If America Does It, It’s Not Immoral. If A Republican Orders It, It’s Not Illegal.
By Shorter + Scarily Verbatim Michael Goldfarb: People who engage in illegal torture to obtain information so valuable that it, for example, thwarted plots that had already been thwarted a year ago are “American heroes.”
Bonus hackery: “More responsible critics are satisfied to argue that the technique is illegal. Maybe they’re right, but there are plenty of lawyers, and at least one Supreme Court Justice, who will argue the other side of that. It’s not clear the United States government can prosecute a lawyer for holding a minority view.” I was previously unaware of the argument that laws could not be applied if a single person anywhere disagreed with the applicability of the law (with, presumably, bonus points of these disagreements rest on utterly farcical arguments.) I must say that I also don’t recall this standard being deployed by Goldfarb’s magazine during the Clinton impeachment, but admittedly blowjobs are a far more serious concern.