RTFA: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4496829n

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Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin share their thoughts on the best and worst parts of current Vice President Dick Cheney’s career. Katie Couric reports.

Good point in the CBS comment thread: just because Biden has tons of experience with interviews doesn’t mean he’s the better candidate. Biden is a known critic of Cheney, so is this answer surprising? …but once again, I think this clip speaks to the preparedness of the two VP candidates.

It’s possible to be critical of Cheney’s actions without getting overly partisan.

For example, consider Cheney’s closed-door Energy Task Force which happens to have preceded the Enron scandal, California’s blackouts, inflation of energy costs unseen since the 1970s, and the inherent conflict of interest involved in being the former CEO of Halliburton, an energy services company. By the way: Halliburton has moved its headquarters from Texas to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, with the partial justification being that it will reduce costs by lowering their taxes.

As another example, consider the infamous Cheney decision to shoot down United Flight 93, which was the 9/11 hijacking airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania. According to the official 9/11 Report, Cheney deliberated over this decision in “the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.” Those are literally the words. While I do not disagree with the decision, I would like to believe that a world leader would be more considerate in a situation like that.

There are Cheney’s repeated attempts to deceive the US people into believing that Iraq was somehow involved with 9/11, even though there was no evidence to support this … even though Cheney’s office has now been convicted of criminal activity in attempting to fabricate the evidence and cover it up. It was Cheney’s office (if not Cheney himself) who blew Plame’s CIA cover, in retaliation for questioning the Iraq-9/11 link. …and Palin was caught red-handed repeating the Cheney rhetoric.

Finally, there is the duck hunting incident, and the attempt to cover it up during the days immediately following. It’s embarrassing, in the first place, but the attempt to keep the story from the media is par for the course, and damning.

…but that is seriously the worst Palin is willing to be critical of? This is scandalously wrong! As Biden points out, detention and torture is wrong, and so is Unitary Executive Theory. Palin seems to have no problems with any of this, and that in and of itself is troubling.

RTFA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic…

“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

Ultimately, after millennia of consideration, the human practice of law and legal progress has concluded: that there are no laws. Who saw that one coming?

I find myself exclaiming, “wow,” with increasing regularity, probably due to the fact that it’s such an interesting time to be alive.

RTFA: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/vo…

But it was Val’s voice that haunted his dreams after he left the show. Even eight months later, Pham still has conflicting emotions. While he didn’t find his isolation therapeutic, he says it was worthwhile simply for the experience. Even at the depths of his pain and humiliation, he could appreciate the show’s entertainment value. “It’s very hard to explain,” he says of the ball gag, which he cites as both a high and low point. “You’re trying to ham it up and let yourself have fun, entertain them, making the best of a pretty horrible situation. It’s like when you’re on death row. How sad can you be on death row? You’ve got to at least have as much fun as you can when you know you’re coming to an end.”
Stanford University psychologist Phil Zimbardo might classify Pham’s attitude as a rationalization. The professor emeritus is best known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, wherein students were divided into two groups-guards and prisoners-and placed in a mock prison setup. Within days, the students were subsumed by their roles. The guards turned cruel and the prisoners suffered emotional breakdowns rather than walk away, as they were free to do. “They became prisoners,” Zimbardo recalls.
He hasn’t watched Solitary-the reality genre is distasteful in his view-but he was repelled by what I told him about it. “My sense is it’s a debasement of human nature, and it doesn’t matter if the process is a competition, a game show, or a war,” he says. Nor does Zimbardo buy Hiatt’s claim that Solitary has therapeutic value. “Is it therapeutic for me to shit on you?” counters the psychologist. “Well, yeah, because then you realize you’re not as prideful as you thought you were.”

Wow - Fox made a torture show, inspired by Abu Ghraib and the famously unethical Stanford Prison Study.

Just, wow. Oh, did I mention they’re making a third season of the show?

WOW.

RTFA: http://www.metafilter.com/68915/Psychologists-Prot…

Citing the organization’s “sharp shift in values and direction,” Ken Pope, prominent member of the American Psychological Association (and a former chair of its Ethics Committee), resigned his membership on February 6. He’s the latest of a growing number of professional psychologists who have quit APA in protest of its position on the use of psychologists in government interrogations in the “War on Terror.”

The APA has stopped short of banning members from conducting torture, and instead has issued statements that prohibit members from performing specific actions during interrogation. It has become clear that certain APA members are actively involved in torture on behalf of the US government, and although the APA has been pressed on the issue, the APA has remained silent. Therefore, the statements by the APA that would condemn torture have been shown to be hollow.

In all, this amounts to a tacit approval of torture practices by APA members.

RTFA: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/us/18gitmo.html?…

This spring, the stoner screwball movie of 2004, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” will get a sequel. This time, because of some unfortunate confusion on an airplane between a “bong” and a “bomb,” our slacker antiheroes are shipped off to the moviemakers’ idea of the worst prison imaginable. On April 25, on a screen near you: “Harold and Kumar Escape From Guant�namo Bay.”Seriously, dude. Six years after the detention camp opened on Cuban shores, officials in Washington continue to consider its fate. The charges filed last Monday against six detainees in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks are renewing international focus on the prison and the policy discussion about whether it is part of the solution or part of the problem.

Wow. Just… wow.

RTFA: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/01/documentary-c…

Three years in the making, Jon Ronson’s Crazy Rulers of the World explores the apparent madness at the heart of US military intelligence. With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary — and plain bizarre — national secrets at the core of George W Bush’s war on terror.

No comment. Oh - watch this.