I suspect this Allen interview might help him since he’s really laying it on pretty thick. But it’s cool that he’s dedicating the rest of life to the fight against discrimination of all sorts. That’ll be interesting to watch. I guess it was too much for Wolf Blitzer to bring up Allen’s history with white supremacist groups. That wouldn’t have been nice.
TPM Reader JB on the Allen Oprah moment …
Honestly, I feel sorry, deeply sorry for his mother. Him, not so much. Webb needs to be very careful that this doesn’t become a Shakespearean tragedy with this undeserving putz at the center.
I’m fascinated with the operatic dimension of the story, which has built like the best melodramas do.
Here’s what details are available on that torture compromise.
Count me as semi-mystified. I’ve read Justin’s review of the torture deal at Muckraker. And now I’ve read the Post’s run-down too. And I still don’t think I understand precisely what the deal is and who gave what. The point about trials I think I understand. The prosecution must give summaries or redacted versions of classified evidence rather than the raw intel. On the torture front, it’s less clear to me.
Let’s make this the question of the evening. Do you understand the deal? What are your thoughts?
We’re discussing it here over at TPMCafe.
Late Update: I tend to follow Marty Lederman on this stuff. And he thinks the three amigos folded utterly.
Lovely. White House already trying to wriggle out of even the feeble concessions the three amigos won in the torture compromise.
I must confess that I am simply dying to hear what Dean David Broder has to say about this torture compromise. In yesterday’s paper he was positively rhapsodic about his prized Republican moderates channeling Thomas Jefferson and standing up to President Bush’s lawless presidency. He even managed to get in a few digs against the only people who’ve actually opposed this lawless chief exeecutive. So where does he come out now that his ‘independence party’ has conceded most of the points of contention, folded abjectly and basically given up?
(ed.note: I’m reserving some judgment on the ultimate questions here, because the legal terrain is one in which I need to defer to others with more expertise and because the language of the compromise, as far as I can see, has yet to be made public. But it looks pretty bad from everything I’ve seen so far.)
A bit earlier this evening, in the comments section at TPMCafe, I said that from what I could tell the torture compromise is that we agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, only to continue violating them. The Post now has its editorial out. And they appear to have to come to something like the same conclusion. (Can’t wait to hear the Dean’s verdict.) The senate won’t formally reinterpret the Geneva Convention or explicitly sanction the president’s torture policies. But they’ll allow him to keep using them.
That’s the compromise.
The Senate, in this dance, becomes the United States ‘rendering’ prisoners to the executive for illicit torture much as the US renders folks to Syria and Egypt when we really want them to get the treatment.
Or maybe it’s like Pilate washing his hands?
Scooter Libby scores a win in court. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.