Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said that in light of the administration’s apparent retreat from its legal embrace of the harshest tactics in 2004, the 2005 opinions “are more than surprising.”
“I think they’re shocking,” Mr. Specter said.
He added members of Congress voted to ban “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” in December 2005 without knowing that the Justice Department had already decided that the C.I.A.’s methods did not violate that standard.
Of course, in 2005 Senator Specter was perhaps less accommodating than his Republican colleagues but damn -- he was smart enough to realize by that time that the administration was throwing lie after lie at Congress. In that funny film in which Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep find themselves in a kindly but judging purgatory, the criteria for moving on to a more evolved existence consisted largely of showing that one didn't let fear get in the way of living. Measured by that standard, Arlen Specter will be stuck for a few more lives, stuck among the same old faces, cowering in Congress.
