"I was 26 when the war ended... That was considered too old for marriage, in those times."

"I did not want to marry a bad, older man, and no single men came to me.... I was afraid to die alone.... I wanted someone to lean on in my old age. I wanted a child of my own."

McCain "pressed Hagel on whether he stood by his opposition to the decision to surge U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007."

"Hagel, who once called the surge the 'most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam' resisted McCain’s repeated attempts to solicit a 'yes' or 'no' answer."

"I’m not going to give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I’ll defer that to the judgment of history... I did question the surge. I always ask the question: Is this going to be worth the sacrifice? We lost almost 1,200 Americans and thousands of wounded. Was it required? Was it necessary? I’m not sure. I’m not that certain that it was required."

"Unlike so many of the lemmings and partisans of Washington DC, Hagel actually called out the catastrophe of the Iraq War as it happened."

"The neocons cannot forgive him for exposing what they wrought on the nation and the world. For good measure, he has a Purple Heart and has served in combat. Not easy to say about most of the Iraq War armchair warriors and war criminals."

ADDED: That link goes to Andrew Sullivan (discussing Peter Beinart), but if you want your choice of links to uproar over Hagel, there are plenty at Memeorandum.

"What a liar" — famously muttered into an open mike.

It's the one thing I've always remembered about Daniel K. Inouye.

Dead now, at age 88.

Inouye was a World War II hero and Medal of Honor winner who lost an arm to a German hand grenade during a battle in Italy. He became the first Japanese-American to serve in Congress, when he was elected to the House in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state. He won election to the Senate three years later and served there longer than anyone in American history except Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010 after 51 years in the Senate....

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson urged Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had won the Democratic nomination for president, to select Inouye as his running mate. Johnson told Humphrey that Inouye's World War II injuries would silence Humphrey's critics on the Vietnam War.

"He answers Vietnam with that empty sleeve. He answers your problems with (Republican presidential candidate Richard) Nixon with that empty sleeve," Johnson said.

But Inouye was not interested.

Email from John Kerry: "I have one message burned into my memory..."

What?! I can't believe Kerry would evoke his old "memory which is seared — seared — in me" line. If you don't have that seared in your memory, here's a 2004 WaPo article, "Kerry's Cambodia Whopper."

It's weird to get email from a character from the past and have it begin with, essentially, remember me, the big liar. The email reads:

I have one message burned into my memory for everyone who cares about the outcome of this year's presidential election:

Respond quickly and powerfully to attacks from the other side...

If you tune in to the convention, you'll see that Mitt Romney and his allies have no qualms about misleading voters if it means defeating President Obama.

But their attacks won't work if enough people step up to protect the President's record.

Meanwhile, over on Rush Limbaugh's show, the complaint is that the Republicans are afraid to attack Obama. After the first night of the convention, he quotes Fox News commentator Ed Rollins, who said: "Not hitting on Obama was a perfect way to go. We all know the Obama record and don't need to have it reinforced." That exasperates Rush:

Clearly what we've known for years is true. The Republican hierarchy, from its consultants on down, truly believes that mentioning Obama by name and then criticizing will cause these swing voters that [focus groupster Frank] Luntz had that I told you about to run straight back to the Democrats. It is clear they believe it.

Naturally, I profoundly disagree.

But I think also it's obvious that these people don't see this as a turning point election. They see it as just another one in the cycle. Here's Joe Trippi. Joe Trippi is a Democrat consultant. Trippi ran Howard Dean's ill-fated campaign in 2004 when John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way) ended up being the nominee. He was also on the Fox show this morning. After Ed Rollins said, "Yep, yep! Not hitting Obama was the perfect way to go," Joe Trippi said...

TRIPPI: Christie last night, there's been some disappointment he didn't go after Obama enough. But what he did was talk to the undecideds out there. If he had pounded on Obama in that way, I think it woulda turned those people off.

RUSH: Folks, I'm literally going insane hearing this. I want to know why these independents don't get turned off when Obama calls Romney a murderer and a felon. Why is it that independents only get turned off? Why is it that our guys are agreeing with a Democrat consultant? Why is it that the independents only get turned off when we're critical? And we're not even being "critical" when we tell the truth!

Did you notice the name John Kerry in there?

Kerry's name came up in a different point in the show yesterday, when I caller said:

You know what, Rush, I am so sick of the Democrats painting Mitt Romney as some out of touch rich guy.  I mean, can we say John Kerry, John Edwards, Algore, and you know I see Kerry is scheduled to speak at the DNC next week.... So they're actually featuring the most out of touch rich guy at their own convention.  I mean, how can they get away with this, Rush?

Rush said:

'Cause he's a Democrat, and Democrats care about poor people and Republicans don't, and that's it.  I'm doing this my 25th year.  I have every day, for 24-plus years, said what you just said.  I've been pointing it out.  I've written columns about it. I've said it on TV. I've said it on radio. I've made speeches about it.  Kerry is five times wealthier than Romney, and... he inherited it all, and he's much more flagrant in his consumption of his wealth.... than Romney is. 

I think he means that Kerry married into money. His wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry inherited her money, which Kerry married into. 

Romney gave away his inheritance.  He gave it away.  He donated it to charity.  Look, I understand your frustration, 'cause you don't like being on defense.  Why do we have to respond to these guys?  They feel the need to do it because the truth still isn't out there, and it's wrapped up in something that isn't complicated at all.  Kerry is a Democrat; they care about the poor.  Republicans only care about the rich and Wall Street, and that's what doofuses, morons, in this country believe.  The people who are not informed, who think they're lifelong Democrats, born and raised hearing that every day of their lives, particularly if they're members of unions, that's what they've heard.

I must say I did not know that Mitt Romney gave away his inheritance. I hear it said over and over that he was born into money, and I don't remember ever hearing that Romney gave the money he inherited from his father away. But it's true. He gave the money to found a school at Brigham Young University.

Why don't we hear more about it? I assume it's the same thing Ann Romney was talking about the other night: "Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point." In my mind, this connects to what Jesus said about charity and good works:

Be careful! When you do good things, don't do them in front of people to be seen by them. If you do that, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

When you give to the poor, don't be like the hypocrites. They blow trumpets in the synagogues and on the streets so that people will see them and honor them. I tell you the truth, those hypocrites already have their full reward. So when you give to the poor, don't let anyone know what you are doing. Your giving should be done in secret. Your Father can see what is done in secret, and he will reward you.

And yet the task at the moment is winning the Presidency (not heaven). We're told people don't find Romney likeable enough, and the Democrats pound away on the message that he's a horrible man. He doesn't care about people.

Jesus said:

People will insult you and hurt you. They will lie and say all kinds of evil things about you because you follow me. But when they do, you will be blessed. Rejoice and be glad, because you have a great reward waiting for you in heaven. People did the same evil things to the prophets who lived before you. 

But then, reading on, we see:

"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its salty taste, it cannot be made salty again. It is good for nothing, except to be thrown out and walked on.

"You are the light that gives light to the world. A city that is built on a hill cannot be hidden. And people don't hide a light under a bowl. They put it on a lampstand so the light shines for all the people in the house. In the same way, you should be a light for other people. Live so that they will see the good things you do and will praise your Father in heaven.

That's saying let your good works show. I don't want to say Jesus contradicted himself. Commenters will explain this seeming discrepancy, which is undoubtedly the subject of numerous sermons that I have not sat through. But I have read that passage many times over the years.

And... city on a hill. City on a hill! Talk about your Republican conventions.

Prof. Stone says it's "depressing" that the Court's "fleeting expletives" opinion repeatedly used "f***" and "s***"...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

"Katzenbach finally interrupted and said he knew about the Constitution, but a man could be a damn fool and be constitutional."

From David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" (p. 345), reporting what the Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach said when Secretary of State Dean Rusk, not wanting to pressure LBJ about Vietnam, "gave Katzenbach a long dissertation on the constitutional prerogatives of the President."

Nicholas Katzenbach died yesterday. He was 90.

There was speculation that Mr. Katzenbach left as attorney general [in 1966] in part to make way for Ramsey Clark, an assistant attorney general. President Johnson, it was said, wanted to make a historic appointment to the Supreme Court, choosing Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice. Appointing Mr. Clark would prod his father, Justice Tom C. Clark, to resign from the bench to avoid a conflict of interest with his son. Ramsey Clark was appointed, Justice Clark did resign and Justice Marshall did succeed him.

As the No. 2 official at State, Mr. Katzenbach defended the legality of United States involvement in Vietnam, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August 1967 to argue that the Tonkin Gulf resolution, passed by Congress in 1964, had given the president the authority to widen the war.

Opponents of the war had hoped that he would follow in [the footsteps of the man he replaced, George W. Ball,] and challenge the administration’s policies from within. Mr. Katzenbach took a quieter tack, setting up a secret working group — “the Non-group,” he called it — to pursue ways to end the war. Mr. Katzenbach later said the group had added shades of gray to policy discussions and had contributed to bombing halts.

Another passage from "The Best and the Brightest" (pp. 420-421):

For Lyndon Johnson, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was a victory, but like so many things he was to do in the coming year, it produced short-range gains with far more serious long-range problems. (However, ironically, the lack of legal authority for the war continued to bother not just the critics of the war but the President as well, and in 1965, as the escalation mounted, he turned to Nicholas Katzenbach, the Attorney General, and asked, “Don’t I need more authority for what I’m doing?” Katzenbach assured him that he did not, that on a legal basis he had all the authority he needed with the Tonkin Resolution. But Johnson was still bothered by the idea, and he raised the same point with his congressional liaison people and his friends on the Hill, and they told him not to go for more legal justification, that he would get hit from two sides: by the people who opposed him on the war, and by those who supported him but thought they had given him enough authority already.)

"This grasping at straws was just the capstone to what even liberal observers admitted was a week of self-immolation..."

I'm annoyed that I can't get into that article — about the SG's argument in the Obamacare case — because I don't have a subscription to the Weekly Standard. Now, I'll never know whether that article contains a funnier mixed metaphor than that.

What are those images?

Self-immolation is deliberately setting oneself on fire. I picture dramatic protests from the Vietnam era, but it's been going on for centuries:

It was Western media coverage of Buddhist monks immolating themselves in protest of the South Vietnamese regime in 1963 that introduced the word "self-immolation" to a wide English-speaking audience and gave it a strong association with fire. The alternative name bonzo comes from the same era, because the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves were often referred to by the term bonze in English literature prior to the mid-20th century...

Bonzo! Most Americans think of that Ronald Reagan movie when we hear "Bonzo." Perhaps some think of Led Zeppelin. But fiery suicide, to make a political point? That's new to me.

A capstone is "a stone that caps or crowns." I'm quoting the OED, where we can see the metaphorical use of the word goes back to 1685: "Here is the fair occasion... to put the cap-stone upon his other perfections" (tr. B. Gracián y Morales Courtiers Oracle 150). By the way, the Great Pyramid is missing its capstone. Ever notice? Makes you want to put an eye there:



Okay, now what about grasping at straws? What's the image there? I realize I've always pictured ants trying to get out of water by climbing onto some bit of straw. Focusing on that for the first time, I can see that grasping at straws would probably work for an ant. You're supposed to picture a human being trying to escape drowning and desperately grasping at anything, no matter how absurdly useless it is. Wiktionary tells me that the image goes back Thomas More, "Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation" (1534). More is talking about people who will not seek the "comfort" of God. Some of them are completely lethargic — "so drowned in sorrow that they fall into a careless deadly dullness." Others are so "testy" and "fuming" that you don't even want to talk to them. Then there are people who do want to be comforted. Some of them "seek for worldly comfort":

He who in tribulation turneth himself unto worldly vanities, to get help and comfort from them, fareth like a man who in peril of drowning catcheth whatsoever cometh next to hand, and that holdeth he fast, be it never so simple a stick. But then that helpeth him not, for he draweth that stick down under the water with him, and there they lie both drowned together. So surely, if we accustom ourselves to put our trust of comfort in the delight of these childish worldly things, God shall for that foul fault suffer our tribulation to grow so great that all the pleasures of this world shall never bear us up, but all our childish pleasure shall drown with us in the depth of tribulation.

You know, that eye on the pyramid, as seen on the Great Seal of the United States dollar bill is the "Eye of Providence":

On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words Annuit Cœptis, meaning "He approves (or has approved) [our] undertakings", and Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning "New Order of the Ages". The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country. The lowest level of the pyramid shows the year 1776 in Roman numerals. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God, favors the prosperity of the United States.

Have we gone so deeply into the mixed metaphor that it's all coming together somehow?

"Now videogamers can play the role of Ho Chi Minh's communist forces as they rout French colonists in a blood-spattered shoot'em-up."

"We in Vietnam aren't that familiar with World War II but we still enjoy the 'Call of Duty' games... Anybody can enjoy any game, as long as it's fun and rewarding."

"President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement..."

"... and it may cost them the 2012 election, "says pollster Douglas Schoen (in the Wall Street Journal).

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda....

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

It's obviously risky for Obama to identify too closely with these people, but there are also risks in distancing himself. If you look at the various statements by Obama and his advisers, I think you'll see that they have positioned themselves in the middle ground with the message: We understand the protests as an emotional expression about current economic conditions. There's no identification with the protesters' abstract ideology or policy proposals — which Schoen's polling may reveal, but which are not that apparent in the protests. So Obama may have the right strategy: Characterize the protests as inarticulate cries of pain about problems that are real and that affect all Americans.

Schoen cites the 1970 elections — the midterm of the Nixon administration — when Democrats should have gained ground but lost by "aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats [as] many middle-class and working-class Americans ended up supporting hawkish candidates who condemned student disruptions." The Democrats who won, Schoen says, were the ones who acted enthusiastic about law and order. So Schoen — who was a pollster for Bill Clinton — recommends that Democrats eschew the "huge new spending programs and tax increases" that the protesters would like and please moderates by "opposing bailouts and broad-based tax increases."

But let's examine the 1970 analogy. The antiwar protesters pushed a very specific policy: ending the Vietnam War. A politician couldn't characterize their noise as an inarticulate cry of pain. If you sided with them, you were opposed to the war.

So I'm not convinced that moderate voters will punish Obama for taking his "I feel your pain" approach to the protesters. The rest of America also feels that pain, and Obama is good at performing empathy. Make it all very general and emotional, and let that emotional fuzz further obscure the already vague policy notions in the mushy heads of the protesters.

True, moderate Americans dislike disorder, but how hard is that to deal with? Up to a point, merge it with the "expression of pain" interpretation. And if it goes too far and there is actual violence, you do what all the moderate folk do when there is violence: Deplore it.

How Dan Quayle got into law school through affirmative action — a controversy from 1988.

Perhaps you remember the challenges to Dan Quayle, who was the GOP VP nominee in 1988 (and later served as VP under George H.W. Bush):

[Quayle] was questioned about a report that he had been admitted to Indiana University Law School as part of a program designed for students whose grades and aptitude test scores were so low they would not have been admitted in the regular admission process....

Mr. Quayle acknowledged earlier that he had persuaded the dean to admit him despite poor grades at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind....

Professor [Charles] Kelso said he did not remember Mr. Quayle and was certain that neither his family nor his wealth had played any role in his admission to the course.

I remember discussing this matter at the time, perhaps with another Wisconsin law professor. My interlocutor said that an applicant who shows up in person and makes a persuasive argument demonstrates a determination and skill that might justify admitting him to law school. These are qualities, seen in person, that might not appear in the cold numbers of the LSAT and the GPA and that are in fact relevant to the applicant's aptitude for lawyering.

I said: But what about everyone else who got rejected? If they had known there was another way to get in, they might have wanted to appear in person in front of the dean and show that they too were brimming with lawyerly promise unmeasured in standardized tests. If there is a second way to get in, there should be a competition there too. The dean who let Quayle in on alternate grounds may have seen value in the man who appeared before him, but did he fully visualize the others who might have presented themselves too? Was Quayle really the best of them? The dean had no way to know.

My interlocutor retrenched: If there is a secret backdoor route into the law school, the applicant who is able to find it has manifested a special skill that would be irrelevant if the school made it plain to all that there is an alternate admissions path that uses an interview with the dean. My interlocutor had to concede that there is no way the law school dean would put up with interviews with every rejected applicant who wanted to take the trouble to show up in Indianapolis to plead his case.

I said: So a law school should make a special point of admitting the guy who realizes the official process might not be the only way to get what you want and who has the nerve to decide that his personal interests transcend the importance of equal rules for all and to take up the time of a busy person (the dean) and to promote his individual case? Well, maybe that is the attitude a client wants from his lawyer, and maybe it's okay that their lawyer couldn't score well enough on the LSAT to get into Indiana.

But I couldn't accept the law school dean's failure to treat Dan Quayle like the other rejected applicants. I thought and still think that it was the moral failing of valuing the seen over the unseen. Quayle showed up in person: Here I am, see my worthiness! But all the other rejected applicants were human beings too. Imagine them, all of them, and what they might have argued in pursuit of their goals.

***

By chance, the linked article — which I dug out of the NYT archive — contains another seen-and-unseen issue:

Outside the plant about 150 protesters carried signs that said such things as ''Draft Dodger Quayle - Who Died in Your Place?'' - a reference to his decision to join the Indiana National Guard in the Vietnam War.

If you opposed the Vietnam War and evaded the draft, did you truly visualize the person who went in your place?

"Should a two-time Oscar-winner like Jane Fonda really be making a spectacle out of the fact that she wanted to appear on a home-shopping channel?"

Asks Big Hollywood, noting Jane's plaint:

I was to have been on QVC today to introduce my book, “Prime Time,” about aging and the life cycle....

The network said they got a lot of calls yesterday criticizing me for my opposition to the Vietnam War and threatening to boycott the show if I was allowed to appear.

Bottom line, this has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us.

Big Hollywood has a few quibbles with some of those assertions.

Poor Jane! Getting old... and just wants to sell her book about getting old. We're all getting old, and Jane has always been about capturing — and purveying — the spirit of whatever time she happened to be in. With that mindset, it's hard to understand the depth of feeling some people have about the past.

Remember 80s Jane?

Will no one shed a tear for Jerome Corsi?

Corsi wrote the much promoted book: "Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President."

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #36 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > One-L
#1 in Books > Nonfiction > Government
#1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law

#1 in Constitutional Law? Does that hurt, o fellow conlawprofs? Check out the rest of the list? How far down do you have to go before you see a book on constitutional law that you respect? But anyway... who can pity Corsi? He got his #1 book. But no, the book won't be released until May 17, so everyone who's put in an order for the book, everyone who made that book #1, should go right into their Amazon account and delete the book. Or will the publisher find a way to withdraw it and redo it so that it becomes super-timely? Some new chapter espousing some trumped up conspiracy theory about the birth certificate and its release.

James Taranto got me thinking about Corsi:

Jerome Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President" has an official release date of May 17. Corsi must be wishing he'd pushed the date up to yesterday...

Presumably Obama could have made this request [Hawaii's Department of Health] at any time, so why now?...

It's an amusing thought if an idle one that perhaps Obama did this just to stick it to Corsi, whose book reportedly hit No. 1 on Amazon after Drudge promoted it. John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking former junior senator from Massachusetts who by the way served in Vietnam, is probably smiling. After all, Corsi was co-author, with John O'Neill, of "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry."

But Kerry really was unfit for command, whereas contrary to Corsi's new book, Obama, fit or not, is legally qualified to be president. "We don't have time for such silliness," Obama said at his briefing today. Then, as John Podhoretz notes, the president "flew off to Chicago to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show."

"Chicago is up in the house!"/"He's never nipped at anybody but he barks and growls"/"I wanna be your dog"...

... "Everyone left is from Chicago"/"It's the love-in of a lifetime"/"People are going to be really embarrassed some day to look back and realize that they had joined in on something that was really a mistake and they chose the wrong side and that they joined it with such fervor"/"Did you ever do that when you were young?"



All this video was recorded yesterday... except the flashback. (That was originally blogged on February 17th.)

And here's the NYT article on "self-compassion" that I talk about in the car.

"The biggest hero of the Vietnam War" has died.

Vang Pao was 81.

The Hmong are a tribe in the fog-shrouded mountains separating Laos from southern China, and they were natural allies for the C.I.A. because of their enmity toward Laotian lowlanders to the south, who dominated the Communist leadership.

General Vang Pao quickly organized 7,000 guerrillas, then steadily increased the force to 39,000, leading them in many successful battles, often against daunting odds. William Colby, C.I.A. director in the mid-1970s, called him “the biggest hero of the Vietnam War.”

Lionel Rosenblatt, president emeritus of Refugees International, in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 2008, put it more bluntly, saying General Vang Pao’s Hmong were put “into this meat grinder, mostly to save U.S. soldiers from fighting and dying there.”

According to Bush, Abu Zabeta wanted all "the brothers" to be waterboarded until they broke so they, like him, would get "the chance to be able to fulfill their duty."

I think this is the most interesting thing George Bush said in the interview with Matt Lauer that aired on NBC last night. The topic was waterboarding, which Bush said he believed was legal "because the lawyer said it was legal." The technique was used to get information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who, they had good reason to think, had valuable information, it worked to "save lives," and his job was "to protect America and I did." Then Matt Lauer brought up "another guy you write about in the book, Abu Zabeta, another high profile terror suspect":

LAUER: He was waterboarded. By the way, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, according to most reports, 183 times. This guy was waterboarded more than 80 times. And you explain that his understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation up to a certain point and waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold and fulfill his religious duty and then cooperate. And you have a quote from him. "You must do this for all the brothers." End quote.

BUSH: Yeah. Isn't that interesting?

LAUER: Abu Zabeta really went to someone and said, "You should waterboard all the brothers?"

BUSH: He didn't say that. He said, "You should give brothers the chance to be able to fulfill their duty." I don't recall him saying you should water-- I think it's-- I think it's an assumption in your case.

LAUER: Yeah, I-- when "You must do this for--"

BUSH: But…

LAUER: …"All the brothers." So to let them get to that threshold?

BUSH: Yeah, that's what-- that's how I interpreted.

What do you think really happened? Was Abu Zabeta's quote fabricated? Was it real, but some kind of sarcastic taunt? Perhaps it was his way to justify himself, after he'd caved to pressure, by saying that under his principles, he'd done his duty. Bush seems to interpret it to mean that the detainees would appreciate being waterboarded until they broke so they could fulfill their duty.

That got me thinking about John McCain. This is from his 2008 speech accepting the GOP nomination:

A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.

When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.

I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.

No one would wish to be tortured/subjected to enhanced interrogation, but, after the fact, human beings find ways to process the experience. It's generally known — isn't it? — that at some point everyone breaks, and the standard answer to the shame of breaking is that you held out as long as you could. Both Abu Zabeta and John McCain understood their experience that way. I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. How much of the rest of McCain's thoughts were mirrored in the mind of Abu Zabeta?

The new Miss World is a United Statesian.

Alexandria Mills.

What's her favorite book? "'Guess how much I love you,'my mom used to read it with me." Don't laugh. I'll bet most of the people you know, if they were being honest, would name a children's book as their favorite book.

Tell us a little something about your Country?

The USA is a melting pot for all cultures. My home town is famous for the Kentucky Derby Horse Race.

Yeah, the USA, la la la... let me tell you about Louisville! Louisville, Kentucky:

"... Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.... Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin... If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace."

That reminds me. The Rally to Restore Sanity is happening today. Are you there? Are you watching it on C-SPAN? Sanity. Are you up for sanity today? I've got the sanity rally recording on the DVR and I'm going to scroll through it — I say "scroll through" these days, not "fast-forward" — later. Meanwhile, remember when the smart reaction to politics was insanity, back when we read Hunter S. Thompson essays?

A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless [censored]! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in Kentucky."

"I was there when it happened, asleep in an apartment about eight blocks east of Sterling Hall."

Michael Haz writes about the bombing that took place here in Madison 40 years ago today:

The blast threw me out of bed. I scrambled into the dark hallway and ran into others; we all thought that a bomb had been detonated in the basement of our building. We ran apartment-to-apartment making certain everyone was awake and okay. Then we helped the grad students get their notes, manuscript drafts, computer data cards, etc. out of their apartments in into cars for safe keeping.

We heard the approaching sirens of emergency vehicles, and were astonished when they went past rather than stopping. It slowly dawned that the explosion hadn't been in our building, but was somewhere on campus.

More and more emergency vehicles raced past. They were heading in the direction of the (old) University Hospital. A neighbor said "My God, did a boiler at the hospital explode?" We got dressed and ran toward the hospital, partly from curiosity, and partly to offer help evacuating patients from the hospital.

The street was filled with glass three blocks away. We got to Sterling Hall, which was across a narrow street from the hospital, and saw that it's front had been blown off. One side of the hospital had been severely damaged; its windows were gone. Nearby buildings were heavily damaged and buildings several blocks away lost their windows. There was a crater where the explosion had occurred.

My roommate asked a fireman "What happened?" He answered "It was a bomb." That answer was shocking. How could it have been a bomb? You mean someone did this on purpose? How can that be? the peace movement isn't about bombs, it's about peace?!

A cordon was set up and we were pushed back. Standing near a fire truck so I could hear its radio I heard a fireman report finding one body in Sterling Hall. Stunned, I stood for a few more minutes than walked back to my apartment.

Two days later I cut my shoulder length hair and notified my landlord that I wouldn't remain as a tenant for the fall term.

I was done with UW and Madison, except for completing my studies. I rented and apartment west of Middleton and commuted, spending as little time on campus as possible. I didn't attend my graduation.

The anti-war movement was a sham; a cover for violent anarchists. It wasn't actually anti-war; it was mostly anti-draft, and nothing more. It was over-indulged white males who didn't want to be conscripted. It would never have happened if there hadn't been a draft.

I don't have a romantic version of the late 60s in my head. I lived through it, it was horrible. Sure, the music was good, the weed was abundant, "liberated" coeds eschewed underwear, and contraceptive sex had no risk. It was still an awful time.

Karleton Armstrong was lucky. He should still be rotting in prison.

"They all had small red spots on the back of their ears. The spots should have disappeared if they had had sex. My many years of experience told me that these men did not have sex before."

The acupuncturist's virginity test that Vietnam has used to exonerate convicted rapists.

"As he drove the getaway car carrying the four men, Dwight Armstrong abruptly pulled over. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'You have to look.' And there, above campus, was this huge fireball going up."

Karl Armstrong, remembering his brother, who is dead now, at the age of 58. Dead at the age of 33, in 1970, in Madison, Wisconsin, was Robert Fassnacht.