RoguePlanet

"Torture is not an American value."

Says Digby. Torture-enabler Gonzales will be up for confirmation as AG. Digby explains why the Democrats should show some spine.

Mark Graber at Balkinization is a little more pessimistic:

Guantanamo Bay is no different. Most Americans probably suspect that our nation now routinely tortures persons and that the President has sanctioned this policy. We sort of know this is wrong, but as long as we can maintain plausible deniability, who really cares. Thus, while we profess outrage when stories hit the front page, the outrage vanishes as soon as the stories disappear. Besides, some victims of torture might give up valuable information. Others are no doubt bad people, who might well torture us in appropriate circumstances. Most are people we do not know, and in America, people we do not know are people Americans need not care about. This is the real scandal, and it is about us. Beneath all the media talk of a politics of morality, George Bush and his cohort are deeply amoral people, and American under George Bush is a deeply amoral place. The real challenge for the left is making people care about torture, even when torture is not on the front page.