THE US DOES NOT TORTURE, EXCEPT WHEN IT DOES, AND THEN BOY DOES IT EVER

Re: The Bush Legacy piece from Lucky Bensonhurst

I’ll also direct yr attention to this bipartisan report released earlier this month on whether or not the US ever tortured anyone during Junior’s heyday. (Hint: we fucking well did.)

This was a kind of throwaway comment, but it’s worth highlighting in a separate post, because it doesn’t seem to have generated nearly the amount of headlines it probably should.

Or maybe it did and I missed it – I was traveling to KL when the news came out, and I was pretty busy.

Also, the report came out right after the Boston Marathon bombings, so the media was too busy running the usual 24/7 OMG circus to pay much attention to anything else. Except for Fox News personalities, of course, who didn’t mention the actual report (as far as I know), but did spend a lot of air time demanding that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be renditioned to Gitmo for waterboarding, which is not torture – not if you ask Sean Hannity, who is so convinced that it’s not torture that he won’t submit to it himself just to prove it.

Anyway, the independent report – from the Constitution Project, a non-partisan Washington-based think-tank – which got all its info from public records, was pretty clear about its findings: not only did America torture detainees in Gitmo and elsewhere, there is zero evidence we ever got any valuable info out of any of them, and while torture fans claim there is plenty of evidence, its just happens to be classified.

"History shows that the American people have a right to be skeptical of such claims, and to decline to accept any resolution of this issue based largely on the exhortations of former officials who say, in essence, 'Trust us' or 'If you knew what we know but cannot tell you,'" the Constitution Project said.

"The Task Force believes there was no justification for the responsible government and military leaders to have allowed those lines to be crossed. Doing so damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive," it said.

Exactly.

I’d go on, but you’d be better off watching this Daily Show clip, which I think amounts to more coverage of the report than any of the actual news channels.

You may feel a little prick,

This is dF

WHEN CONGRESS WANTS YR OPINION, THEY’LL GIVE IT TO YOU

Or, "And another thing ..."

It’s old news by now that the US Senate managed to vote in favor of new gun legislation – but not by a big enough margin for it to actually pass.

Much has been said about it. But the main talking point seems to be how the Senate not only managed to reject a bill that anywhere from 85% to 95% of the country supports, but also – as Jon Stewart demonstrates here – did it by making some fairly dumb-ass arguments against it.

So the question people are asking now is: what’s going to be the political cost of rejecting universal background checks that most people support?

Gun-control proponents are expecting a bloodbath in 2014. And we’re already seeing some political damage – at least in New Hampshire, where Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte’s approval rating is down 15 points.

On the other hand, we’re a good 18 months away from the mid-terms, which is forever in political time.

The other thing, oddly, is that if you believe this poll from Pew Research Center and the Washington Post, America isn't all that upset about the vote. In fact, only 15% said they were “angry” the bill was shot down (so to speak), and another 32% said they were “disappointed”. That adds up to 47%, but compared to the 85-95% who supposedly supported the bill, that’s a major shortfall of anger/disappointment.

The lesson, of course, is that polls don’t mean a whole lot, which is probably why Congress generally feels free to ignore them when it’s politically feasible to do so. And make no mistake, Congresspeople tend to base their legislative votes on the likely political pros and cons, not whether the bill is the right or wrong thing to do, and certainly not on what the opinion polls say.

It’s also worth remembering that between the legislation proposal and the vote, the Boston bombings happened, which probably took priority in terms of emotional investment for a lot of people than some old gun bill. Or maybe unlimited access to guns seemed like a good idea all of a sudden.

So all up, I don’t think the bill’s failure is really going to cost any Congressperson his/her job. Not by itself, anyway. And I think the GOP Senators (and three Demos) that voted it down knew that, just as they knew that even a watered-down compromise bill like this one was never going to pass in a Senate where the Demos have the slim majority they do.

Odds are even Pat Toomey (R-PA) knew that when he helped craft the thing. Indeed, it’s even possible he only agreed to co-sponsor the bill so that when it failed, he could say it’s all Obama’s fault for being a divisive president.

Which, of course, he did. “Hey, it’s not like we want to oppose every single thing Obama proposes! He’s dividing the country by wanting things we don’t want! It’s like he’s in a whole different political party on purpose! You'd totally have universal background checks now if he didn't make us hate him so much!”

What a rube.

And you wonder why I don’t take the gun debate seriously anymore.

Unpopular demand,

This is dF