September 21, 2006

Blogometer Update

TORTURE POLITICS: Torture In & Of Itself

   A startling event happened yesterday on Capitol Hill as the House Judiciary Committee first rejected, then approved, the White House "torture" bill.

   Upon hearing the news of the initial rejection, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo intoned, "Defeat breeds more defeat."  Justin Rood at TPMmuckracker reported on it as well, noting presciently that negotations were continuing between the White House and Congress.

   Then all of a sudden House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced that the Committee had "changed its mind."  Raw Story had an account of the "flip-flop" excerpted from the subscription-only Congressional Quarterly:

[The] article explains that "arm-twisting by top GOP leaders" apparently led to a change of heart by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who had earlier voted against the bill. Additional votes in favor of the bill were cast by two GOP representatives who were absent from the first tally.

TORTURE POLITICS II: For It Before He Was Against Its Opposite

   Michael Crowley at The Plank looks at a revealing bumble by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA).  Westmoreland appeared at a local luncheon and somehow the issue of torture was wrangled up.  Per the Ledger-Enquirer:

On Tuesday, the Grantville Republican told a Douglas County Chamber of Commerce luncheon that he "voted for torture" and that "we need to get information out of these people the best way we can," the Douglas County Sentinel reported.

   The next day, Westmoreland rued to the Associated Press, "Maybe I shouldn't have said I voted for torture.  I should have said I voted against the anti-torture bill."  Fair enough.  But when the AP got him to talk further about his vote last year--which was on an amendment reaffirming US commitment to a UN anti-torture convention in which he was one of 8 to oppose versus 415 for--he said he felt the definition of torture was "too vague" and that he was unsure if the Geneva Convention applied.  Westmoreland kept sharing his peculiar take:

Pressed on whether that means he supports torture, he said, "What's torture?   Torture is many things to many people ... people have different breaking points." ... Asked whether he would support using electric shocks, he said, "Electric shocks are given to people during initiations to different clubs ... Is that torture?  I don't know."

   Crowley sums up it all up, saying, "So he's not pro-torture, evidently--just anti-anti-torture."  Reader CS helps Crowley out with some Westmoreland gems, like his "10 Commandments" Colbert moment (vid here) and a brazen act of unoriginality as detailed earlier at The Plank.

Posted by Conn Carroll at September 21, 2006 09:12 PM