Jose Padilla and the soul of America

The circular reasoning of torture, all laid out with a pretty bow.

The Jose Padilla case is enough to make any American just vomit. The way this country has just eased its way into a torturing, fearful place in which the rule of law simply doesn't exist is the kind of thing we'll look back on in a decade or two and go "What the fuck??"

This could only have been pulled off by a group of people who simply have a misplaced sense of what government is all about, "led " by a man who insists, time and time again, that he "took an oath to protect the people of the United States" (hint to W: You didn't. Ironically, the only oath you took, which you've trashed, is to protect the Constitution). We've finally got some broad push-back on this point, after years of single stories about heroes such as William Kuebler.

I genuinely believe we ourselves will be judged by our reactions to this expansion of power, often used for petty (at best) or evil (at worst) purposes.