Richard Cohen Is Even More Morally Bankrupt Than I Thought

Good lord:

Now he is in American custody. What will happen? How do we get him to reveal his group's plans and the names of his colleagues? It will be hard. It will, in fact, be harder than it used to be. He can no longer be waterboarded. He knows this. He cannot be deprived of more than a set amount of sleep. He cannot be beaten or thrown up against even a soft wall. He cannot be threatened with shooting or even frightened by the prospect of an electric drill. Nothing really can be threatened against his relatives -- that they will be killed or sexually abused.

Well, I guess what might happen is that interrogators will have to use methods that actually, you know, work. Which might lead to actual, you know, good intelligence...with the added benefit that such proper interrogation is not illegal, unconstitutional, or morally bankrupt. Kind of a win/win, don't you think?

No one can possibly believe that America is now safer because of the new restrictions on enhanced interrogation and the subsequent appointment of a special prosecutor. The captured terrorist of my fertile imagination, assuming he had access to an Internet cafe, knows about the special prosecutor. He knows his interrogator is under scrutiny. What person under those circumstances is going to spill his beans?

Actually, Dick, I do. I believe that America is now safer now that we won't be torturing false answers out of people desperate to make the torture stop. I believe that America is now safer because our intelligence officers now know that they can no longer torture prisoners to death in ways that expose our own forces to torture and death in the event of their capture.

So, you know, there's one person for you. Why don't you go find another straw man to beat up, you sad, sad excuse for a pundit?

Maureen Dowd is Seen as Petty and Shallow

Maureen Dowd in today's NYT. Where to begin? Well, Glenn Greenwald already took care of the lede ("And in this one short passage, on vivid, revolting display is every repellent attribute that defines the Standard Modern Political Journalist"), so I'll jump to the corrupt heart of the thing:

She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.

Um, Maureen? Maybe she won her senate seat "after being embarrassed by a man," but she certainly didn't win it because she had been embarrassed by a man. She won it because Rudy bailed from the race for health reasons, and she ended up running against a relatively young congressman who was just completely out of his depth. At least, that's what I was thinking when I cast my ballot for her...not, "Well, Bill cheated on her, so she deserves my vote." Maybe several million New Yorkers are as shallow as you think, but I doubt it.

I also love the "[s]he was seen as so controlling" comment. Says who? Could you, you know, cite to a public opinion survey before you make such a sweeping statement about how New Yorkers perceived Hillary eight years ago? Just because you saw her as "too controlling" doesn't make it so for millions of other people. Here's an example: Maureen Dowd is seen as petty, shallow, and a symbol of everything that is juvenile and rotten in our political press.

How this kind of puerile drivel passes for informed political commentary is beyond me.