By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and others for torture-related war crimes would be madness, and President Obama clearly doesn’t want to do it. But torture is serious business. What should we do?
At ThePhoenix.com, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate shows us the way out.
Boston.com editor David Beard talks with George W. Bush’s official photographer, Eric Draper, and about how the former president bid him farewell.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Admit it: You didn’t watch President Bush’s farewell address. Well, I did. In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at his short, half-hearted effort at vindication and conclude that the real message is we no longer need fear the little man at the podium.
In my latest for the Guardian, I express my shock and horror at Dick Cheney’s interview with ABC News, in which he (1) defended torture on the grounds that it’s not torture unless he says it is and (2) all but mocked President Bush on the decision to go to war with Iraq. Give him this: the man is not a hypocrite.
The Bush White House, by all appearances, hasn’t made much of an effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden since that botched encounter at Tora Bora in late 2001.
Now NPR reports that the administration is going all out to get bin Laden before Bush leaves office.
If you listen to the audio version of the story, you’ll come to the inescapable conclusion that the real goal is to roll up bin Laden even earlier than that — say, a couple of weeks before Election Day.
Shameful.
Charles Krauthammer makes it cogently. And I’ll add this: If McCain had, say, talked Condoleezza Rice into being his running mate, don’t you think McCain could spend the rest of the campaign writing his inaugural address? Even despite her deep involvement in Bush’s failures?
A pretty good night for McCain. He really caught a break with President Bush, who I thought came across far better as a chief executive on the job than he would have if he’d actually been in the hall. Bush was at his charming best and stayed on message, making it about McCain instead of himself. Discordant note: his out-of-context reference to “the angry left.”
What got into Fred Thompson? If he’d been this energetic and folksy during his presidential campaign, he might have gotten someone outside his immediate family to vote for him. I agree with David Gergen, who said on CNN that Thompson was unusually effective in talking about McCain’s experience as a POW, but no doubt angered Democrats with his distortions* (my word, not Gergen’s) of Obama’s stands.
It was pretty funny to follow Thompson’s hyperpartisan attacks with Joe Lieberman’s call for bipartisanship. Lieberman was a considerable upgrade over Zell Miller, the then-Democratic senator who made a fool of himself at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Lieberman took a couple of shots at Obama, but you had to laugh with some appreciation at his success in getting Republicans to clap for the Clintons.
I also enjoyed the smirk firmly planted on Lieberman’s face as he praised Sarah Palin.
*And, as Josh Marshall points out, a damn vicious distortion in at least one case.
Which, as the Politico notes, puts her well to the right of John McCain. Even to the right of President Bush.
I’ve never seen him that impassioned on his own behalf. And if Bill Clinton was more intent on whacking Bush than McCain, Kerry made up for it. He even poked fun at himself as he ran through a litany of McCain flip-flops.
Good Jason Zengerle piece in The New Republic on Kerry’s revival as one of Obama’s most effective surrogates. If Biden falls flat tonight, remember: I told you so.
How stupid is this? Obama is going to be giving his convention speech in front of some faux-Greek columns, which isn’t exactly new — Bush himself did it just four years ago. And have you walked around the Statehouse lately? Or ever?
But anonymous (i.e., Clinton) Democrats claim this is more proof that Obama thinks he’s Zeus or something, the media are freaking out and the Republicans blasted out an e-mail about the “Temple of Obama.”
Could everyone please grow up?