So when do we get to start torturing this guy:
The man charged with murdering a high-profile abortion doctor claimed from his jail cell Sunday that similar violence was planned around the nation for as long as the procedure remained legal, a threat that comes days after a federal investigation launched into his possible accomplices.
A Justice Department spokesman said the threat was being taken seriously and additional protection had been ordered for abortion clinics last week. But a leader of the anti-abortion movement derided the accused shooter as “a fruit and a lunatic.”
Scott Roeder called The Associated Press from the Sedgwick County jail, where he’s being held on charges of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller one week ago.
“I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal,” Roeder said. When asked by the AP what he meant and if he was referring to another shooting, he refused to elaborate further.
Since there is no doubt that we have a history of anti-abortion domestic terrorism, and since we know that evangelicals already support torture for everyone, when do we get to start waterboarding this guy? Does he have any children whose testicles can be crushed? Will we keep him up for weeks on end in stress positions in extremely cold rooms to get him to break? Beat him? All the right made a very good show of how shocked and appalled they were when this man killed Dr. Tiller, so surely they will not object. So when do we get to start torturing this guy?
And of course, the answer should be “NEVER.” Torture is wrong. Torture is immoral. Torture is evil. Torture is illegal. Torture does more violence to our values than it does to the individual being tortured. Torture is unreliable. Torture is counter-productive- everything someone says after being tortured should be treated as suspect.
Just do your job and investigate. No need to become as bad as the criminal.
*** Update ***
Great minds and all that.
*** Update #2 ***
There are no original ideas on the internet. The previous update was to Jeff Fecke, who had the same idea and beat me to it by a couple hours. Now here is Booman, who had the same idea a day earlier.
Sigh.
taodon
We have already established precedent using torture on terrorist subjects, and it would be unAmerican to not keep our time-honored traditions. Apple pie, baseball, and waterboarding: the American dream is still alive today.
chrome agnomen
it would be irresponsible not to.
clone12
I vote we make this a standard disclaimer before every episode of “24”
Wag
Would Jesus torture him?
Michael D.
Even the right wouldn’t agree that this guy should be tortured because, in the minds of the type of right winger who would support torture, what THIS guy did was justified.
Why would they want to torture someone they believe did the right thing?
JR
Listening to this guy complain about the deplorable conditions in his county jail cell, you’d think he’d spent half a decade at Guantanamo. Woe.
bago
The fact that I read these words makes me die a little inside. Nothing personal. Time does that too.
Rey
He won’t be tortured because abortion is bad or something.
kid bitzer
everything someone says after being tortured, we gotta treat like a suspect?
you mean, we gotta torture that, too?
cleek
and that puts to rest any argument about whether or not this is actually terrorism (instead of the act of one crazy guy who just happened to hate Dr Tiller).
Michael
I vote we waterboard Randall Terry, Alan Keyes and Newt Gingrich on this.
Bill E Pilgrim
Funny how devoted they all are to “just let this be handled as a legal matter” in this case. Which is as it should be. But they’re usually so into declaring “war on” things. I guess “The War on Christianist Extremism” didn’t sound so good to them this time.
Lola
@clone12:
Keifer Sutherland was at Obama’s Hollywood fundraiser. Go figure.
EconWatcher
Has torture always been celebrated in movies, or is that a new cultural development, thanks to the propaganda of the last admin? I sat through a truly awful on-demand movie over the weekend (Taken with Liam Neeson), which includes a nasty torture scene. Interestingly, Neeson begins torturing because of a “ticking time bomb” scenario, but after it becomes clear that no more info will be forthcoming, he carries on out of sadism and vengeance. The victim is a dirtbag and the whole thing is painted as heroic.
Admittedly, I don’t expect lousy movies to offer a clear moral compass (a plausible plot would have been nice). But the casualness of the depiction took me aback–as if it were just another action scene. Is this new?
Bill E Pilgrim
@kid bitzer:
Using
torturedintensely interrogated language is one of the specialities of the WNo’Sphere.Cat Lady
A middle aged white man will never be tortured in this country.
gbear
He was already complaining about how cold his cell was when he called the AP. Poor fragile thing.
Cris
[email protected]: Kiefer Sutherland is an actor, not a writer. Just because he portrays Jack Bauer doesn’t mean he thinks like Jack Bauer.
I do realize he’s credited as an executive producer of 24, so he does bear some responsibility for the show’s message. But in general, I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about an actor’s politics based on their roles.
By the way, I’ve never watched 24, so I have no idea whether it really glorifies torture. I know the authoritarians get a hard-on over the famous ticking-bomb scenario, but these people also have a long history of cherry-picking messages out of film (exhibit a: “best conservative movies of the last 25 years”).
SGEW
Torture has virtually[1] always been portrayed as a weapon of the enemy in American cinema; a tool of dictators, tyrants, and psychopaths. This was especially true during and immediately after World War II, when depictions of torture were explicitly used to highlight the stark difference between us (the “good guys”), who bravely endured it, and them (the Axis powers and the “bad guys”), who cackled maniacally while operating the rack. There are countless examples, and this has been often commented on (tho’ I can’t find the links right now – I know Sully’s written about this). The contrast between the anti-torture sentiment overwhelmingly prevalent in 20th century films and the prevalence of “torture porn” (e.g., Saw, Hostel, etc.) and utilitarian avenger protagonists (“24,” Taken, etc.) we see now is clear.
As to whether the torture policies of the Bush administration were a cause, an effect, or were part of some sadistic cultural feedback loop is a trickier question. I’ve yet to come to a satisfactory view on the matter of our culture’s newfound[2] appreciation of torture.
Also, re Lola: Maybe his dad made him go.
[1] With very notable exceptions, naturally. We can all recall instances where the “loose cannon” doesn’t go “by the book” and uses violence and brutality to get results. Think Dirty Harry. Or the new Batman movie, for that matter.
[2] Or, maybe, not so much newfound as resurgent. Torturing slaves or Native Americans or foreign revolutionaries or spouses with no rights has long been a favored pastime of many Americans.
hank
What, no credit to Jeff Fecke for this meme, who posted it first, where it got linked on memeorandum, where you saw it before promptly copying it?
cleek
i stopped watching after the third season. but in those seasons, torture is effective and common. the only people who hesitate to torture are weaklings. Jack Bauer will torture a guy in a heartbeat because he is a strong decisive tough guy who knows what’s at stake. he also ends up on the receiving end of torture because his enemies are sadistic and cruel. torture is (or at least was) just another situation a man like Jack Bauer can run into, multiple times a day, because he is a tough man doing dangerous things for the right reasons.
it’s best if you don’t think too hard while watching 24.
NonyNony
I’m actually now waiting for the season of 24 where Jack Bauer has to stop a Christian terrorist group from blowing up abortion clinics.
Frankly, if they had the balls to do a season of that, it might just launch 24 into TV legend status, rather than the “flavor-of-the-moment” status it enjoys now. Flavor-of-the-moment makes good money, but they talk about TV legends for decades after the show has wrapped.
Bill E Pilgrim
@SGEW:
I don’t think those are notable exceptions at all, I think it’s standard cop show/movie fare for decades. The “cop-gone-rogue and being put on leave by his superior for excessive force, torture, you name it” is one of the most common boilerplate scenes in movies and television in the US. And the cop’s the hero, in those scenarios, for the most part.
Then the librul judge throws the case out, and not even because of the torture, amazingly enough, but because some paperwork wasn’t filed on time.
It’s so common that the average person thinks that this is how it works, that those damn Miranda laws and etc have justice with one hand tied, when people who actually work in the field will tell you it’s entirely the opposite.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Cat Lady:
We generally do it to ourselves when we read Malkin, NRO or Red State.
SGEW
@Bill E Pilgrim: You’re right, of course, but I suppose I was thinking of 20th cent films in total: the cop-gone-rogue meme only really developed in the last quarter or so and was usually B movie stuff (even within the “thriller” genre): mostly rip-offs of Dirty Harry (a film that was quite controversial at the time). And the depiction of torture itself by a protagonist was confined to restricted audience films (I believe), and never portrayed on television.
I’ve often thought that the rise of the acceptance of torture was presaged in the “tough guy” movies from the early 70’s carried over into the “murderous psychopath as hero” genre in the 80’s (Death Wish, Segal, etc.). Torture and murder as the ultimate antithesis of “liberal” thinking, as you point out. And now we see the logical consequences.
Bill E Pilgrim
@SGEW:
Really? I thought it was every mainstream Mel Gibson movie and onward, including lots of TV shows. It’s true that the rogue cop is not always engaging in outright torture, I’ll hand you that. Though actually, did you see “Taken”, just recently? The torturer was definitely not the scary foreign one (despite the fact that the actor is Irish), and clearly torture was okay as long as the ones being tortured were dark and swarthy enough. They didn’t even make them Russian because that would risk torturing someone blond.
I always find Hollywood to be the biggest pusher of right wing themes around, which is why I’m always amazed at the “liberal” reputation it has. Sure there are lots of those, but man oh man there are plenty of the opposite also.
As far as it being a recent development, well, I guess that’s part of it. And that’s just in keeping with the sliding of everything to the right in general. But that’s what we’re up against, of course, being residents of this time.
Jim Kakalios
What about freezing the assets of institutions that provide support for these activities, to which Roeder has known connections? (cough* Operation Rescue*cough).
SGEW
@Bill E Pilgrim: Interestingly, Mel Gibson films in particular are an important data point in this. In his strange career, Mel Gibson is consistently (and quite frequently!) the tortured victim and never, ever the torturer (see, e.g., Lethal Weapon or Braveheart or even The Road Warrior). One cinema critique called his filmography “martyr movies” (culminating in The Passion, natch. Fun film trivia tidbit! It was Mr. Gibson’s own hand that was used for the special effects insert shot of the nail being driven into Christ’s palm. True!).
As to Taken, it was my example of the current appreciation for torture in cinema: I believe that it would have been shockingly controversial in, say, 1940 or 1960 or even 1980. Nowadays it hardly raises eyebrows.
Bill E Pilgrim
@SGEW:
Good point.
I do remember Gibson being painted as the one who had tortured, basically, native Americans, in The Patriot, though at least they pretended that they saw it as something shameful, rather than as what it clearly was, a way to make him the “crazy guy you don’t wanna get mad at you” which they love.
The Grand Panjandrum
Ruh roh, Sullivan linked to this post. I wonder how much fun this thread is going to be now?
Unka Willbur
Not criticizing, mind you, but to me that should more accurately read “Torture does more violence to our souls than it does to the individual being tortured. “
Emma Anne
@EconWatcher:
Torture was generally used against the good guys, who demonstrated an inhuman ability to withstand it. C.f. Princess Leia in Star Wars. If the good guys ever used torture, it was a slap or two (or even just looming threateningly), after which the bad guy broke and told everything, all of it the truth. So not *as* toxic, but still misleading and torture porn in a minor key.
I didn’t really mind this sort of thing (though I always knew it was bullshit) until the U.S. decided to torture people.
South of I-10
I want to know why this guy is being allowed to issue threats in an attempt to intimidate other abortion providers from jail.
John Cole
Hunh? I was emailed this story yesterday in the AP (I think it was that one, it was from the AP but it might have been an earlier version), forgot to write about it, and then was reminded this morning when I was scanning the WaPo. If anything, I should credit the emailer, but I can’t because I despammed and cleaned out my google account last night.
I will more than happily link Fecke if he came to the same conclusion I did, but I got one thing to say to people who accuse me of plagiarism. I’m in a good mood today, so I won’t say it.
Stephen1947
“a leader of the anti-abortion movement derided the accused shooter as ‘a fruit and a lunatic.'”
Back when I was growing up in Colorado (I would be just 3-4 years younger than the “Brokeback Mountain” protagonists), ‘fruit’ was one of the many names flung at gay men. So is this anti-choice leader being a homophobe or just shortening “fruitcake'”? Of course “both” is a reliable answer
slag
Let’s tape his eyes open and make him watch cable teevee. If he has any sensibility left, he’ll be singing like a canary by Pat Buchanan’s 3rd appearance.
GregB
Funny too that none of the usual suspects have taken to the airwaves to extol the virtues of racial profiling.
-G
geg6
Actually, I think I may have brought up the torture thing right here on BJ, way back on the very day of the murder. So, by hank’s logic, both you and Fecke have plagiarized me. ;)
SGEW
Disappointed fan of John Cole’s expletives is disappointed.
gex
@Cat Lady: Exactly. Compare and contrast Jose Padilla and John Walker Lindh. Both citizens, but the brown one got the Gitmo treatment.
Jay in Oregon
But a leader of the anti-abortion movement derided the accused shooter as “a fruit and a lunatic.”
And again, I am reminded of this blog post by Fred Clark:
Jay in Oregon
@GregB:
Silly person, everyone knows that “white” isn’t a race, it’s the default state.
Therefore, when wingnuts talk about “racial profiling” they mean “non-white profiling”.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@gbear:
Next he’ll be complaining that his lemon chicken is too dry.
ThatPirateGuy
Buffy tortured vampires. In retrospect it makes one feel a bit uncomfortable.
Phinehas1
Thank God He removed George Tiller…Where are all the churches that say they are against baby killing?….They are quick to turn away from Scott Roeder, just the way they turned away from Paul Hill.
I really wonder if any churches in the US are against abortion….I think it just makes them feel good to put all the little crosses in front of the church….But when God answers their prayer, then they are ashamed to acknowledge it….What a pity.
Tsulagi
Exactly, he’s already conducted terrorism on American soil and admits to having inside knowledge of additional ops. The ticking sound from all those time bombs is deafening.
Time to implement preventive detention; pick up Randall Terry and Dobson. After a little judicious enhanced interrogation, anyone doubt they’d confirm this terrorist’s statement and what we suspect to be true, that Terry and Dobson are harboring terrorists? I think not.
Fucker, just when the fun could start you bring the rain.
scarshapedstar
How does this person know that he’s gay? Are they romantically involved? Clearly we’re gonna need to bust out more than one waterboard to get to the bottom of this.
YellowJournalism
@tripletee (formerly tBone):
Reminds me of one of the better scenes of a mediocre sequel:
Elie
Roeder’s complaint about conditions in the jail highlight his narcissism. He is entitled in his mind to congratulations for a job well done and only the best accomodations as thanks…
I really wish that we could jail Terry and others right along with him in his jail cell — let them look at each other and pat each other on the back for the job well done.
These people test my humanity —
Anton Sirius
@EconWatcher:
In the past, it was almost always the hero getting tortured by the villains — Dustin Hoffman in the Marathon Man, Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon etc. etc.
kay
It isn’t about the identity of the suspect, it’s about the identity of the victim.
Tiller doesn’t deserve any legal protections, because he isn’t “innocent”, and anti-abortion extremists unilaterally determine guilt and innocence.
Tiller isn’t “worthy” of legal protections. He has no rights. Rights are granted to the “worthy”, and Tiller just doesn’t measure up.
They regularly trespassed and damaged Tiller’s property, and no one in the mainstream pro-life community said a word. The week prior they glued the locks. They made it clear that George Tiller had no rights, and deserved none of the legal protections and civil society norms that they themselves enjoy.
Not property rights, not a “right to life” not nuth’in. They determined Tiller’s guilt and that was really all she wrote. He was on his own.
Still, I’m pleased Tiller’s murderer is getting proper process, and the opportunity to contact the Associated Press and whine about how he has a cough.
DCX2
Regarding the ticking time bomb scenario, if it was a nuke in my city and my family was going to die, sure, I’d torture him. And then I’d immediately submit myself to the rule of law and serve my time with pride, knowing I saved lives and hoping my sentence would be mitigated. Forcing accountability even on those who do it for a good cause is the only way to ensure that torture is only used in the most rare of circumstances.
Elie
DCX2 –
Your point is so wrong on so many levels…
Lets just say that you do your “good deed” and line up to serve your time “with pride”. Suppose one of the prison guards just wants to make sure that you “learned your lesson” from his value system. He tortures you to wring out a confession that you made a mistake in torturing the other guy. He makes a mistake during the torture and kills you accidentally.
BTW, what if you “accidentally” kill the guy you torture to get information from to “save the world”? What then?
Alan Vanneman
Can we drop the Pam Anderson ads?
Martin Longman
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/6/7/151543/1624
Beat you to it.
KRK
Last week The Rude Pundit posted an email from a reader who used to volunteer at Dr. Tiller’s clinic, highlighting some very pointed questions about who has been financing Roeder all these years. Hopefully that’s something the federal investigators are thinking about, too.
Wile E. Quixote
@DCX2
This is one of the dumber things I’ve ever heard, of course that hasn’t stopped a lot of people from saying it. Here let’s flip the coin. You’ve parachuted behind enemy lines, infiltrated Al-Qaeda headquarters and planted a nuclear bomb that will kill every one of them. On your way back to your LZ you’re captured by Al-Qaeda, who begin to torture you to find out why you were in their headquarters. Do you
a) squeal like a punk-ass bitch and tell them everything, including the location of the bomb and the procedures for disarming it
b) make a bunch of shit up and give them as many false leads as you can knowing that soon the bomb will go off and your mission will be accomplished
See, I’m betting that most sufficiently dedicated terrorists would choose option ‘b’. So what exactly did your torture accomplish? Oh, and when the fuck in history has there ever been a documented instance of one of these fucking stupid “ticking time-bomb” scenarios? C’mon, can someone give me just one example? Bueller? Bueller?
Doug Newkirk
Hilzoy and Balkin took the idea a bit further last week, with customary insight and rigor
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_06/018454.php
Jeff Fecke
Don’t worry, John. I’m sure someone beat Booman by another day or two. :P
It is funny how torture is still torture when it’s a white Christian, isn’t it?
The Moar You Know
@DCX2: Yes, and then they can be heroes for having saved everyone from the horror of ticking time bombs with YOUR 100% ACCURATE NO-FAIL OBTAINED BY TORTURE INFORMATION and you will get blowjobs from cheerleaders every day of your life and sleep in a gold-plated bed covered in American flags and have your face put on the $100 bill and have a mile-high sculpture dedicated to your balls, which will be somewhat disappointing as you will think that the sculpture should be TWO MILES HIGH TO PROPERLY REPLICATE YOUR AMERICAN TESTICULAR AWESOMENESS.
Fuck you, apologist.
kay
@KRK:
I don’t know, KRK, about who is feeding whom “to the sharks”.
The suspect has only been in the local lock-up for a week and he’s freely making statements about a continuing conspiracy, and that has implications for any investigation.
I assume he’s mentally ill, so I understand his statements are subject to questions about credibility. Still, I don’t know that anti-abortion extremists have him under control. He sounds to me like he’s more than ready to throw some of his fellow lunatics to the sharks.
Mayken
@cleek: Only in the Real World, cleek. In Wing Bizarro World it is just more proof that the “lone crazy” is even more alone and crazy.
I find it interesting that they are all quick to call the gunman in Arkansas who killed the Army recruiter a terrorist but this guy, not so much. I know, I know, the Arkansas crazy is brown, has a funny name and is Muslim so he is, by definition, a terrorist. While Tiller’s assassin is white, has an “American” name and is Christian so can only be crazy and acting on his own.
Silly me.
redbeardjim
@SGEW:
Although note that in that case, the result of the torture was that the torturers ended up acting on incorrect information.
TenguPhule
So simple, yet people still don’t get it.
Also, it’s past time Operation ‘Rescue’ was rounded up by the FBI for being a terrorist cult.
AhabTRuler
Nope, better than that. The torturers fulfilled the plan by torturing the suspect, thus being hoist by their own petard.
KRK
@kay: I assume that the “feed him to the sharks” remark is more about Roeder’s expectations. If, as the writer says, Roeder was pleading for bail to be set despite having absolutely no personal resources with which he could post bail, he seems to have some expectation that others are going to be going to bat for him. It’s a little early yet for him to realize that he’s been completely cut loose and therefore angry/disillusioned enough to name names.
Alan
I hate to be the oddball, but personally, I disagree with the premise of this post — I think it is imperative that we ship Roeder to Gitmo and begin using “enhanced interrogation” techniques on him immediately … because this is the only way we will ever get the right wing to acknowledge that such techniques are illegal torture. Most Americans (and nearly all Republicans) don’t give a damn about torture so long as it is only performed on dusky foreigners. If we torture a white-skinned, Christian American, the Republicans will get on board with anti-torture laws so fast we’ll all get whiplash from watching them switch sides.
David
I’m not sure torturing him is enough. I think we need to round up everyone he’s been associated with in the past year: store clerks, family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, church members, and anyone who posted on the same message boards he posted on. They need to all be rounded up, taken to Bagram, interrogated using enhanced techniques, and detained indefinitely.
Rick
Actually, what should really be done is to round up all the people this guy has had contact with, declare them enemy combatants, ship them to Gitmo and try to extract the details of the already admitted terrorist plot. You never know who’s in a terrorist cell until you waterboard the lot of them.
kay
@KRK:
I get that part. I think of him as being in this insane bubble, where they kept telling him he had this moral duty to act, and he was so immersed in that hyper-hysterical reality, he probably (rationally) expected them to line up and post bail, or at least defend his claim of “justifiable homicide”.
But, he acted, and now it’s gone really, really quiet, and he’s in the county jail, and they aren’t coming to get him.
They played him, that’s true.
But, now, it looks to me like he’s playing them.
Mayken
@Alan: I think it is unrealistic to think that doing any of that would change the wingers’ minds, even if we get past the evil of doing it to their side to try to prove a point. The wingers are perfectly capable of believe two contradictory things before breakfast. Logic doesn’t work in Bizzaro World.
dday
I actually wrote this idea last Thursday. And I was riffing off of Jack Balkin, who had it two days earlier. No new ideas on the Internet, indeed. Sigh.
KRK
@kay:
I don’t think we’re disagreeing about this. I just think he’s earlier in the timeline than you’re talking about. At this point it seems to me that Roeder is still doing and saying what he thinks his friends expect and want from him — e.g., proclaiming “this will continue so long as there are any abortions” — even if he’s not entirely sure what’s happening on their end. The fact that he’s inadvertently hurting them by keeping himself in the news and making references to concerted action is just his lack of savvy, not a turning on his handlers. He won’t be playing them unless and until he figures out that he really is on his own and he can help himself (and punish his betrayers) by talking.
Wile E. Quixote
@DCX2
The other incredibly fucking stupid thing about this statement is that it’s obvious to me that you’ve never been in pain. Seriously, you’ve never been in pain. I’m not talking about “damn, I hit my thumb with a hammer” no, I’m talking about the kind of pain that is so bad that you can barely stay conscious in the face of it. I have been in that kind of pain, with my left leg crushed and broken in four places below the knee and I have to tell you that when you’re in that kind of pain you will say anything to make it stop. Anything, but just because you’ll say anything doesn’t mean it’s the truth. There were times when I was in the hospital after my motorcycle accident where if the nurses had said “Nope, no pain meds for you until you confess to killing JFK” I would have signed a confession right then and there, who cares that I wasn’t born until 1965, just please make the pain stop!
Anyone who thinks that torture is anything but torture, even under the ridiculous hypothetical situations that DCX2 and other wankers of his ilk are constantly ejaculating about, is completely and totally fucking retarded and should be sterilized by being repeatedly kicked in the groin.
Just in case any of the torture apologists such as DCX2 have forgotten, or as is probably more likely never read the book, this is what torture is all about.
If you want to hurt and maim people then say it. Have the balls to stand up and say “I want to hurt and maim people”, don’t make up bullshit scenarios about “ticking time bombs” and other nonsense. Admit that these people anger you and that you want power over them. Admit that you want to make these people suffer, that you want to inflict pain and humiliation on them for no other reason than doing so will make you happy. But don’t pretend that what you’re doing has any value, cease with the ridiculous hypotheticals, stop talking about rough men standing ready in the night. Just cop to the fact that you’re a sick, sadistic sack of shit and that hurting people brings you great joy, that the object of torture is torture and nothing more.
Nada Lemming
It’s a clear ticking time bomb scenario (10+ / 0-)
Recommended by:
sharman, mrblifil, txbirdman, luvmovies2000, Yamara, Lashe, The Hindsight Times, JVolvo, Uberbah, happymisanthropy
I wonder if Rush, Hannity and Cheney would support waterboarding this guy to get him to name his co-conspirators?
“[Y]ou give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.” -Jesse Ventura
by Nada Lemming on Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 10:06:15 AM CDT
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Nada Lemming
The above is from DKos on June 5. What did I win?
Wile E. Quixote
Damn WordPress and its inability to handle blockquotes and links. I want to torture their programmers until they clean up the crap Katamari that is WordPress and get it right. And then once they did I’d immediately submit myself to the rule of law and serve my time with pride, knowing that my fellow Balloon Juice commenters no longer had to worry about the formatting of their posts being fucked up by WordPress and hoping my sentence would be mitigated. Forcing accountability even on those who do it for a good cause, like making sure that blockquotes and links work properly, is the only way to ensure that torture is only used in the most rare of circumstances.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mayken
I have to agree. These guys are doubleplusgood doublethinkers.
kay
@KRK:
We’ll see, right?
I’m not that worried about him turning on his co-conspirators, or how that might help the state’s case. I believe Eric Holder is a law ‘n order career prosecutor and will pursue this vigorously, as he would pursue any other act of terrorism.
I think there’s reason to believe Holder is a law ‘n order “equal under the law” prosecutor, because he has acted to rectify injustice on two separate issues in the Steven’s corruption case, where the state bungled nearly everything, so we have a record of his approach. No small thing, a prosecutor admitting a huge screw up. He did that. Twice.
I’m not singing Holder’s praises, this is the base-level we should expect, but I do think he’s at least minimally competent and ethical, unlike the last crew.
mike
No, I think we ought to crack his skull open and suck out his brains……..oh wait, that’s wahat we do to babies in Amerika!
ThresherK
“Richard Dreyfuss is a cop who’s never argued with his captain, never been suspended, and has never fired his weapon while on duty, in ‘By the Book'”.
Wile E. Quixote
@mike
Yes, and judging by the fact that those babies don’t grow up to commit terrorist acts it must work! Support legal abortion, remember, today’s fetuses are tomorrow’s terrorists!
TenguPhule
And then they grow up to be Republicans.
AhabTRuler
How many meters?
hank
“but I got one thing to say to people who accuse me of plagiarism. I’m in a good mood today, so I won’t say it.”
Does it relate to coming up with identical post titles?
asiangrrlMN
@Mayken: I totally agree with Mayken. There is a certain mindset that allows for two completely divergent ideas to coexist simultaneously. I am afraid that many torture apologists have that kind of mentality.
@kay:
This is mostly right as well. While I do believe that it’ll be a cold day in Hades before a middle-aged white man will be tortured by the apologists, I also think there reticent in this case has more to do with the fact that Dr. Tiller provided abortions, and so, he’s reprehensible in their minds.
hank, oh, good grief. It’s not like the title is original or anything like that (sorry, John). Bloggers can have the same idea at the same time without plagiarizing. Give it a rest.
John Cole
@hank: Imagine that- two people talking about the ridiculous ticking time bomb scenario use the phrase “ticking time bomb” in the title. Craziness. Was I plagiarizing when I mocked ticking time bomb scenarios on 18 April? Or on 16 December? Or march of last year?
Or were all of these people plagiarizing?
Seriously, blow it out your ass.
John Cole
Also, you might want to look up identical- because our titles are similar, not identical.
Jackson
If journalists today were transported back in time to the 1940s, they would condemn American soldiers for killing the Germans. Yes, nothing justifies death! Not killing innocent Jews, or innocent babies!
Thomas Beck
I don’t want to torture Roeder for information…
kay
@asiangrrlMN:
Well, they said as much, right? The mainstream GOP pundits, even. They essentially said the identity of a crime victim matters, as far as regret on his murder.
They could barely choke out a “sorry” that this guy had just been gunned down, and they all had to add a qualifier, that he was a horrible abortionist (anyway).
The shooter outside the recruiting station was charged with 13 counts of “terroristic actions”. Do you know why? Because there were 13 people in the recruiting station who could have been hit.
How many people were in that church? GOP pundits, who scream in terror every time OBL makes a stupid tape, didn’t even MENTION the people in that church, who were, let’s face it, terrorized.
George Arndt
Apparently water boarding, rendition and holding people without trial is only for Muslim terrorists. Did they torture McVeigh to get information?(he quite a few people) The members of the Weather Underground from the 60’s were never tortured. There may be an element of bigotry here.
After all, has one non-Muslim terrorists been tortured or held without charges by the US?
Phoebe
Screw Kiefer Sutherland, and any and all “he’s just an actor” rationalizations. No, he doesn’t really torture people; he just glamorizes and legitimizes it. Not OK.
zett
@Wile E. Quixote:
This, in my opinion, is the last word on torture.
It’s all just about wanting to make “camel jockeys” and “sand niggers” suffer. As long as that happens, it is enough.
Sick fucks, indeed.
Tonal Crow
BTW, this thread has been picked up as “most blogged” by Yahoo; the forwarding link is http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/SIG=11cti6070/**http%3A//www.balloon-juice.com/%3Fp=22277 . It’s referenced under a story about California selling San Quentin prison. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_re_us/us_selling_san_quentin .
Barry S. I Mean O! Yes O!
This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard come out of the Marxist, I mean Leftist camp. Look at the devil herself, Nancy “Deer in the Headlights” Pelosi admonishing the use of torture. Yet here we have a piece written by some left wing blogobot calling for torture on an American for shooting somebody? In case you Cranial rectal left wingers haven’t been paying attention, murder happens every day in this country. Abortion happens every day in this country. Shootings always occur, so it was just a matter of time before an abortion doctor got his. You all act like this guy is on a moral plane with Idi Amin. Shame on you and it’s time for you all to be slapped back to reality because you all are a disgrace after reading this horrible post. I doubt Huffington would even carry this blog because it’s too far gone and over the edge. May God have mercy on your souls and quit drinking the fluoridated water because it’s killing your ability to use judgement.
TenguPhule
I forsee a long talk with the FBI in your future, friend.
P.S. You’ve been rickrolled sucka!
Tonal Crow
@Barry S. I Mean O! Yes O!: In other words, you have no argument, only insults.
She
The truth is that more murder and torture has been done in the name of the Christian church than any war or dictatorship in recorded history- These bible thumpers are so quick to point the finger and think they have “God” on their side to justify their actions- Shame on them and the history of such a violent religion.
If they do beleive in a truly merciful God then “the devil made ’em do it!’ LOL
Barry S. I Mean O! Yes O!
What’s there to argue? One guy killed another and the “people” on the left want to torture him? It’s only a sicko that would try to find an argument with that. I think they do that kind of stuff in other countries – torture criminals and not terrorists! Is there a shortage of people skilled enough to kill the unborn? Do we have to go to extreme measures to ensure the public that a killer of the unborn must be avenged thru torture? Read the Bill of Rights if you feel the need to argue anything. Last time I checked, the Bill of Rights were drawn for the citizens of this country and not for foreign fighters outside of it. That’s just public knowledge, Dude!
Yutsano
–
I could pick this apart point by point, but to do so would validate the troll’s existence and I fell into that trap on another blog thread. So I’m just gonna declare EPIC FAIL and move on.
scarshapedstar
More like epic spoof, I hope.
Batocchio
Jack Balkin wrote a pretty definitive piece on this angle, too, applying every Bush Doctrine due process-denying argument to this situation.
Novista
Sidney Lumet’s “Strip Search” (with Maggie Gyllenhall touches on this subject in an interesting parallel way of contrasts.
Juliana Leblanc
Too many people speaking without knowledge about Kiefer makes me wonder if they don’t do the same about anything else the choose to offer an uneducated opinion about. From reading most of the comments here – it would be appear they do!
Kiefer Sutherland is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, the former Saskatchewan premier who is considered the father of the country’s health care system. A system that the woefully unlearned within the US refer to as “socialized healthcare”.
Not so. It’s a single payer system! In Canada (and many other countries with universal care), doctors run their own private practices, just like they do in the US. The only difference is that every doctor deals with one insurer, instead of 150. And that insurer is the provincial government, ( backed by the mandate and direction of the Federal Gov’t) which is accountable to the legislature and the voters if the quality of coverage is allowed to slide. Canadians pick their own doctors, just like Americans do. Since it all pays the same, poor Canadians have exactly the same access to the country’s top specialists that rich ones. The many myths about long waiting lines, poor quality healthcare, yada yada are laughable, and while there are some problems, by and large most of the problems are highly exaggerated by politicians in the US mostly. There are problems. YES. But not nearly to the extent the US media portrays.
The percentage of Canadians who’d consider giving up their beloved system consistently languishes in the single digits., though, grousing about health care is still unofficially Canada’s third national sport after curling and hockey.
As for Kiefer he has always been a Democrat who embraces the most liberal of Democrat ideology, does support a single payer system in the US identical to the Canadian system created by his granddad and has gone on record ( See Charlie Rose) as denouncing torture, providing the usual spin as to why its the corner stone of Jack Bauer’s belief that when the clock is ticking—the means justifies the end.
Ok….I’ll admit — I m being a bit snarky calling it ‘spin”
In fairness to Kiefer – especially since I’ve met him and worked with actors for years while in Hollywood – I have to agree that the actor is not the character he plays. And not all characters are aligned with ones personal political or spiritual or moral beliefs and lifestyle and as such Kiefer should not be faulted for playing the role of Jack Bauer – a role which he clearly was born to play.
Kiefer isn’t Bauer and more than Michael C. Hall is Dexter.
And Republicans do not support torture of American Citizens. But Democrats have decided that “NSA surveillance” of Americans in American is illegal and unAmerican. Yet had we maintained Surveillance on this asshat, he may not have been able to pull of the shit he did at the Holocaust Museum. I m mean its NOT like the Southern Poverty ( Democrats are great republicans are evil ) Center wasn’t tracking him..they were. They read his books, his website, knew of him in great detail. And a cursory review of his life and his book, and words spoken by him, make it clear that Roeder HATED Christians as much as Jew, had both FOX and Weekly Standard on his hit list, and embraced the works of liberal “god” Choamsky, as well as the work of a LONG LIST of left wing heroes – radicals by any ones measure.
Roeder was as much a right wing radical as Noam Chomsky is.
Its astounding how every left leaning blog and “pundit’ has failed to mention those facts about Roeder or failed to understand that NO ONE on the right supports this man’s actions, and to note that the Right spoke out against him immediately unlike the LEFT who has YET to condemn the murder or one Soldier and attempted murder of another Soldier by a self proclaimed MUSLIM. Who made it clear his actions were politically and religiously motivated.Of course the Religion is ISLAM, not Christianity — soooo.. hush hush.. lets NOT mention that TRUTH. Not one mention of his political beliefs which run counter to those of Democrats, Republicans and basically ALL freedom loving democracy embracing Americans. Not ONCE did Obama or ANY pundit on the left DENOUNCE the actions of this man. Why? Because he killed a soldier at a recruiting office? Because your hatred for the Military exceeds your compassion and ability to be disgusted by the murder of an American in his place of work… simply because that man was a soldier?
Don’t wax endlessly with arrogance about Republican, Conservatives, Christians,E I T’s which YOU have decided to call torture, and presume to be so morally superior while you support the murder of fetuses by the millions, ( a genocide of mass proportions) and remain silent about the murder of one good decent American young adult and the attempted murder of another, by a MUSLIM, who was politically & religiously motivated.
Hypocrisy is becoming a growing fashion staple within the Left.