A New Question for Judge Mukasey
Since the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to pass his nomination on to the full Senate for confirmation, perhaps our future Attorney General might have a few moments to consider this.
Or would you need more specifics? Were they chocolate-chip or oatmeal cookies? Was the paddle for ping-pong, or cricket? Was it a 12-oz Coke bottle, or a 2-liter Mountain Dew bottle holding the urine?
Or is it the fact that it was done by private individuals, and not the state what makes it torture? Maybe if it had been about something other than getting paid for your drug stash?
I hear that some Democrats are driven to the point of proposing legislation to specifically ban waterboarding (even though, despite administration sophistry, waterboarding is already illegal, and, in fact, we have prosecuted those who've used it in the past). This news from Madison County, IL suggests that perhaps we should amend those bills. Since we now seem to need the specific modality of the torture enumerated before we can attempt to stop it, we should include a provision covering the use of hot cookies, or really, baked goods of any kind.
Maybe later we can move on to bills specifying other horrors that we used to understand as something good Americans didn't do, like shooting unarmed, bound prisoners through the head, or tossing people out of helicopters. Oops, better include fixed wing aircraft as well. We wouldn't want the Attorney General to be unclear.
Madison County prosecutors on Monday charged Rosario James, 23, and Jordan Sallis, 20, each with two counts of aggravated kidnapping and one count of robbery and aggravated battery.Well, Mr. Mukasey? Was it? Torture, I mean?
Both were jailed Tuesday on $150,000 apiece.
Sheriff's Capt. Brad Wells said that Friday night, three men went to James' house to buy marijuana, but two of them grabbed the drugs and fled, leaving the third behind. The suspects held that man, who is in his late teens, and told him he needed to find $400 for the drugs, Wells said.
The suspects beat the man with a wooden paddle, burned his neck and shoulders with cookies immediately after taking them from the oven, shaved off some of his hair and poured urine over him from a soda bottle, Wells said.
"It was just sheer torture," Wells said.
Or would you need more specifics? Were they chocolate-chip or oatmeal cookies? Was the paddle for ping-pong, or cricket? Was it a 12-oz Coke bottle, or a 2-liter Mountain Dew bottle holding the urine?
Or is it the fact that it was done by private individuals, and not the state what makes it torture? Maybe if it had been about something other than getting paid for your drug stash?
I hear that some Democrats are driven to the point of proposing legislation to specifically ban waterboarding (even though, despite administration sophistry, waterboarding is already illegal, and, in fact, we have prosecuted those who've used it in the past). This news from Madison County, IL suggests that perhaps we should amend those bills. Since we now seem to need the specific modality of the torture enumerated before we can attempt to stop it, we should include a provision covering the use of hot cookies, or really, baked goods of any kind.
Maybe later we can move on to bills specifying other horrors that we used to understand as something good Americans didn't do, like shooting unarmed, bound prisoners through the head, or tossing people out of helicopters. Oops, better include fixed wing aircraft as well. We wouldn't want the Attorney General to be unclear.