Another chapter in the tear filled saga of yet another conservative ranting about how those big bully liberals treated him. Andrew Breitbart's side of the story - The right-wing provocateur's backers say anyone would act crazy given how liberals treat him.
The crux of Marcus's argument is that Breitbart's hysteria is justified, because in Breitbart's words, "The worst thing you can do ...in politically correct America…is accuse somebody of being a (sic) racism." Certainly some journalists have examined the racial point of view that motivated Breitbart's young protege, O'Keefe. Blumenthal's Salon article detailed O'Keefe's involvement in a white nationalist debate featuring American Renaissance's Jared Taylor (we corrected the article to take out the charge that O'Keefe helped organize the event). Blumenthal and the New York Times and others have written about O'Keefe's racially tinged pranks at Rutgers, where he organized a spoof "affirmative action bake sale" (where minorities got discounts) and protested the cafeteria carrying "Lucky Charms" cereal because it belittled Irish Americans. Then there's that silly pimp stunt, with a fur coated costume borrowed straight from blaxploitation movies. It's fair to raise questions about O'Keefe (and Breitbart's) racial attitudes.War criminals have genuflecting conservative friends come to their defense. The defense is lame, but that is predictable, Stuart Taylor’s Stuck Record
Writing behind the paywall at the National Journal, Stuart Taylor makes a sustained effort to defend Jay Bybee and John Yoo. He expresses his support for the analytical approach that Yoo pioneered in the memos, starting with the idea that while techniques like waterboarding may well be “torture” as the term is commonly used, it is not “torture” within the specific definition that Congress put forward. That is the key Yoo premise: that Congress chose to punish only some exotic exceedingly rare kinds of torture. Indeed, Yoo doesn’t seem to be able to identify anything that always constitutes torture, even if it results in death. David Luban makes short work of the Taylor apology in a recent post:ACORN Cleared in NY
The 1971 OED: “severe or excruciating pain or suffering (of body or mind)….”
Webster’s Third International (1971): “intense pain”
Webster’s Second International (1953): “severe pain” and “extreme pain”
American Heritage Dictionary (1976): “severe physical pain”.
In other words: the colloquial meaning of ‘torture’ is virtually the same as the legal definition. The OED definition, by the way, is so similar to the CAT definition that it seems likely that whoever drafted article 1 of CAT may have drawn on the OED.
New York Daily News:
Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORNof criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.
While the video by James O’Keefe and Hannah Gilesseemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.
“They edited the tape to meet their agenda,” said the source.
O’Keefe and Giles – who visited ACORN offices in several cities, including its Brooklyn headquarters – stirred controversy when they posted the videos on their Web site.
They were hailed as heroes by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and their footage led several government agencies to temporarily cut funding for ACORN as the prosecutors opened an investigation.
“On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees,” Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a one-paragraph statement issued Monday afternoon.
“That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.”
