Unqualified Offerings

Larison’s entry on the Jane Mayer book is word-perfect. To "pull a Paglia" for a minute, I’ll note that I said something similar way back in the early days of the blog:
The arguments for torture and military tribunals are that terrorists don’t deserve the protections afforded in ordinary criminal cases, because terrorists aren’t ordinary criminals. [...]

To the extent that I have any reputation at all, it’s as a warblogger. But I’ve given my patrons at Art of the Possible essentially no warblogging, which may be a bad bargain for them. So herewith, some warbloggging by me on AOTP, all about the unprecedented threat in Iraq from, er, rockets mounted on [...]

By Thoreau
It will never stop being jarring that Pulitzer-Prize-winning revelations from the New York Times that the President and the telecom industry were committing felonies for years culminated in the full-scale protection of the lawbreakers and retroactive legalization of the criminality by the “opposition party” which controls the Congress.
Don’t worry, I won’t use this post [...]

I wonder if the current dismay of libertarians and progressives with Obama’s betrayal on telecom immunity is a kind of Uncanny Valley phenomenon.
I wonder if the current dismay of libertarians and progressives with each other on the issue is too.

NB: I first learned about the Uncanny Valley from Bruce Baugh, now officially the best UO [...]

The last bullet on the Onion’s "Who Will Be Obama’s Running Mate?" list is pretty darn funny.

Is by Andrew Bacevich:
Whereas the earlier departures from the rule of law represented momentary if egregious lapses in democratic practice, the abuses orchestrated from within the Bush administration suggest that democracy itself is fast becoming something of a sham. From Mayer, we learn that in George W. Bush’s Washington, the decisions that matter are made [...]

For libertarians, this is the national-security-state election.
For liberals, this is the health-care election.

ADDENDUM: In the bullet points, I’m not saying liberals don’t care about the national-security state issues. The great thing about “The Netroots” is that they are the first vibrant antiwar and pro-civil liberties movement in either major party since the 1970s. (I say [...]

By Thoreau
I became a regular blogger here in early 2007, after the Democrats took control of Congress and devoted their full effort to servicing George Bush. Prior to that, my main blogospheric activity was as a commenter at Hit and Run. Over there, I’ve been known as fairly leftish. You can argue [...]