One hint might be the degree to which the CIA calls on the batphone from the black sites and asks Washington what they can do and what they can't during their verschärfte vernehmung. If they've done this before, you'd think they'd know what they can do and what they can't.

Do you think the USA is better than other countries? If so, is it because we torture less than they do? More? Torture only swarthy people who might want to blow us up? Or something else?

You could just wear a flag pin

And talk about ceding moral high ground -- the President keeps trying to have it both ways, saying publicly that we don't torture while presiding over legal efforts to make sure that we can. President Chinaski presumably would say, it's a brave new world, fellas, and if we have to string a few folks up and apply electrical currents to their genitals to make sure they're not going to bomb our shopping malls, that's what we're going to do, and if you don't like that you should move to Canada.

Surprise
 

Maybe all the Dems across the table from him can sit in a wide stance during the conference committees.

S_A_M

Surprise
 

BTW, say they hold ethics hearings. Isn't a vote of the entire senate needed to expel a member? Will any D's vote for expulsion?

Surprise
 

Will they tap their feet during the hearings?

S_A_M

what if the last tim e we were in a live war where we were really threatened was 1945? Or what if, in the past, they didn't need to call because they weren't worried about newspaper coverage?

I think we have tortured in the past. I think it is a very ugly world.

Every argument you make is exactly like arguments that were made to stop the CIA from working with "criminals." We should be better than that!

Surprise
 

There's always a few that will vote for anything.

I'd just as soon see all the dems just abstain, and let the Rs decide how much they care about this. I'm not sure this bullshit is really worth the Senate's time, even if it might make for good Oprah ratings.

Maybe they should just pair votes, so the Dems split down the middle leaving the decision to the Rs.

Surprise
 

I assume most if not all R's would vote to expel, but there's at most 49 votes there. So the D's could keep him in office if they wanted. Question is whether some of the D's would lose votes back home for voting to keep a miscreant in office.

You lean quite heavily on the prospect that bad shit's been done in the past in the name of advancing American interests. Neither you nor I really know how much this has occurred in the past, but I'm sure that it has in times of crisis.

To my mind, though, these incidents either occur outside of the government's official policy apparatus, or if they occur within it, history usually concludes that it was an unfortunate and ultimately unneccesary retreat in the battle for liberty.

I find your enthusiastic embrace of not only the choice to embrace the bad shit that you deem necessary, but also to enshrine it as part of governmental policy, baffling.

One angry, drunken, or perhaps insane elephant.
 

The logo for RNC, 2008!

http://www.gopconvention2008.com/med...tionlogo_2.gif

If this doesn't foretell a Giuliani nomination, I'm not sure what will.

Comparisons with more sedate elephants here.

Gattigap

One angry, drunken, or perhaps insane elephant.
 

I think it's a wide-stance elephant.