A Welcome Senatorial Challenge

more at link
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/10/welcome-senatorial-challenge.html

Marty Lederman

"This is a terrific letter to Judge Mukasey from the ten Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, basically daring him to continue to express agnosticism on the question of the legality of waterboarding.

Most distressing thing about it: No Republican signed.

Potentially the most intriguing: If Mukasey now does not publicly agree that waterboarding is unlawful, could (principled) Dems who signed a letter such as this really vote for him?"

way to go Dems! This is how you do it.
(Now it seems to me that Judge Mukasey had many more issues than just waterboarding, but this particular issue was beautifully put.)

and I'm reminded of this article by Naomi Klein.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1209-22.htm

"...Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the Bush Administration's real innovation has been its in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by US citizens in US-run prisons and transported to third countries in US planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette, more than the actual crimes, that has so much of the military and intelligence community up in arms: By daring to torture unapologetically and out in the open, Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability.

For those nervously wondering if it is time to start using alarmist words like totalitarianism, this shift is of huge significance. When torture is covertly practiced but officially and legally repudiated, there is still the hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and when those responsible merely deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the juridical person in man"; soon enough, victims no longer bother to search for justice, so sure are they of the futility (and danger) of that quest. This impunity is a mass version of what happens inside the torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them..."

senate intelligence committee. What a difference one senator can make! (meaning Leahy vs Feinstein. Feinstein actually breaks all the partisan ties by siding with the republicans on most matters, while Leahy questions.)