The Friday Bacon

I guess this is what it looks like when you cover one of those bacon weave mats with cheese and roll it up.

The Friday Bacon

The Friday Bacon

Bacon wrapped hot dog with cheese.

Tazing Grannies

The video embedded in this story from MSNBC has been heavily edited but I think the screams of the granny speak for themselves.

I still find this incident disturbing, and the actions of the deputy immoral, even though there may be a reasonable person out there that could answer our standard question with a "yes." But that all depends on how you frame it, and whether the taser is supposed to be a less lethal substitute for the officer's pistol.

If you frame the question as whether the use of the taser saved lives in this incident, a reasonable person could answer in the affirmative. If you ask whether the deputy would have had to resort to use of his side arm or lethal force if he were without his taser, the moral calculus changes.

Dismembering Justice

In my last article on the torture conducted by the Bush administration, I may have left out another important reason for a full and complete reckoning for all involved at every level of government. It was in my last article I explained why I understand that Obama won't prosecute the agents that carried out the torture. To reiterate, we need our agents in the field to be able to do their jobs without worrying about the outcome of the next election and whether their actions will become unpopular.

However, of course that was the plan of the Bush administration all along. It now appears that from the beginning they planned on denying any responsibility for the torture by arguing that they had only asked how far they could go legally and it was the nefarious Department of Justice that told them to torture. Though, the new information seems to indicate that those lawyers were pressured to produce opinions that indicated torture was legal.

Given the amount the DOJ was politicized by the Bush administration it is highly unlikely that any advisory opinion that emanated from that DOJ was free of undue influence. Also, why would the DOJ have generated this opinion if it werent asked? And why would the question have been asked if it werent abundantly clear what the "correct" answer was?

Though if you believe the story being sold to us by the former administration through MSM is true, that every lawyer "consulted" by the Bush administration agreed that the techniques were legal, that does not make it so. The DOJ does not make the law. Congress makes the law. And Congress has made torture illegal. As I have explained in my previous article, waterboarding and the other techniques used were and still are torture.

Spc. Zachary Boyd

This photo has made the rounds in the MSM and blogosphere by now, and has become iconic. I just wanted to point out something that has not been explicit in all the media attention. Spc. Boyd, seen here fighting in Afghanistan, was 11 years old on September 11th, 2001.

Those of us who have been adults for the entirety of the intervening time span can easily forget how long it has been. But the people entering the military now were children when this all started and their world has been shaped by this conflict.

The Friday Bacon