Category: civil liberties
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Will, Fully Obtuse
On the NY Times site yesterday, William Safire complained about a line in (President!) Obama’s speech: He skirted the controversy about harsh interrogations with a facile “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” — when there are times when that painful choice cannot be “rejected.”…
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Tortured Logic
The NY Times recently posted a range of opinions on torture after the report of torture at Guantanamo. I disagreed with much of what Andrew McCarthy had to say (including his definition of what is and is not torture), but the logic of this particularly escapes me: On that last score, even those of us…
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Running to the center is not leadership
Gail Collins is correct when she notes You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? But those of us disappointed about the FISA vote aren’t disappointed because we don’t understand what a compromise is. I’m disappointed because Obama wasn’t only talking about bipartisanship and building a consensus…
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Happy Fourth of July Three-Day Weekend
Between Guantanamo and FISA, I’m not feeling particularly patriotic this year — when everyone else is singing along to that hideous Greenwood song, I’m thinking of e.e. cumming’s “next to god of course america . . . “. However, I do like this country, quite a bit, so I will polish off the holiday weekend…