Duh. Should anybody be surprised McCain and Graham ‘compromised’ and gave Bush all the wiggle room he would need. Saying the Geneva Conventions will be respected at the same time you give interpretation of the Conventions to the man who hasn’t respected them has been done before. The December twin fiasco of McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act along with the Graham Kyl Amendment previously killed any justice for detainees held by the Defense Department at Gitmo. What’s happened now is the CIA that has been doing who knows what is now similarly protected from prosecution and they can go on doing whatever they’ve been doing.

Aburdities abound. Again. Duh. The ‘compromise’ is a winner for everybody. Why? “It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.” This is the land McCain loves. Being able to say he stood for something, then sitting down while somebody interprets or issues a signing statement that gelds whats left of his golden ego. The big news is the so called transparency where the White House would have to publish its interrogation regulations in the Federal Register. Ha. Get back with me when that happens. The Bush Administration has been required to report on all variety of things it never does. Laws and good faith are for other people.

Neither history nor the courts will look kindly on this latest charade. The Supreme Court is unlikely to agree the cases moving before it suddenly have disappeared. And the American Revolution was fought over small reasons like habeas corpus that some now see dead.

One voice to rule them all? Previously divided Republicans are now upbeat. Rule by soundbite continues to be the order of the day. Democrats simply can’t oppose this bill because McCain the Dissident Maverick and Bush Are United TM. This presumes the Democrats are too lazy to stand on their own on a bill that stomps decency. Maybe they are.

Duh: If McCain’s ‘dissident’ voice is all the Democrats can rally behind on this, if they presume Americans can’t read the particulars here, then black truly has become white.

Are we clear? A crystal from Marty Lederman : “The Administration has been suggesting that it would somehow be inappropriate for the legislation, or the Senators, to say specifically which techniques the law would prohibit, i.e., that the law must remain so opaque that the Congress and the public don’t have any idea what it does and does not prohibit. Think about that.” Argh.

Plus what he said: ” . . .would it at least be possible for Democratic leaders to stop drooling on themselves with praise for John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, and refrain from holding them up as the heroes who safeguarded all that is good and just in the world.”

And what he or she said: “It’s hard to imagine how gay marriage or women’s rights could even come close to the kind of weird, inhumane behavior that is set free when you go this deeply into sanctioned authoritarian sadism.”

Torture cannot be contained in its cell.