Torture Poll: We Love It!

The last Ambivalent Poll asked: “If you could save a million lives by torturing one person, would you do it?” (Related post.) The final results were:

• 72% of respondents said unequivocally: “Yes.”
• 14.2% said: “impeach bush”
• 6.3% said:“The question is stupid. That's not a choice we really face.”
• 3.9% said: “I don't believe torture would save the millions lives; the information gained would not be reliable.”
• 3.1% said: “No”

I was in the minority with “No.” Shocker, eh? As L.'s brother might say, I guess I'm just a paper-pants hippie.

Posted 12:30 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | general politics

2006: The Year the Fourth Amendment Disappears?

Hi there. We just returned last night from our travels and we had a most excellent time relaxing and enjoying the company of family and friends. My loved ones spoiled me ridiculously so I have lots and lots of loot to wear, play with, and use in this new year, for all of which I am extremely thankful. Family and friends are the best part of life—something that's easy to forget in the day-to-day when you're far away from them. I'm very much looking forward to finishing law school and finding a job closer to the people I care about and who care about me the most.

Being immersed in all that family goodness for the last 10 days or so meant that I was largely tuned out of what was going on in the world. I tried to follow the domestic spying story but found that the Billings Gazette didn't seem to think it important enough to cover, other than to say the spying was more widespread than was originally thought. Instead I heard bits and pieces about the one-year anniversary of the tsunami, I learned that the Billings, Montana City Council seems pretty spineless, and more recently I heard repeatedly about an Iraqi child with spina bifida who has come to the U.S. for treatment. CNN Headline News seemed obsessed with that story the other day and curiously kept repeating that U.S. troops found the child during a raid on her parents' home. The message seemed to be that it's a great thing for U.S. troops to raid your home because then they can find your disabled child and maybe get her some medical help! Gee, CNN, when you put it that way, I'm thinking maybe we should all hope our homes get raided by U.S. troops! I'm sure they could find something they could help me out with.

The lesson I learned was this: If you depend on your local small-town newspaper and/or CNN for news of what's going on in the world, you're likely to get a really strange, fragmented, and incomplete picture. Oh, how I missed the internets!

And yet, now that I'm back and catching up on what matters to me most at the moment, I'm sickened to learn that just before Christmas 49% of Americans thought Bush's domestic spying was Constitutional and 50% thought it made the country safer. All I can say is that these people do not know their history. When the President starts spying on any American he wants and does so in secret and without any oversight, that can never make anyone safer and if it's only Constitutional if the Fourth Amendment is meaningless. But what's worse is the brazen way Bush continues to claim what he's done (and apparently is continuing to do!) is legal and necessary. Not only that, but he's trying to shift the focus from his own impeachable offenses:

The fact that somebody leaked this program causes great harm to the United States.

No, Mr. President, Whoever “leaked” this to the press is a hero. the fact that you are unilaterally spying on Americans without their knowledge or consent and without any judicial oversight in contravention of the Fourth Amendment is what is causing great harm to the United States.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

*sigh*

p.s.: Thanks to Marshall for making my point better than I did in arguing that whether the domestic spying is legal is not the point in terms of this being an impeachable offense. Marshall writes in the comments to that post:

Strictly sepaking, impeachment isn't a criminal remedy. It's way for democratically elected representatives to redress wrongdoing. In the impeachment context, “wrong” is not limited to simply criminal acts. Incompetence or malfeasance or a gross offense against those who elected you will do. I'd say this president has been guilty of all three at various times.

I could not agree more.

Posted 12:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | general politics life generally