Bloggers blast treatment of "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla. They also trash radio personality Dennis Prager and welcome a new breed of "mobile journalists."

Padilla TV: The New York Times obtained a video depicting detainee and "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla being escorted out of solitary confinement for a trip to the dentist. Padilla's lawyers say the video, in which guards in riot gear outfit Padilla with blackened goggles and noise-blocking headphones, illustrates "outrageous government conduct." A psychiatrist who examined Padilla said that as a result of prolonged isolation, he "lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense," according to the article. Bloggers exhaust the thesaurus entry for appalled.

Anti-torture pundit Andrew Sullivan calls Padilla's treatment "unconscionable" and connects it to Congress' suspension of habeas corpus: "This could happen to any American anywhere this president decides to call an 'enemy combatant.' " Liberal Bitch Ph.D. sighs, "[T]he only hope left is that we'll learn something from having literally used all the power of the government to ruin a man without so much as charging him with a crime."

Liberal Hungry Blues compares the still images to photos from Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-ray, which depict prisoners subjected to sensory deprivation. Liberal Marc Parent at Crimes and Corruption of the New World Order News likens Padilla's treatment to classic CIA psychological torture techniques and wonders why this treatment continued for so long: "[T]hey surely must have realized that he had no secrets to reveal. So why continue? One can only speculate. Were they conducting a barbarous experiment, trying to determine what it would take to destroy his personality? Was it simply brutal punishment for the humiliation experienced by those who ordered this treatment after they realized he was not the big terrorist they had fantasized they had in their power?"

Liberal Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory  reserves his most brutal sarcasm for Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, whom he accuses of belittling the issue in an online chat: "In Kurtz's world, the only thing this non-story really implicates are some routine matters involving prisoner security which only whiny human rights hysterics would be upset about. … It's just some leg shackles and goggles. What's all the fuss about?"

Lance at A Quiet Noise wonders how many Americans justify such treatment and "at the same time put forth that we are a Christian Nation": "I thought the Inqusition was over centuries ago. And the Salem Witch Trials, at least they got a trial!"

Read more about Jose Padilla.

Prager v. Ellison: Conservative radio host and columnist Dennis Prager wrote recently that newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, should take his oath of office on the Bible instead of the Koran. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called his views "bigoted" and demanded his ouster from the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Most bloggers side with neither party.

Fellow conservative Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters writes that Prager "got this issue spectacularly wrong." For one thing, he notes, House members may opt for an "affirmation" instead of a religious oath. But secondly, "if using a religious text for an oath has any significance at all … one would suppose that it would have to be a religious text with significance to the person swearing the oath. … Why wouldn't we want Ellison to swear his oath on the one religious text he holds sacred, if we want him to feel some responsibility for acting in its defense by fulfilling his oath?"

At Huffington Post, conservative Christian David Kuo weighs in on Ellison's side: "In courts across America today, people pledge to tell the truth and the whole truth without putting their hands on the Bible if they so choose. (The same thing is true in swearing-in ceremonies). President Bush participates in celebrating Ramadan. If Islam is good enough for President Bush, I suppose its holy book is good enough for a swearing in ceremony."