The Law is a Wax Nose

Here's how the legal defenses of torture have been made:

Charting that progression is almost not worth doing anymore, so familiar are the various feints and steps. First, the administration breaks the law in secret. Then it denies breaking the law. Then it admits to the conduct but asserts that settled law is not in fact settled anymore because some lawyer was willing to unsettle it. Then the administration insists that the basis for unsettling the law is secret but that there are now two equally valid sides to the question. And then the administration gets Congress to rewrite the old law by insisting it prevents the president from thwarting terror attacks and warning that terrorists will strike tomorrow unless Congress ratifies the new law. Then it immunizes the law breakers from prosecution.
-Dahlia Lithwick, Anybody's Guess

The piece is marred at the end by that common secularist Tourette's Syndrome which cannot keep its mouth shut. Dahlia blasphemes God as casually as others defend torture. "That's not an imperial presidency. That's the kind of presidency Yahweh might establish."

Way to build bridges, Dahlia.

via Mark Shea