You have swayed me not to go to Ankara.

The disturbing thing is the role of torture and abuse in American life. AFP reports:

“Rape, sexual harassment and violence in US jails were on the rise in 2006, with prison guards responsible for more than half the cases, the Department of Justice said Thursday in a report.”

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Sexual_violence_on_the_rise_in_US_p_08162007.html

Hardly surprising though in a country where conservative Christian preachers pray for their political opponents to die:

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=18930

The scary thing is that the Behavior Detection Officers could mistakingly detect bad intentions in your eyes and you could be the next Padilla:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/18923.html

Still though, listening to the Government Boosters on both sides of the aisle disect whether or not “torture up to the point of organ failure” is legal would seem to place the entire discussion in the realm of the brazenly insane. I think the old man, veteren of the Third Marine Division and WWII would have choked on his Coors if he would have heard the discussion going on today.

Watching the testimony of the Executive’s Legal Council in the various NSA Hearings , as well as the Judiciary’s forebearance in the face of the earnest idiocy is little better than the Hee-Haw Kabuki exchange one might find in a polite zoning hearing in any two-bit town in the outback. These people are all talking but they certainly seem to place little value in the stock of their words. When the language is suffering inflation, the thought behind it is nearing bankruptcy.

Every day that goes on , the life of this nation starts to look more and more reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade directing plays with the inmates at Charendon. Our distilled Oligarchs and their media favorites , just like then , seem to find it all charmingly picturesque and worthy of debate.

I suppose its too much to ask to have a member of Congress stand up in that Body-snatched well and call the charade for what it is and enter into Impeachment proceedings that are long long overdue. To put it simply, as soon as you debate torture, you’ve lost.

But, I forget, this assumes we had a “functioning” government instead of some kind of sideshow hatched in the restrooms of K Street.

50 years of “free” television and the counterintuitive logic of relentless commercials seemed to open the field of “debate” to virtually anything. Still though, I have not yet heard any of the wankers mention trepanning in their black satchels of inducement and so we must have some ways to go yet in the ongoing devolution . Another few weeks and we’ll be there for certain.