Torture: The Forgiveable Sin

There was a time when the U.S. pushed for democratic reforms in its Middle-East ally, Egypt. But distracted by that whole Iraq thing (a U.S. attempt to bring democratic reform to the Middle-East -- or was it to find WMDS?), the U.S. has decided to turn a blind eye to Egypt's systematic torture of arrestees and detainees, including those suspected of such heinous crimes as insulting civil servants and blogging about the government.

This LA Times article talks about a bus driver arrestee who was sodomized while in police custody. He alleges police officers performed the torture -- a fairly easy allegation to believe, since the cops videotaped the attack and then broadcast it in the driver's neighborhood.

Meanwhile, Connie Rice passed through Cairo without a word of criticism for the government -- where the president, Hosni Mubarak, who recently made a show of running for reelection, now "implie[s] that he intend[s] to head the country 'as long as a heart beats in my chest and I draw breath.'"

After all, it's just torture. Now, if they were pursuing stem cell research . . . .

The Fickle Finger of Blame

It didn't take long after Mark Foley's resignation for conservative pundits to theorize -- based on little more than speculation -- that (a) sinister, provocative underage pages lured a poor, innocent congressman into flirting with them; (b) sinister, provocative democratic "operatives" set Foley up, using the pages as bait; or (c) all of the above.

I don't know if anyone has condemned the pages for wearing those shameless Brooks Brothers coats and ties, but that's probably coming soon.