As A Tiny Revolution puts it:

INSANE BILLIONAIRES: Let's kill everyone and take their money!

SANE BILLIONAIRES: I like the way you think. I really do. But if we keep everyone alive, and working for us, we'll make even more money, in the long term.

INSANE BILLIONAIRES: You communist!!!

So from a progressive perspective, you always have to hope the Sane Billionaires win. Still, there's generally a huge chasm between what the Sane Billionaires want and what progressives want.
 

This may not be complete, all of the time; indeed, it isn't. But all too much is true all too much of the time; as the current effort to kill the stimulus unless it becomes tax cuts witness.

Is Berkeley violating the first amendment by hosting a webpage which says:
 

The misconception that one always has to choose between science and religion is incorrect. Of course, some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science (e.g., the belief that the world and all life on it was created in six literal days); however, most religious groups have no conflict with the theory of evolution or other scientific findings. In fact, many religious people, including theologians, feel that a deeper understanding of nature actually enriches their faith. Moreover, in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution.

I should think not; but a Caifornia couple is taking this grievous offense against the First Amendment, according to the group that's sponsoring them, to the Supreme Court.

Much more at Panda's Thumb.

My thanks to Digby, at Hullabaloo.

Ruth Marcus claims that we need not prosecute those guilty of torture on these grounds: There are other remedies which will prevent this from happening again (she names none but congressional oversight, an evidently useless measure; Congress immunized much of this). Those who were guilty weren't deterred by the threat of punishment (of course they weren't; they counted on not being punished, and Ruth Markus is bending every effort to make sure they are right). They had lawyers who told them their actions were legal. (So has every tyrant since Charles I; the remedy is disbarment - in addition to trials.) Lastly, that the government cannot do two things at once: preparing trials will somehow interfere with closing Guantanamo.

This is bleeding-heart conservatism. If the same reasoning were applied to a punk who held up the corner grocery store, everyone would laugh at it; this demotes the Washington Post to the level of bird-cage liner.

Law is, as Mr Justice Holmes said, what judges do; it is also what they fail to do. Ruth Markus is proposing to make torture constitutional, a political question; she should be ashamed of herself.

See, I'm performing a literary reference; I must have a working sense of humor. Yet the more I look at this, the more disgusted I am.

An Atlantic Monthly columnist, Ross Douthat, is arguing that Bush's torture  program is Bush Administration's interrogation policy was immoral, in its design and in its execution, but I don't believe it belongs to a category of immorality wholly different from other sorts of moral compromises that American Presidents have made, and will continue to make, He has gotten there by arguing that waterboarding is like Hiroshima: almost any American president would have done it.
 

Set the argument about Hiroshima aside, although it is one stroke against Douthat that he assumes this is sufficient defense; get to the meat: would other presidents have done what the Bushies did. Douthat's answer is almost:
 

But you don't have to look hard the history of our foreign policy, from the beginning of the twentieth century down the present day, to see continuities between the policies pursued by past Presidents and the approach the Bush Administration took to torture and/or torture-lite.
 

Observe the use of "torture-lite" of the methods of Darkness at Noon. Strike two.
 

Now imagine that mentality translated into a context - the months after 9/11 - when it was widely believed that the Clinton Administration had been way too timid and way too lawyered-up in its approach to al Qaeda. Is it really plausible to imagine President Gore would have approached these issues like the bearded liberal truth-to-power speaker he became once he lost the White House? Isn't it much, much more likely that he would have become a post-9/11 proponent of a still-more gloves-off approach to terror suspects?

Now this doesn't mean that a Gore Administration would have signed off on exactly the same interrogation tactics that the Bush Administration permitted, or allowed the same sort of abuses to take place. (Without the invasion of Iraq, too - which might have plausibly happened in a Gore Presidency, but certainly would have been less likely to take place - there would have been no desperate, bloody counterinsurgency for the Gitmo interrogation tactics to migrate into.) Maybe Gore would have drawn the line at waterboarding. Maybe there would have been less of what Conor Friedersdorf describes as "testosterone charged bungling" in the implementation of interrogation protocols....Maybe there would have been more focus on what these kind of tactics do to America's reputation, and to the ability of jihadist organizations to recruit new members. And certainly a different, better-managed, less insular and paranoid administration would have done a far better job of being self-critical, making room for dissenting views, correcting abuses and changing course than the current occupants of the White House did.
 

Now what is the evidence for these assertions: This quote from Against All Enemies, ahowing that Gore approved of "extraordinary rendition":
 

The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: "Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, 'That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."
 

That's from p. 144. On the previous page, Clarke gives the Clinton-era definition of extra-ordinary rendition: apprehending terrorists abroad, "usually without the knowledge, and almost always without the approval of the host government." Many of them are to be delivered to New York (for trial for the failed attack on the World Trade Center), some go elsewhere.  Douthat should know that the implication Gore approved of the
sort of thing that is "extraordinary rendition" under the present administration is false. All he need have done is thought, or turned the page. Intellectual dishonesty. Strike three.