(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Via Sully, a Right Wing torture "expert" named Dean Barnett writes:

So what does the actual scholarship say?

The key to gathering information is to disorient the subject. If you disorient the subject enough, he lets go of his secrets. Discomfort is actually much more useful than pain.

What's the best way to get information?

Unquestionably water-boarding.

But Amnesty International and the left say the information gleaned from this technique is unreliable. Is it?

Amnesty International is either confused, dishonest or both. Some people do say it's unreliable. but the undeniable consensus is that water-boarding is an extremely productive interrogation tool.

Cites to actual experts would be nice. I know Barnett is a Red Sox fan, and gawd knows that must be torture, but that stll doesn't make him an expert.

by TChris

Some states elect judges. Other states try to remove politics from the process of judicial selection by appointing judges on the basis of merit. The federal experience shows that politics can play a decisive role in the appointment of judges, but some states use (supposedly) neutral selection panels to recommend judicial candidates, providing at least a minimal safeguard against blatantly political choices.

When judicial candidates must raise funds to campaign for election, the public wonders whether judicial decisons are influenced by campaign contributions. To avoid conflicts of interest, judges should recuse themselves from any case in which they accepted contributions from a party to the lawsuit. A NY Times investigation reveals that Ohio Supreme Court justices consistently decline to remove themselves from cases that involve campaign contributors. (A sidebar identifies similar judicial conflicts in Illinois and West Virginia.)

This has me laughing out loud. Newt Gingrich on Fox News Sunday, via Media Matters, which also has the video.

Discussing the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) with host Chris Wallace on the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Fox News political analyst and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that House Republicans would have "been accused of gay bashing" if they had "overly aggressively reacted" to Foley's allegedly inappropriate email communications with a 16-year-old male congressional page when House Republicans reportedly first learned of Foley's actions in late 2005.

.....Wallace then asked: "How would it have been gay bashing?" Gingrich replied: "Because it was a male-male relationship," adding that "there was no proof" that Foley was a "predatory person."

The issue isn't the male-male nature of the contacts, it's the age of his victims, his sexual harassment of them while they worked for him and the fact that Republicans left him in a leadership role on committees addressing sexual misconduct of youth after they knew about it.

Update: Another laugh out loud: Wonkette's "strip down and relax" post.

Via the Washington Post:

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.

"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell's resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

The source: Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, being published October 10 by Knopf.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Credit where due, Fox News anchor Shephard Smith does a great job on pointing out to Bill Kristol that the Emperor Bush Has No Clothes.

A Daily Kos diarist has the transcript :

Congressman Tom Tancredo's challenger Bill Winter has a diary over at Daily Kos today. He says he can win. He needs your support. Please, help him out. Here's a portion of his message today, aimed at Latino voters:

When white settlers came to what is now Colorado and Arizona and New Mexico and California, they found people already living there. Many of those people were dark skinned and Spanish speaking. Today even the names of many of these places are still in Spanish--Colorado, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles.

But now, in 2006 in America, people like Tom Tancredo say that Spanish is a danger to America, and those people, the ones who were here first, are somehow a threat to our culture and to our way of life. I believe in an America that is much stronger than this. I wish Tancredo believed in America the way I do!

The new Supreme Court term begins Monday.

The American Constitution Society has a preview of five of the upcoming cases written by leading legal experts.

This is the first full-term in which Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts will participate fully. Other sites with round-ups: ScotusBlog, which also has many of the case briefs available for download.

Newsweek has an exclusive 11 page excerpt of Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial, with the secondary headline,

It was Bush's decision. But Rumsfeld drove the dynamic on Iraq. How the SecDef blew it.

More from Newsweek: The White House is in full damage control over Woodward's book.

House Speaker Denny Hastert's staff knew in 2005 that Rep. Mark Foley had had inappropriate e-mail contact with young pages. They say they told the Speaker in the spring of 2006. Hastert defends his inaction by saying he didn't know the contact had sexual, as opposed to just over-friendly tones to it. Yet, it was serious enough for Foley to be warned about it. Saturday, Hastert moved for a criminal probe.

Hastert moved for a criminal probe because his hand was forced by publicity and by other Congressmen refusing to take the fall alone. Had Hastert become aware of the explicit nature (pdf) of the e-mails through the Congressional grapevine without the press finding out, do you really think he would have called for a probe a month before the November elections? Of course not. He would have sat on it and allowed the creep to be re-elected and maintain his committee leadership positions.

There's more that defies credulity regarding Hastert's knowledge. Why was he told in the spring of 2006 but not the fall of 2005? How could John Boehner, Tom Reynolds, Rodney Alexander, the Clerk of the House and others know but not Hastert? Why wasn't a criminal probe launched then? Why wasn't Foley pressured to resign in the Spring of 2006?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat

Mark Halperin, of ABC's The Note fame, actually seems to get it better than just about all Democrats, until he proves he is just as stupid, or cowardly:

[M]any . . . believe that the Republicans' strategy of fighting from the base has worn out its welcome. Therefore, this view holds, a campaign that appeals to moderates, one waged from the center, is the only way for the party to maintain control of the House and Senate. Interesting theory, but it probably won't work. If the Republicans want to keep their majorities in the midterm elections, their best chance is to stick with the old, base-driven Bush-Rove electoral strategy.

Why? In the eyes of the Bush team, America is a polarized country, one where there are fundamental divisions worth fighting over. A president -- and a party -- should not worry about slender margins of victory or legislative control. The goal is to accumulate just enough power to use the energies and passions of the base to effect ideological change in the nation's laws and institutions, even if -- sometimes especially if -- those changes might be at odds with majority public opinion.

Broder? You listening? Democrats, you listening? More stuff to listen to on the flip.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Here's another reason to take the rogue Dems to task. Look what they have wrought:

Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."

Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.

. . . Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.

Sad but true. And it hurts. Morally and politically.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

In a short note, Chris Bowers takes umbrage at the charge, apparently leveled at him, that he has been "mollified," which I took to mean, coopted:

I'm not "mollified" because the majority of Democrats are with us on pretty much every issue. I just don't think it is fair to argue that Democratic Party in general was in favor of torture, or any other piece of legislation where the majority of Democratic elected officials voted against it. I hate that lazy thinking that because some Democrats voted for something, somehow it is OK to say that Democrats in general were complicit with it. And I stand by that.

Well, I think it is ridiculous to argue Chris has been "mollified"/ coopted. But it is not ridiculous to argue that Chris' reaction to the Democratic performance on the atrocity known as the Detainee Bill was wrong. Of course he was not alone. At the Daily Kos community, calls to "calm down" were rampant on Thursday. And those calls were wrong too. I'll explain why I think so on the flip.