"You want to know who the biggest hypocrite in the world is? The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers and not for homosexuals. Hypocrite. The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals - sodomites, queers! That’s what it was instituted for, okay? That’s God, he hasn’t changed. Oh, God doesn’t feel that way in the New Testament … God never “felt” anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed," - Pastor Steven L. Anderson, Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Award Glossary here. Most nominations are suggested by readers.
Benen: 'DESECRATING' 9/11?....
As the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, the White House has designated Sept. 11, 2009 as a "National Day of Service." It seems like an appropriate way to honor the tragedy.
But not to everyone. Matthew Vadum has a piece in the far-right American Spectator, arguing that President Obama's service proclamation is part of a plan to "desecrate" 9/11. In all sincerity, this is not a parody:
The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.
This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it's not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing. [...]
The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.
"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day." [...]
With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.
It's hard to know where to start with something like this. There's crazy, and then there's this crazy.
But let's just note a few relevant details. First, George W. Bush called for community volunteer work on the anniversary of 9/11, and the right didn't find it controversial. Second, victims' families have recommended making 9/11 a national day of service for years. Third, Alex Koppelman explained, "Check out the official Web site set up for the day: They're asking people to come up with their own events. So if you don't want to help out at anti-American places like food banks and community gardens, you can organize your own event."
What's more, while the Vadum piece is obviously bizarre, it's also worth remembering that these disturbed ideas were quickly embraced by other far-right bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and another site that argued the president is calling for "mandatory civilian service" as part of Obama's drive to build "his civilian army."
Conservative bloggers pick the strangest things to get excited about.
Benen: CHENEY'S CLAIMS PUT TO THE TEST...
For much of the Spring, Dick Cheney received more than this share of media attention, insisting that there were documents proving the efficacy of Bush-era torture. For the most part, the claims were largely irrelevant -- torture is illegal, it undermines our national security interests, intelligence can be gleaned through legitimate methods, and President Obama disavowed its use.
But Cheney kept pushing, insisting that the administration should declassify pro-torture materials, which would prove that "enhanced interrogations" produced life-saving intelligence. His political allies and a variety of media figures endorsed his demands. Yesterday, the documents were published for the first time, and the former vice president was delighted. Should he have been?
Spencer Ackerman took a closer look.
Strikingly, [the documents] provide little evidence for Cheney's claims that the "enhanced interrogation" program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages -- though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA's interrogations. [...]
[P]erhaps the blacked-out lines of the memos specifically claim and document that torture and only torture yielded this information. But what's released within them does not remotely make that case. Cheney's public account of these documents have conflated the difference between information acquired from detainees, which the documents present, and information acquired from detainees through the enhanced interrogation program, which they don't.
In a statement, Tom Parker, the policy director of Amnesty International's American branch, said, "Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Vice President Cheney's track record, the two CIA memos released today are hardly the slam dunk we had been led to expect. There is little or no supporting evidence in either memo to give substance to the specific claims about impending attacks made by Khaled Shaik Mohammed in highly coercive circumstances."
Patrick Appel has more, including this conclusion: "The documents are heavily redacted, but nothing we can read refers to torture techniques providing solid information.... It's worth repeating that no one denies torture produces information. It produces loads of information, most of it bad. The same or better information can be collected through other techniques and, again, nothing in these documents compares and contrasts these methods."
Dick Cheney's claims haven't stood up well to scrutiny. Imagine that.
Bodenner (Daily Dish): Hiding Behind The CIA
From Cheney's statement:
The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions.
Now compare that compassion with his words for Lynndie England just six months ago:
At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulations, and simple decency. For the harm they did, to Iraqi prisoners and to America's cause, they deserved and received Army justice. And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful, and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men.
As Andrew wrote:
Look at the photos again. Forced nudity: approved by Cheney. Hooding: approved by Cheney. Stress positions: approved by Cheney. Use of dogs: approved by Cheney.
Power drills and mock executions: not approved by Cheney. Right?
Appel (Daily Dish): Exploiting The Vestiges Of Decency
After hearing that a CIA interrogator threatened to kill the children of a detainee, Julian Sanchez feels shame:
I guess what especially turns my stomach here is that the idea wasn’t just to inflict mental anguish on a presumably odious man in order to extract information. It was to inflict that pain by exploiting, as a weakness, whatever flicker of nobility or love remained in an otherwise wretched soul. It was a method of torture that would have been effective only because and to the extent there was something human left in him. Maybe I’m being overly sentimental, but every cell in my body is telling me this is sick and wrong.
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