I was all ready

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I was all ready to have some fun with David Broder when he had to take stock of the torture cave-in by the senators he was so wildly lionizing last week. But before I do that, take a look at his Sunday column. It’s like he’s lost his mind. He’s become almost messianic in his adulation of this ‘independence movement’ that as far as I can tell doesn’t even exist.

I know that sounds like trash talk, insult over analysis. But seriously, read the column and tell me whether you think I’m so far off the mark.

But back to the torture question. Last week the confrontation over torture and kangaroo courts was the critical turning point in the battle between the lawless Bush presidency and the ‘independents’, a moment with a truly “epic dimension”.

By now I think it is fair to say that there is a consensus not only on both sides of the aisle but both among policy experts and political analysts that the three senators caved. Perhaps not abjectly, though I would argue they did. But President Bush got what he needed on this epic question of “both constitutional and international law.”

With all that gushing I was more than a little eager to see what Broder made of the come-down.

But he seems to have decided that brevity is the soul of wisdom. Or rather, sub-brevity.

He doesn’t mention it at all. The word ‘torture’, the whole topic, go wholly unmentioned in the Dean’s second paean to independence. Epic last week, old hat this week.

How can we think that there’s anything more here than a long twilight struggle to make politics safe for those willing to stand up for and cater to insiderism?

Sound and fury, David.

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