the US government would like him to do.) I think Eric is probably right. Look, weak leaders have been fending off strong foreign suzerains for a long time. Very few of [...]

By Mona
I did not think D.A. Ridgely ever waxed scatological, but that he hath done in a very entertaining post-GOP-debate dissection; excerpt with naughty, and daringly iconoclastic bits (no snark or irony intended!):

John McCain:
This copy of the Constitution was in your daddy’s pocket when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was [...]

By Mona
A Republican advocate of medical marijuana asks Generalissimo Herr Doktor Guiliania whether, since America’s Mayor is all choice, choice, choice on abortion, he favors it for cancer patients:

RUDY: No, I don’t think a cancer patient should use marijuana. There are other options.

(Via Dave Weigel)
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Yanno, I think both sides of the intractable [...]

By Thoreau
Breaking 211 years of media silence, George Washington has decided to criticize the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, according to the latest Onion:

“This entire military venture has been foolhardy and of ill design,” said Washington, dressed in his customary breeches and frilly cravat. “The manifold mistakes committed by this president in Iraq carry grave [...]

By Thoreau
The most chilling part of last night’s debate was, of course, when 10 of the 11 candidates fell all over themselves to assert that they aren’t afraid to pre-emptively nuke Persians.  But the most inspiring moment was when Ron Paul labeled our embrace of pre-emptive war as the biggest moral crisis of our time.  [...]