Torture

Malcolm Nance wrote a post about torture. He’s a guy who knows about it.

Here’s the quote that makes my guts churn:

Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

Read the post, if you haven’t already. It’s been widely distributed.

Less Freedom, More Surveillance

Two scary things happened recently. The deadline to make surveillance on the internet easier for federal agencies has come and gone. And I learned of this FBI pamphlet. Admittedly it’s from the early 1990’s, but I don’t believe the attitude among those at the top of agencies like the FBI has changed any.

Those two combine to make me very unhappy about the state of freedom in the U.S.