THAT NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER AND
HIS MORTGAGE
Turns
out, there’s more to the story. Did Edmund Andrews mention anywhere in
his article or his book, Busted, that his wife had twice before
declared bankruptcy? Chivalrous of him to leave that out; but, as Megan
McCardle notes
for The Atlantic, relevant to his tale. Writing of this new twist,
Andrew Leonard complains,
“One of Busted’s selling points is the level of personal
detail Andrews provides about his finances and his marriage. To leave out a
detail so relevant to his tale of debtor’s woe smacks of outright
dishonesty – and it’s exactly the kind of behavior that you would
hope a New York Times reporter would avoid at all costs.” Nor is
Leonard buying Andrews’ response.
THAT
NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST AND EQUAL RIGHTS
Get
on the stick, Mr. President, writes
Frank Rich of the need to provide LGBT Americans equal rights under the law. I
have no doubt the President will get there in his careful, thoughtful, deliberate –
successful – way. So a few months or even a couple of years more or less
may not seem to matter (unless you’re an Arab linguist who just lost his
job or a widower who can’t collect survivor benefits). But 40 years
after the Stonewall “riot” that marked the beginning of the modern
gay rights movement – and with the Democrats controlling Congress and the
White House – impatience is understandable. Frank nails it, as usual.
BASEJUMPING
Andy
M.: “I liked your ‘vacation
planner’ – but those slides were nothing! Have a look at this
video of basejumpers.”
WATERBOARDING
This
conservative radio talk show host lasted six seconds, and observed: “It is way
worse than I thought it would be. It is such an odd feeling to have water
poured down your nose with your head back...It was instantaneous...and I
don’t want to say this: absolutely torture.”
JESSE VENTURA WAS WATERBOARDED .
. .
. . . and told
Larry King: “It is no good, because you – I’ll put it to you
this way: you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have
him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
☞ In other words, it can get you to say anything.
But what Larry might have followed up to ask: “Can it get you to reveal
important secrets?”
We hope the answer is ‘no!’ because then
there’s no dilemma. Sure, we should never do it because it’s
torture . . . but, by the way, it doesn’t work anyway.
The more difficult question is whether to do it if it does work.
The answer is still no in almost any conceivable realistic
situation (you know ‘24’ is not realistic because Jack
Bauer’s cell phone never drops a call).
As
suggested by this
McClatchey Newspapers report, former Vice President Cheney has been misleading
us:
[Cheney] quoted the Director of National Intelligence,
Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a
"deeper understanding of the al-Qaida organization that was attacking this
country."
In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the
information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is
no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through
other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the
world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever
benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national
security."
A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's
investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive
interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks,"
according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department
released last month.
FBI Director Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine
in December that he didn't think the techniques disrupted any attacks.
AND THEN THERE’S THIS . . .
Abu Ghraib was perhaps even worse than you thought.
According to this by
Philip Gourevitch, the soldiers who tried to reveal Abu Ghraib for what it was
were rewarded not with Pulitzer Prizes but with prison. If you think we
didn’t torture (we did), read this. If you think the additional photos
should have been released (Gourevitch doesn’t), read this, too.
Tomorrow: 39 MPG