TenuredVulture wrote:Now, I suppose the whole Clinton impeachment thing was really a novel approach to partisanship that came from the Republican side of the aisle, but you know, the Dems never tried to impeach Bush. And even now, the idea of holding trials for members of the former administration is still a fringe position, so, no, the Dems really aren't copycats here.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:I do think it is curious that whenever Democrats act like jerks, their defense is often, "well, conservatives did it first."

No, no, the Democrats come up with original ways to be jerks, at least that's the case with the whole Supreme Court politics thing. Bork really was different from Sotomayor though, so there's that.

Now, I suppose the whole Clinton impeachment thing was really a novel approach to partisanship that came from the Republican side of the aisle, but you know, the Dems never tried to impeach Bush. And even now, the idea of holding trials for members of the former administration is still a fringe position, so, no, the Dems really aren't copycats here.

pacino wrote:Wow, I decided to listen to my usual 5 minutes of crazy (Sean Hannity show) on teh way home from work. More traffic than usual so it ended up being an entire segment. I tried to count the falsehoods but I can't count that high. It really is bizarro world there. Up is down, left is right, Palin's FB status update was a heroic statement of fact, seniors are in danger from this new plan, etc. It's really quite impressive how much Hannity and whoever his guest was (seems like a former congressman from 94) in how they rewrote history and the facts. They even lamented the misinformation out htere in the mainstream media (somehow the #1 cable network isn't quite mainstream enough yet).

Kudos on your act, Sean. No one can actually believe all that he believes.

TV - how exactly is wanting an investigation into torture a 'fringe' position?

TenuredVulture wrote:So if Harry Reid Loses, but teh Dems say pick up two other seats and everything else remains the same, is that the best of all possible worlds?

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.

So “Doc Mitchell” and “Doc Jessen,” as they had been known in the Air Force, helped lead the United States into a wrenching conflict over torture, terror and values that seven years later has not run its course.

....

In December 2001, a small group of professors and law enforcement and intelligence officers gathered outside Philadelphia at the home of a prominent psychologist, Martin E. P. Seligman, to brainstorm about Muslim extremism. Among them was Dr. Mitchell, who attended with a C.I.A. psychologist, Kirk M. Hubbard.

During a break, Dr. Mitchell introduced himself to Dr. Seligman and said how much he admired the older man’s writing on “learned helplessness.” Dr. Seligman was so struck by Dr. Mitchell’s unreserved praise, he recalled in an interview, that he mentioned it to his wife that night. Later, he said, he was “grieved and horrified” to learn that his work had been cited to justify brutal interrogations.

Dr. Seligman had discovered in the 1960s that dogs that learned they could do nothing to avoid small electric shocks would become listless and simply whine and endure the shocks even after being given a chance to escape.

....

Dr. Mitchell, colleagues said, believed that producing learned helplessness in a Qaeda interrogation subject might ensure that he would comply with his captor’s demands. Many experienced interrogators disagreed, asserting that a prisoner so demoralized would say whatever he thought the interrogator expected.

At the C.I.A. in December 2001, Dr. Mitchell’s theories were attracting high-level attention. Agency officials asked him to review a Qaeda manual, seized in England, that coached terrorist operatives to resist interrogations. He contacted Dr. Jessen, and the two men wrote the first proposal to turn the enemy’s brutal techniques — slaps, stress positions, sleep deprivation, wall-slamming and waterboarding — into an American interrogation program.

By the start of 2002, Dr. Mitchell was consulting with the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center, whose director, Cofer Black, and chief operating officer, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., were impressed by his combination of visceral toughness and psychological jargon. One person who heard some discussions said Dr. Mitchell gave the C.I.A. officials what they wanted to hear. In this person’s words, Dr. Mitchell suggested that interrogations required “a comparable level of fear and brutality to flying planes into buildings.”

....

In late July 2002, Dr. Jessen joined his partner in Thailand. On Aug. 1, the Justice Department completed a formal legal opinion authorizing the SERE methods, and the psychologists turned up the pressure. Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times.

The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up. Higher-ups from headquarters arrived and watched one more waterboarding before agreeing that the treatment could stop, according to a Justice Department legal opinion.

momadance wrote:http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/

Wow, Paglia goes to town!

As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

kruker wrote:Isakson is a funny case in cowardice. He did an interview with Ezra where he called Palin's comment "nuts", now since his words are being used as an example of a Republican acknowledging the outlandishness of the Queen's comments, he's tucking tail. All fear her majesty!

momadance wrote:http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/

Wow, Paglia goes to town!