Only if you're doing it right.

Is water boarding torture?

Only if your're doing it right.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I wonder if Woody Allen thought the sex was "dirty" and "right" enough when he was having that affair with the teenage daughter of his then-wife.  Cf. the apparently true confession of his predilection in the 1979 movie "Manhattan," in which his character has an affair with a high-school student, played by Mariel Hemingway.  On one occasion when they are in bed, she says she will indulge him by letting him do whatever he wants with her; and he says, "Let me go get my scuba gear."

On Rudy: he is a very frightening man.  And indications are, he consciously projects himself that way.  In the 1960s, I thought we had all put aside at last, with great wisdom, thoughtfulness and maturity, the old childish pollyanna-ish trust of people in the military, in law enforcement and in intelligence-gathering, as though they are all automatically the "good guys."  Clearly I was wrong.  But the vast number of stories on TV and in movies in which the heroes are policemen, detectives, military personnel, secret agents, vigilantes, prosecutors and investigators should have told me as much.

But this points to one of the most painful divisions in our society.  People on Rudy's side think that anyone who does not automatically presume that "the Americans" are "the good guys" is a despicable America-hater and internal foe.  And, they think and say, when the "liberal media" are critical like that, they do not deserve to be believed.

There is already plenty of bad blood between Rudy and the New York Times.  Clearly the Times understood Rudy's words as the assault that they were intended to be.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  None of the other Republican candidates will test the Times's journalistic neutrality nearly as much as Rudy.

On Michael Mukasey: Unfortunately, you are right, IDS.  One would have expected better of a graduate of Columbia College, who took Contemporary Civilization, the two-semester core-curriculum course on political philosophy.

And one might have expected better of Chuck Schumer, who started out by recommending Mukasey strongly.  God, these New Yorkers are just too much sometimes!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.