Filibustering for Torture

In the proud tradition of so many of his Southern predecessors in the august halls of the United States Senate who proudly used parliamentary procedure to stand up for gross immorality, Republican Majority Leader Bill “Sweat Causes AIDS” Frist has announced that torture and arbitrary executive authority are issues are principles worth using all tools at his proposal to protect. What Hilzoy says:

Wow. After all sorts of unspeakable bills have passed the Senate under his leadership, here is where Bill Frist is finally going draw the line: he will not allow limitations on the administration’s ability to torture people, or to violate treaties our country has solemnly sworn to abide by. Making it illegal for CIA officials to keep people standing for 40 hours, or to hold them in rooms cooled down to 50 degrees while dousing them with water, or to deprive them of sleep, even when a pretty impressive array of intelligence officials say that these techniques don’t work, and an even more impressive group of retired generals say allowing them would put our soldiers at risk: that’s just too much for him to swallow.

And all this from the self-proclaimed defenders of Moral Values™. It’s enough to make an ethicist scream.