Using torture is both a legal and moral question. You obviously see nothing wrong with it. You are entitled to your opinion and entitled to have your own morals.

Of course I believe the constitution is meant to adapt to the times. It can be ammended as long as it does not compromise the integrity of our nation. That's where officially sanctioned torture crosses the line.

The bottom line is that the founding fathers did not intend for the constitution to be twisted by morons, but they acknowledged that possibility. That's why they tried to create a solid system of checks and balances.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

As long as it remains an 'opinion', and I use the term guardedly. But as soon as he reaches for his favorite toys- it's the slammer ! Lol.

And is it all about the results? the ends justify the means? Forget the fact that it might be ethically and morally wrong to treat another human being that way.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

I gave you an objective definition, part of the beauty of that is that it eliminates any NEED to ask such stupid case-by-case questions.

A grown up makes rational, thoughtful comments. I was asked what I would permit, and I said rather frankly that I would permit whatever it took in order to protect innocent lives. How about you define what limits you would place, even to save an innocent life.

Is it immoral for police to shoot someone holding hostages? Isn't killing someone far worse than torture?

If you knew for an absolute fact that there was a bomb in some public location somewhere in the country, and it was going to go off within two hours, and that you had someone in custody you knew for a fact new exactly where it was, but that there was no chance of getting him to talk in time using conventional interrogation techniques, what limits would YOU place on getting the information from him in time?

And you obviously cannot read, or you would not have been able--in good conscience--to assert that I "obviously see nothing wrong with it". In fact, I made it obvious that my view is that sometimes--in the real world and not the fantasy liberalland--sometimes certain situations called for extreme actions that while we may find them repugnant, are nonetheless essential or justified for the greater good.

That is why I mentioned Virgil Tibbets, and example of a man who was called upon by his country to participate in the commission of a horrific act, who realized that however horrific it was, it was justified under the circumstances.

And let's not pretend that we as a society do not consciously write such distinctions into our laws. The Constitution makes clear that there are different standards in times of war than at other times.

Are you talking about the formal process of Amendment, or are you referring to "amended" by way of judges substituting their view of what the Constitution SHOULD mean based on their personal values as opposed to what it actually was understood to mean by those who wrote and ratified it?


Where does the constitution prohibit torture?

Gee, I guess they only intended for the Constitution to be twisted by unelected left-wing judges! Has it ever occured to you that the Judiciary was not only intended to be subject to the very same system of "checks and balances", but was actually intended to be the weakest branch, the most dependent upon the other two. It was put very nicely in Federalist 78:

Seems perfectly "obvious" to me that the framers understanding and intention of the "checks" and "balance" vis-a-vis the courts was that the Exective should feel free to disregard its judgements.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Well, I think we can all agree summarily shooting someone in the head and executing them in general is morally wrong. But under some circumstances it becomes morally acceptable. If you are holding a hostages with a gun, it is completely acceptable morally for the police to put a bullet in your head in the interest of protecting innocent people.

I am not saying that police should be able to randomly grab people off the streets and torture random information out of them. What I am saying is that there is a rational ground between rather naively declaring something is so utterly wrong that there is absolutely no circumstances in which it should ever be done, regardless of the overall good that can come of it (or in most instances greater tragedy or injustice occuring).

I have little doubt that the British considered some of the tactics employeed by our forefathers as barbaric and very ungentlemanly in the revolutionary war. I am glad as hell they did!

Take a very simple example of conjoined twins, there are situations in which it is medically impossible to keep conjoined twins alive without separating them, but also medically impossible to separate them without one of them dying. Is it immoral to sentence one to death to save the other? The choice is morally and emotionally repugnant to most people (I defy you to find any parent who could easily and dispasionately make such a choice). But in the end, we must acknowlege that however wrong it is to sentence one of them specifically to death, it is the lesser to two evils over simply allowing both of them to die.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

So you don't condone torture, you just condone it on a case-by-case basis..

You can twist the constitution to justify the means to your own end the way the same way you can twist the Bible to justify the means to your own end.

The federalist papers are not an authority, they are only an interpretive tool. You are not an authority either, you are just an interpretive tool... and a subjective one at that.

I'd rather leave the interpretation of the constitution to a more objective party. I preclude myself from that party as well.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

I'm with you, Non Sequitur. There are some things that are simply ethically and morally wrong, torture unquestionbly, one of them. It pains me to see that there are actually Americans that would argue in favor of it.

Marcus;
Whereas that may be true of a good definition, yours was crap.

You were talking horseshit though, right, because the mention of sexual torture threw you into a flat spin, almost as if sexual torture wasn't even something you'd considered in your half-assed 'anything goes ' statement. The truth of it is that sexual torture is first up when it gets physical. Nakedness loosens tongues, they say. Pulling out fingernails is WAY down the list. No fucking fun in that.

So then, Marcus, are you going to protest against sexual torture or embrace it ?

johnny K;
I'm filled with disgust.

I think it would be more accurate to say that while I do not generally approve of torture as a routine method of interrogation (and never do where it is gratiutous) there are certaintimes when I think that torture would be justified to avoid an even greater tragedy.


Problem is that too many of those who are supposed to be engaged in "objective" "interpretation" of the constitution, are busily at work rewritting it. There is absolutely no reasonable way to read the text of the Constitution without concluding that it in no way, shape, or form proscribes the death penalty (the text clearly foresees the possible use of it), whether or not to have it is a matter left entirely to the elected branches of government. Yet, some "objective" judges have "interpreted" the document to mean something that the plain and unambiguous language of the text flat out contradicts. Is this really a legitimate action by the Judiciary, to blatantly substitute its own values and judgements for what the Constitution SHOULD say, and what it actually does say?

Once you abandon the notion that the constitution is an immutable legal text (changing only by amendment and not merely by the passage of time) then how can you argue that something is "Un"constitutional, if the constitution is a "living document" that is meant to be changed in meaning to suite the needs and values of our time, doesn't that eliminate any basis for arguing that something is proscribed by the document? If the constitution can "evolve" to prohibit that which it never before prohibited, why can't it "evolve" to permit that which it once did prohibit?

Mind you, I am not saying any of my positions require an "evolution" from the originally understood meaning of the text, merely pointing out that it is utterly baseless for a "living constitutionalist" to plead the constitution in favor or opposition to something.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Marcus;
Just like I said earlier, you want to opt for 'pukka American' polite torture yet you state that 'anything goes'.

I think you just like to hear yourself rabbit.

That's a very very narrow, very low probability scenario:

Laws are not made for the exceptions, they are made for the rule.

Using torture under extinuating circumstances "where it is warranted" should only make it a lesser crime.

The bottom line is that the rule of law should prohibit torture. And where it is used or a abused, the courts should decide the degree of punishment.

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Congratulations President-Elect Obama

You are confusing two separate and very distinct issues. While you may DISAGREE with how I have defined torture, it is nonetheless a completely objective definition. There is no ambiguity in the definition I have presented, meaning that in every instance you can apply the definition I have provided and determine whether or not I would consider the activity to be "torture" in my opinion.

Again, you may disagree with what category (torture vs. not torture) my objective definition results in various practices falling in, but it is nonetheless an objective criteria

THAT is what I got pissed about, the obnoxious and idiotic assumption that just because someone thinks that however onerous something may be, that there could be times and circumstances where doing it is acceptable means that they "embrace" it. That is an offensive, baseless presumption on your part.

Far from your increasingly disturbing fixation on sexual torture, I do not distinguish between any particular types. In those situations where extreme methods are called for, I don't have any particular view or "preference" for any particular kind, rather whatever in the professional judgement of the interogator is most likely to yield the urgently or vitally needed information in a timely manner.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes torture IS effective in getting accurate information that will (and has) saved innocent lives that we would otherwise have been unable to save. I think that in extreme instances, the use of torture is by far the lesser of two evils versus allowing numerous innocent people to do...just like arbitrarily sentencing one conjoined twin to death to save another.

You have yet to provide ANY objective definition of torture, good or bad.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

I don't understand why we have American citizens torturing people in the first place. There is absolutely no need or reason to put Americans in that position.

We were doing just fine, under President Clinton and then again under President Bush rendering suspected terrorists to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, etc..

That's a policy we should continue.

Allow the peace loving Islamic Arabs and Africans to subject suspects to torture.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

The lefties loose sleep over that one as well.

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Well said.