Jack Balkin asks a few good questions of Sen. John McCain.  Ones that I'd like to know the answers to as well.  Because last year, McCain said this about waterboarding:

"All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today....It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."

Who we are as a nation is defined by what we do. And what the Bush Administration has been doing in all of our names is against the law. 

Last weekend, the WSJ had an entertainment piece on "24," regarding the necessity of revamping the show's image in the wake of sagging ratings from a swift turn in public opinion.   This, in particular, caught my eye:

"For five years, this was a wish fulfillment show," Mr. Gordon said. "At the beginning, when everybody's fear was more acute, people's tolerance for violence, their own rage, seemed to make Jack's tactics more acceptable. But in the wake of our own abuses in prosecuting this so-called War on Terror, we feel Jack is getting a bum rap. So instead of selling out the entire show and its history and its legacy and apologizing for it and ultimately invalidating it, we decided to defend it."

It was as if they were defending the show itself from charges that it was reckless and partisan. Ms. Walden says she accepted it immediately, and other Fox executives followed suit.

"You can take the position that it is basically reflecting what's going on in the Beltway right now," said Mr. Liguori. "I could look at it and say basically it's the show that's on trial."

On so many levels, this is appalling post-hoc rationalization crap. Or would be if the show hadn't been used for PR agenda purposes by Bush Administration policy advisors to Antonin Scalia and beyond to sell the ticking time bomb torture scenario to a public scared shitless by terror warnings and scary pronouncements of impending mushroom clouds that weren't.

The fiction of the show and WH policy foundations melded into a public sales job.   Jane Mayer was absolutely right -- the "whatever it takes" mentality was being sold to the masses.  

But the costs for doing so are high - and they apply to us all:

Of course, the costs to the United States are much more than financial: more significant are the moral, legal, diplomatic and political consequences of holding hundreds of prisoners in arbitrary and indefinite detention. At the heart of American values is the principle of habeas corpus, which demands due process and fair trials before an independent judiciary. The United States' system of detention and trial at Guantánamo has, for the past six years, betrayed that principle and undermined this country's historical position as an international champion of human rights and civil liberties.

Attorney General Mukasey is scheduled to answer some questions today before the House Judiciary Committee beginning at 11 am ET.   Emptywheel will be following the hearing live, while I keep an eye on the Senate floor for FISA machinations.  Given the admissions in recent days to waterboarding, deliberate tape destruction, and more secret prisons, it should be an interesting dodge and phony show kinda day.  The President does not get to make up the laws as he goes -- and it is high time that Congress reminded him of that fact.  In no uncertain terms.