confession of a war criminal

andrew sullivan reports that during an interview with abc new's jonathan karl sunday morning, former vice president dick cheney confessed to a war crime which has no statute of limitations and for which the penalty under law is either death or life in prison.

These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn't. Cheney's clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.

palin's cheat sheet: the telepalmter

andrew sullivan dishes on palin's palm scribbles.

"everyone hated zucker"

andrew sullivan's recollection of harvard with nbc's jeff zucker and conan o'brien:

"Conan ran the Lampoon; Zucker ran the Crimson. I knew neither. I just remember that everyone hated Zucker and thought Conan was some sort of comic deity."

always look on the bright side of life...

sullivan sums up obama and suggests, on his blog, that the right may be more aware of his success than the left. they're just not happy about it.

bullish on barack

andrew sullivan thinks it's been a good year for obama:

When you consider the magnitude of shifting from one conservative era to one in which government simply has to be deployed to tackle deep structural problems, the achievement is as significant as his election year.

but does he have a dick cheney lunchbox?

you may have missed this, like i did, on andrew sullivan's daily dish...since i seem to have trouble finding andrew sullivan on the daily dish anymore. but here he is at his best, slamming fox's chris wallace for his interview with dick cheney:

Now look: there are softball interviews; and then there are interviews like this. It cannot be described as journalism in any fashion. Even as propaganda, which is its point, it doesn't work - because it's far too cloying and supportive of Cheney to be convincing to anyone outside the true-believers. When it comes to Cheney, one of the most incompetent vice-presidents in the country's history, with a record of two grotesquely botched wars, war crimes and a crippling debt, Chris Wallace sounds like a teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers.

"the suits are terrified"

andrew sullivan on the new associated press policy that "news articles should not turn up on search engines and web sites without permission."

sullivan:

As the MSM struggles to make money, expect more and more of this. The golden era of blogging and linking and open discussion may be coming to an end. The suits are terrified of it. And their bottom line is not the dissemination of ideas or facts, but the making of money. If they have to lose readers but make money, they're happy.

iran: immediate and intense

as some in milwaukee are discovering the heft and value of social media in debate, discussion, and instant communication – through an enormous email list maintained by jim fletcher, through facebook, and through blogging – the opposition in iran has utilized, to stunning effect, the social media you haven't quite figured out yet: twitter.

now andrew sullivan (yes, i'm a fan) is live-blogging today's events in iran using a combination of raw twitter feeds from protesters, and his own soup of scouring cnn, reuters, etc. for any bits of information in real time.

it's a fascinating, and starteling mix of immediate information.

the revolution will be televised twittered

this is why i twitter. there was a major news story happening all day today, but you would never have known from watching cnn, msnbc, or fox news. in fact, the most current, up-to-the-minute information could be found via twitter.

while cnn was airing a pair of waterskiing squirrels, and larry king's in depth interview with the crew from american chopper, an election in iran was more than likely stolen, there were massive riots in the streets, reports of 50-100 dead, major clashes with police, and the opposition candidates were placed under house arrest.

and some of the best coverage of the day came not from the mainstream media, but from blogger andrew sullivan.

i'm looking through you

the weekend before the mccain campaign announced that sarah palin's daughter bristol was pregnant, there were rumours swirling around certain parts of the blogosphere about the parentage of another palin: baby trig.

since then, andrew sullivan has been accused of being a major part of circulating those rumours, when in fact he's only been asking for medical records of trig palin's birth, nothing more. not that different, actually, from the transparency sarah palin demanded and got from her opponent while running for mayor of wasilla, alaska:

In her first race for mayor of Wasilla, she demanded the marriage license of her opponent be made public. Why? Because his wife kept her maiden name - and Palin deemed that sufficiently unusual to demand total transparency. If that level of transparency is necessary for the race for Wasilla mayor, why is it "unspeakable" for the vice-presidency of the United States? Is being mayor of Wasilla more significant than possibly being US president?

sullivan hasn't given up. and strangely enough, has yet to come up with any public record of trig palin's birth.

andrew, mike, heather and hillary

today, andrew sullivan nominated mike huckabee for an infamous yglesias award (for writers, politicians, columnists or pundits who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.)

referring to the obama / wright issue on msnbc this morning, huckabee said, among other things: “[y]ou can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do.” i don't heart huckabees, but that’s pretty good talk for a righty.

moments later, sullivan posts a video showing his girlfriend hillary clinton praising beatle gold-digger heather mills and the work she’s done for charity. (much of the video is about the adopt-a-minefield program, mills’ support of it, and clinton’s own work to authorize assistance to landmine victims.) sullivan then quotes the judge from the mccartney / mills divorce case, who basically says mills was “less than candid” “inconsistent” and “less than impressive” during the trial proceedings (i.e. she lied, she lied inconsistently, and she did it poorly.)

so, despite the work she's done for charity, mills has since acted like a stupid moneygrubbing bitch, and clinton is an idiot for supporting her before she acted like a stupid moneygrubbing bitch. but, we shouldn’t hold candidates responsible for the things people around them say or do.

unless, of course, her name is hillary clinton.

as far as i know

when i read that line this morning, i heard "as far as i know..." meaning "there is more to the answer that i'm not telling you."  

but when you actually hear the line spoken (by hillary clinton) in context (a sixty minutes interview during which steve kroft asked clinton twice if she thought barack obama was muslim) the line is actually "as far as I know."  which, to his credit, is how andrew sullivan posted it last night. 

maybe i'm parsing words here (denouncing and rejecting) or parsing...emphasis.  but there was a distinct difference for me, in reading that line and then hearing clinton say it.

ann althouse actually has a most thorough response to it all.

quote unquote

"Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it."

- barack obama, in a 2007 statement
"at least mccain, obama are clear..."

“Timothy McVeigh was one of the worst killers in U.S. history. But at least we had fair procedures for him.”

- attorney general john ashcroft in 2003, new york times
"administration officials split over stalled military tribunals"

"Well, it's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."

- vice president dick cheney, october 2006, white house radio day
"interview of the vice president by scott hennen, WDAY"

"The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-45 on Wednesday in favor of a bill calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to adopt the US Army Field Manual, which forbids waterboarding..."

the associated press, today
"white house to veto senate ban on waterboarding"

"The president will veto that bill."

- dana perino, white house spokeswoman, today
"white house to veto senate ban on waterboarding"

"...we now know that there will be one difference between Obama and McCain in November. One will never tolerate torture; the other just did."

andrew sullivan, today, the daily dish
"mccain: against torture, but"

love the sinner

in the context of the 2008 presidential contest, andrew sullivan once again discusses constitutional amendments, same-sex relationships, and religion in a way very few others can. i may not be a fan of his hillary-bashing, but on this subject, no one is better.