Mr. “Islamo-fascism” himself, Rick Santorum, has taken a short break from the gay bashing to *gasp* write kind words about the Obama clan in his Philadelphia Enquirer column:
I have been to New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington in recent weeks. In those cities, at least, you cannot watch the news, pass street vendors selling T-shirts, or browse magazine racks at the grocery store and not feel good about our next president, his family, and our nation’s future.There is an air of something big, something grand, something electric about to explode upon us. Barack Obama’s visage is everywhere. His relaxed and reassuring – even beatific – smile is omnipresent. So are his irrepressibly cute girls and their together mom.
Next thing you know, Hugh Hewitt will be taking a bong hit at a George Soros charity event.
The trouble with Toby Young is obvious and oughtn’t be belabored. He chews the scenery; adds nothing to an understanding of a meal; and isn’t funny. A bad meal isn’t a weapon of mass destruction. Watching him sully Top Chef makes it clear that heaven would be a place where Toby Young is hit by a car for all of eternity.
If it makes Spencer feel any better, the lovely Ms. Simmons has not left the show for good. She got married during production and went on leave.
Not sure how I missed this, but John Cornyn asked Eric Holder Noah Feldman’s ticking time bomb question at yesterday’s hearing:
Cornyn: I just want to propose a hypothetical for you, lets say that as Attorney General you find out there are terrorists who have access to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and that you have a detainee who is in possession of information that if disclose would prevent those weapons from being detonated in the United States and thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of innocent people being killed. You would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding which, under my hypothetical, would save tens of thousands of lives?
Holder replies that waterboarding is not the only interrogation technique. Hilarity ensues:
Cornyn: Assume that it was.
HOLDER: I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I’m not willing to concede.
CORNYN: I know you don’t like my hypothetical.
HOLDER: No, the hypothetical’s fine; the premise that underlies it I’m not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.
CORNYN: Assume that it was.
HOLDER: Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I’ve heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it’s hard for me to accept or to answer your hypothetical without accepting your premise. And in fact, I don’t think I can do that.
Words do not do this exchange justice. You simply must watch it for yourself:
Highlight of the video: everyone in the chamber laughs after Cornyn asks, for a second time, that Holder except his hypothetical that waterboarding is the only interrogation technique that could save lives in a ticking time bomb scenario.
They’re not laughing with you Senator. They’re laughing at you.
The most tempting and most flawed argument suggests that drug legalization can free us from drug violence. Drug violence, we are told, is mostly the result of the legal ban on drugs. Eliminate the ban, and drug prices plummet. The financial incentive for violence vanishes. A legal trade in narcotics brings daylight to a black market. As an additional benefit, it eliminates the need to incarcerate so many drug criminals.
This argument is at least prima facie credible. Laws make criminals and illegal markets attract lawlessness. Disputes in the drug trade are settled through violent, extra-legal means because there exists no legitimate authority to enforce drug contracts, set industry standards or guarantee fair business practices in drug deals. Transactions are, as a rule, designed to be untraceable.
The New York Times asked 5 legal academics to pose questions they wish they could ask Eric Holder at his confirmation hearing.
This is the best distinguished Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman could come up with:
What may American military and law enforcement do to extract information from terrorists, especially in a “ticking time-bomb” case?
Come! On! Really?! Isn’t it common wisdom at this point that the scenario imagined by the ticking time bomb thought experiment virtually never occurs in real life? It would be laughable that something so wildly implausible keeps getting dredged up by America’s purported “top minds” were it not the fact that it has been used to justify acts of evil at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, and at other U.S. military prisons.
Seems Feldman got a little too excited about the 4-hour series premier of 24 and was jerking off to Jack while writing his question.
It’s a bit belated I know, but I still can’t get over how incredible it was that all passengers survived the horrific water landing in the Hudson. What most blows my mind is that two equally implausible events–one which might have caused unimaginable catastrophe (birds simultaneously flying into both engines) and another that preempted the catastrophe (a seasoned pilot crash-landing his bird perfectly, an unbelievably capable flight crew preparing the cabin for landing and evacuation, an instantaneous and overwhelming coordinated response which prevented sure death through hypothermia)–converged today by an act of God and gave 155 fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, the greatest miracle of all. The gift of life.
Posted by Mayo 
