One Step Beyond
by digby
I've been meaning to bring this up. Yglesias got there first:
One sees this mentioned now and again in the blogosphere, but in these dark days of FISA-ignoring surveillance and so forth, one can always console oneself with the thought that things aren't as bad as they were during the Palmer Raids of the waning days of Woodrow Wilson's administration...
On the other hand, even at what was the peak (especially in terms of the breadth of violations) of civil unlibertarinism in America, I don't think you had top government officials arguing that what the country needed was the systematic application of torture.
For all its alleged reverence for tradition, the right has successfully destroyed one of society's long standing taboos in record time. It's now a legitimate subject of debate: should we or should we not torture suspects?
I knew these guys were capable of a lot of things, and I'm not especially surprised by their disregard for civil liberties and the constitution. But I don't think I ever could have predicted that they would be able to put torture back on the menu and the congress and the press would pretty much turn the other cheek. It's still kind of a shock.
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