Thursday, October 25, 2007 - Posts
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Here's what Giuliani has to say about waterboarding, in reponse to a question about AG-choice Mukasey's refusal to say that the tactic amounts to torture: “Well, I’m not sure it is either. It depends on how it’s done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it’s been defined in the media, it shouldn’t be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that’s the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn’t be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is.”
Whaaa? The descriptions of waterboarding are clear and unrefuted. They come from inside the CIA. Here's a short video reenactment. As Dahlia points out to me, Giuliani's hemming and shuffling is like the senators who didn't bother to find out how the Guantanamo detainees were treated before voting on John McCain's anti-torture provision in the Detainee Treatment Act. If you don't know what's happening, you can keep going along with it.
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Opening statements in the Darren Mack trial yesterday revealed some sort of crazy quilt defense strategy that seems to involve tossing out at least 12 alternative theories and hoping one of them resonates with each the jurors. Of course the blame-the-victim prong involves painting Mack’s estranged wife, Charla, as a violent, sexually voracious (and deviant) “terrorist” and the judge as lifelong a man-hater. I guess this explains why the jury questionnaires were all so focused on the prospective jury’s histories of violence, abuse, and marital discord. The plan was to seat a jury that was already steamed up about gender equality, ugly divorces, physical violence, then appeal to every single one of those grievances.
This odd split defense – the first murder was self defense and the shooting of the judge was insanity -- was pursued over defense counsel’s objections. It’s all something of a mess, but laced though it are strong defense claims that the unfairness faced by fathers in family court are pervasive and unbearable, and that the injustices of Mack’s divorce were like those of the American colonists fighting the British – only worse. Glenn Sacks calls this the “Mary Winkler” defense and cautions that it “only works for women.”
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