Monday, December 17, 2007

A Retraction

A commenter to the previous post has suggested that "pudgy little freak" is inappropriate as a description of my Congressweasel, and he is correct. (His comment is well worth reading.)

I am troubled by a more-important problem with that post, though. In it, I called for the torture of that person, and that was wrong of me. I could go back and edit the post, but why compound barbarism with dishonesty? Let's use it, just as it is, as a cautionary illustration of the corrosive tendency of our national practice of torture to corrupt the thinking even of its opponents.

I think that a good case can be made against Mr. Souder as a war criminal, and as such he could be tried by some court of competent jurisdiction and punished according to the trial's outcome. Such punishment might include a lengthy term of confinement, or even execution. But it could not justly involve water torture, nor the pulling-out of fingernails; and I should not have suggested such, even in dark humor -- maybe especially not in dark "humor." Mea culpa. I'll try not to do it again.

3 comments:

Craig said...

Hey B, what up?

Here's a list of possible things to call our beloved congresscritter should you run out of ideas:

- Authoritarian thug

- Proto-fascist

- Paranoid Jingo with possible Oedipus complex

- Snivelling runt

- A threat to our republic

- A GOP toady

- Fred Thompson's half-retarded younger brother

- Bonzo

- Cheech

- Mickey

- Reverend Souder

- His Holiness

- Pope Mark

- St. Mark

That's all for now. Merry Christmas B!

Jim Wetzel said...

Hey, Craig!

I like 'most all of your suggested titles. The ones that tend to jump into my mind first are all laden with obscenities, so I have to watch myself a little bit.

Any chance you might get R&F fired up again anytime soon?

Better jump in there quick -- I see where Gotsch, Harper & Co. are itching to get the internets all organized, with plenty of New Rules, don'tcha know. I get tickled watching these folks sometimes. Nothing gets them quite so excited as being recognized, even a little bit, by the "old media." Ooooh, I'm on TV! I'm on the radio! I got some ink in the Journal! I must be really, really real!

As I say ... better get started again, before they make you join the union or something.

Craig said...

Nathan who?