Friday, February 15, 2008 - Posts
-
sponsorship
Remember back when we didn’t believe in torturing people? Turns out it's way more interesting to reopen the whole question and bicker with the umps about their recent calls. Let’s go to the telestrator:
Out on the field this week, we have Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., announcing yesterday that water-boarding is legal whereas “putting burning coals on people's bodies” is torture. Shooting the breeze with the BBC, Justice Antonin Scalia declares that he would have no problem shoving a little “something under the fingernails, smack him in the face” but conceded that these are not easy questions. And Sen. John McCain scores a touchdown for the opposing team when he says he wants torture to be illegal unless the CIA is doing it, in which case it isn’t. Finally, the week closed with Steven Bradbury, who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department and is confident that it isn’t really water-boarding if it’s changed since the Spanish Inquisition.
It would be totally awesome if we could just throw open the whole U.S. Code and race around the football field renegotiating all of it for ourselves, don’t you think? I'm going to redefine shoplifting this weekend and go find me some Prada sandals.
-
sponsorship
I never thought the day would come when I'd look at a photo of civil rights hero John Lewis and think unflattering thoughts, but here we are. When I first moved to Washington 35 years ago—OK, 13, but some of those years were longer than others, which I think is how Hillary Clinton does her math, too—there was no one I admired more. So dignified and brave, Lewis had after all led a 1965 voting rights march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where police responded to the non-violent protest by bashing his head in. So, it was more than a little disappointing that after the embattled Clinton campaign started throwing down the race card—like this and this and this—establishment black powerbrokers including Lewis joined in the attacks on Barack Obama. Lewis did not just stick by Clinton, but went out of his way to be condescending to her rival, saying Obama "is not Martin Luther King. I knew Martin Luther King. I knew Bobby Kennedy. I knew President Kennedy. You need more than speech-making.''
Yesterday, Lewis appeared to have revised that harsh assessment, and suggested to the AP that he might switch teams: "It could happen with a lot of people ... We can count and we see the clock.'' This morning's New York Times went further, reporting that Lewis had decided to vote for Obama as a superdelegate because, "In recent days there is a sense of movement, and a sense of spirit,'' and a sense of uh-oh, better to jump on the caboose than miss the train altogether. Now a Lewis spokeswoman has called the Times story inaccurate. But however he votes this summer in Denver, in a larger sense I'm not sure how much it matters.
Voters were ahead of their leaders in seeing that, as Lewis told the Times, "Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap'' to elect a black president. Obama's repeated warnings that no one in public life should be put on a pedestal make more sense than ever. Loyalty to Clinton doesn't seem any deeper than hers was for her "goddaughter'' Patti Solis Doyle, who has been replaced as her campaign manager. And Lewis has the audacity to tell the Times that, on second thought, the fancy-talking empty suit has gotten much more impressive lately: "He's getting better and better every single day.'' Craven is the word that springs to mind, and how depressing it that?
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?