Comments (15)

Slim wrote on November 9, 2007 9:57 AM:

Uh guys... "Sen. David Vitter (D-LA)"

I don't think so.

should say "(R-LA)"

Just sayin'.

TheraP wrote on November 9, 2007 9:58 AM:

planning, coaching, scripting - but it was all unintentional.

Is this the defense for war crimes and everything else too?

orangeant wrote on November 9, 2007 10:01 AM:

Sen. David Vitter is (R-LA) not (D-LA) as stated above.

tgrdug wrote on November 9, 2007 10:28 AM:

Following on what Josh said about "teh presidentials", why is it that Dodd or, say, Biden, didn't step up. This doesn't make sense to me. What did Dodd have to lose given his recent rants and stances?

Help! I'm like a 2nd grader here, trying to unravel the mystery.

mark wrote on November 9, 2007 10:34 AM:

The comparison to the AG confirmation in 1952 misses the point: in 1952, there were only 96 senators (for the 48 states). Getting 52 of 96 is better than Mukasey's 53/100.

Why can't the Washington Post keep track of these kinds of basic facts?

anonymouse wrote on November 9, 2007 10:40 AM:

"Even if the testimony exonerates Khadr, experts say that the Pentagon will likely detain Khadr indefinitely as a threat to the U.S."

Hey... we can't just start setting innocent folks free... it might just catch on and ALL innocent people might want the same treatment.

Besides, we wouldn't want our dedemocratization to be thrown off schedule...

Dee Illuminati wrote on November 9, 2007 11:22 AM:

As a point that is congruant with my previous posts on this website, the Q&A by Lindsey Graham and the final quote in the below cited arrticle sums it up.

The reason why I point this out is simple, it is that these policies are indeed illegal and the people whom are performing these acts have no protection from a future Attorney General in say, 5 years, ten years, possibly forty years from now pronouncing the obvious, that these acts were subject to lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

The individuals whom recursed themselves from this type of activity and meetings, retained legal counsel, and or sought different employment were of course rational and professional in doing so. There is no appeal to authority having providing permission to legitimize heinous acts.

And the reason why I point this out is not to point the finger at the rear-view-mirror of past acts which cannot be undone, or to use the metaphor 'chase somebody through the sewers of Paris' as a war criminal, but instead point out that the continued involvement by the United States in this type of behavior and policy leaves people in the employment of the United States government at risk from the consequences of this policy that the Senate and the Congress 'cowardly' avoided!

I have never seen such an astonsihing act of 'political cowardice' demonstrated by those whom create the policies that are armed services personnel operate under and our intelligence community functions within.

It took 'political courage' to state the obvious, the all but acknowledged in testimony, that these acts are illegal.

And candidly, at the moment that the Attorney General was nominated the legal onus of this continued policy falls squarely upon the shoulders of those three bodies of government, the yea votes, and the Attorney general himself and lower ranking employees and military are not responsible for acts and liability after the 'precise issue of torture' was debated and the three tiers of government decided not to pass judgement upon themselves!

You'll not find me chasing through the sewer some military service member, CIA interrogator, for any act of coercion after that vote! The Buck stops with those whom refused to acknowledge out of political cowardice the obvious.

This is not a 'line of argument' that is quibbling, ipso facto; the Senate debated the definition of torture and declined to despite overwhelming evidence to pass judegment upon itself for having authorized and condoned the activity.

If you support our troops, love America, and feel that torture hurts intelligence gathering, hurts people, and damages insitutions then the above and below is something to knit into your memory in a Madame Defarge fashion, the onus is now firmly upon the elected officials and not the intelligence community personnel or our militray serviicemen and woman.

Quote Below:

Mukasey confirmed as attorney general By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 9, 2:38 AM ET

Mukasey has called waterboarding personally "repugnant," and in a letter to senators said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture. He also said he thought it would be irresponsible to discuss it since doing so could make interrogators and other government officials vulnerable to lawsuits.

"He felt that he could not make that pronouncement without placing people at risk to be sued or perhaps even criminally prosecuted," said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dee Illuminati wrote on November 9, 2007 12:31 PM:

Secular Rant Friday:

Ok, we have the news that the military is granting: "character waivers."

Ohhh now let me get this straight! Whom is the moral guardians of "character" and similar to stocks in the stock markets: Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results!

I have to think of the morally self-proclaimed righteous whom always seem to eventually have some sordid or lurid behaviour in their closets. Use your own concious as a weathervane or moral concious as you will, but the objections to blacks serving in the armed forces created an outcry, "and the statement:" 'Some will, some won't, some do, and some don't applied' where overall these recruits served with honor and distinction, and then lets recall the outcry about women serving, again: 'Some will, some won't, some do, and some don't applied' where overall these recruits served with honor and distinction, and of course lets not forget the Japanese Americans whom served in WWII, or the Navajo, or any d-jour undesirables enunciated by the 'self-proclaimed' arbitrators of "character" and "human future events."

I have often considered putting up a website entitled: "When good clearances go bad dot com" and listing all of the members of our 'morally fit' assumptions turn out to be: pedophiles, murderers, thiefs, perverts, liars, cheaters, fools, lazy, or stupid! I mean look at the school teachers, law enforcement personnel, intelligence proffesionals, military personnel, Judges, business leaders, clergy.. all of whom met the onus of proving that: "Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results!" Yes the vetting of this moral character is an art and not a science and the generalization is that "most of these people will live up to their obligations" as US personnel a certainty!

So we get these self-proclaimed "character" vanguards whom repeatedly have been proven wrong.

The real fact is this!

A segment of those people given the opportunity to serve will do so with distinction and exceed all the expectations and glittering generalizations of the character vanguards assumptions, and these people will exhibit that rare character when encountered does not negotiate principle, cannot be intimidated, and is unique and self-defining in every unique case it is encountered.

The overwhelming majority will serve and meet their requirements alongside the 'character select' and there might be little difference except how that individual holds a fork and with which hand, but trusted to put down his or her life for the purposes of his brothers in arms.

And then finally, there will be that segement of those whom prove that their failings will perpetuate a unfounded bias, a false set of assumptions, and their behavior will be an embarrasment to the corp. Of course this group will also include the 'character elite' as there is an equal preponderance for 'elite deviatism' where these people think that the generalizations of character do not apply to them as a consequence of their self-bestowed 'character.'

So what to make of this argument?

Well to start that the generalization is unappropo and been proven false whenever encounered. And that "Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results!" And finally out of this group will arise a segment of leaders whom take what the military offers in the means of 'character building' and make the most of it. And that finally those that do meet that criterian cannot intelectually compromise with those whom make such unfounded and ridiculous assumptions concerning human character.

As history amply demonstrates, these new recruits will perform similar to all other groups serving in the military.

The article is BS

IceJustIce wrote on November 9, 2007 12:46 PM:

The usually stellar Greg Gordon has gotten this one spectacularly wrong. Read the backstory here at the Muck, just over the last few weeks, and you will see that DOJ has NOT returned to enforcing voter laws.

Dee Illuminati wrote on November 9, 2007 1:35 PM:

And Friday would not be complete without:

Alan M. Dershowitz An intellectual pygmy and why he by logical extension supports eating a penis!

Lets recall the case of Armin Meiwes the German whom advertised on the internet for a well-built male prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed, The victim, 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, answered the advert in March 2001.

Mr Meiwes told investigators he took Mr Brandes back to his home in Rotenburg, where Mr Brandes agreed to have his penis cut off, which Mr Meiwes then flambéed and served up to eat together.

And lets also consider the lurid and insidious circumstance of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 on October 13, 1972. The group thus survived by collectively making a decision to eat flesh from the bodies of their dead comrades. This decision was not taken lightly, as most were classmates or close friends. In his 2006 book, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado comments on this decision:

Shortly after our rescue, officials of the Catholic Church announced that according to church doctrine we had committed no sin by eating the flesh of the dead. As Roberto had argued on the mountain, they told the world that the sin would have been to allow ourselves to die.

Now this precisely by logical extension and based on Alan Dershowitz's arguments that he advocates eating penis.

Alan M. Dershowitz takes a similar lurid and insidous argument of 'justifiable torture' and similar to the argument of 'justifiable cannibalism' seeks to codefy in our laws the 'recipe and legality' of the act, it is as if Alan M. Dershowitz has no ability to discern the act from the circumstances!

Under Alan M. Dershowitz sophistry, because there is a case where cannibalism is arguably moral, then all cannibalism is moral and legal: and ergo by logical extension we now conclude Alan M. Dershowitz supports eating penis as it is not only congruent with his arguments but in fact VOLUNTARY! There is no equivocating the facts, Alan M. Dershowitz supports eating penis based on the logical extension of his arguments.

Alan M. Dershowitz has argued vociferously that the act of torture is legal as there are lurid and insidous circumstances under where scenarios make this the morally correct thing to do, and then as an additional act of an intellectual Evil Kinevil and moral pygmy concludes the behavior justifiable.

Certainly Alan M. Dershowitz can argue succesfully both scenarios equally, that he supports torture and eating penis.

I await your reply at this website Alan, please differentiate where your standings on these two propositions are Alan and please do not disregard this assertion as mere sophistry as most accuse you.

Sincerely,

Dee Illuminati

Have a nice weekend everybody.

parrot wrote on November 9, 2007 1:59 PM:

One this is sure: Incoherent posting at TPM is not going away soon...but it could sure use some help here in heading away.

Roberta wrote on November 9, 2007 3:58 PM:

Okay, so FEMA employees don't want to inspect the trailers because of the fear of what formaldehyde will do to them. Understandable. Not fair, since they expected people to live in the trailers, but understandable.

But while they're busy NOT inspecting the trailers, have any of them gotten out the paperwork from the PURCHASE of the trailers to backtrack the formaldehyde problem to the MANUFACTURERS?

I know what's coming next: There's no paperwork. They don't know who manufactured the trailers. The guy who bought them isn't at FEMA any more and he took his files with him and they don't know where he is now and it's not their fault.

Having lived in bother trailers and manufactured homes, they actually have labels on them that proclaim who made them. If I had access to a FEMA trailer, I'd get the manufacturer's name, file a suit against them for manufacturing and selling a lethal product, and then go after the agency that was supposed to vet the trailers for safety. Likely it was an agency in the state in which they were manufactured.

But I don't have access to the trailers. Have any reporters seen them? Bothered to find out the manufacturer? Followed up?

While FEMA employees are all holding their unmentionables and fretting about the situation, there's a pretty direct way of getting the twice-victimized Katrina survivors some measure of compensation: Sue the bastards and then throw them in prison.

Dee Illuminati wrote on November 9, 2007 5:16 PM:

parrot relax, I've invited Mr Dershowitz for a rebuttal, Frankly to argue Mr. Dershowitz and his premise requires reducing the 'assertion' to the absurd. It is a commentary upon his apologetics of torture and within the realm of the public domain. I'm surprised that his professional colleagues have not challenged his ridiculous premise with these obvious 101 philosophical deficiencies.

(read carefully the nasis of the approach) A straussian philosopher King hardly does Dershowitz make:

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") also known as an apagogical argument, reductio ad impossibile, or proof by contradiction, is a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result.

It makes use of the law of non-contradiction — a statement cannot be both true and false. In some cases it may also make use of the law of excluded middle — a statement must be either true or false. The phrase is traceable back to the Greek ἡ εἰς ἄτοπον ἀπαγωγή (hē eis átopon apagōgḗ), meaning "reduction to the absurd", often used by Aristotle.

Reductio ad absurdum is also often used to describe an argument where a conclusion is derived in the belief that everyone (or at least those being argued against) will accept that it is false or absurd. However, this is a weak form of reductio, as the decision to reject the premise requires that the conclusion is accepted as being absurd. Although a formal contradiction is by definition absurd (unacceptable), a weak reductio ad absurdum argument can be rejected simply by accepting the purportedly absurd conclusion. Such arguments can also commonly incorporate the appeal to ridicule, an informal fallacy caused when an argument or theory is twisted by the opposing side to appear ridiculous.

My note:

Lets explore the "THEME" of Mr. Dershowitz's excluded middle on his initial premise of a 'ticking bomb scenario; and then his conclusion, ergo: torture is legal.

In some cases it may also make use of the law of excluded middle — a statement must be either true or false.

I'm tired of Mr. Dershowitz's false choices of torture versus security.

Relax.. I'm educated in philosophy where evidently Mr. Dershowitz is not. His arguments deserve the ridicule as a consequence of his publicly stating them.

TheraP wrote on November 9, 2007 5:31 PM:

We are relaxed, Dee. But we're concerned about you.

Dee Illuminati wrote on November 9, 2007 7:32 PM:

See the congressman's comments about Dershowitz's editorial in the video on the torture hearings.

Appealing to Dershowitz as an authority instead of acknowledging jury nullification for lurid and insidious propositions is intellectually on par with Nazism.

I asked Dershowitz to debate this, sent him an email.

Be damn glad that I didn't recount the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced arrest of Gary Farris and inquire in a 'reduction to absurdity' inquiry if waterboarding these women online would have constituting a crime?

And let me assure you, that children and women are the ones at risk when a society embraces torture and I can cite extensive empirical statistical data to make that point as well.

Dershowitz needs to be exposed as the intellectual fraud that he is.

Any community college instructor teaching logic would immediately discard Dershowitz's argument for what it is.

And if a student made such written arguments, I would wonder if it was another shooter like WV.