Opinion: In today’s pages: Animal testing, waterboarding, Colbert reporting
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Columnist Rosa Brooks takes attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey to task for being vague on whether waterboarding is torture:
On Tuesday, Mukasey ‘clarified’ his views in a letter that still offers no opinion on whether water-boarding (or any other interrogation technique) might or might not constitute torture. According to Mukasey, water-boarding is ‘repugnant,’ but he can’t say whether it’s illegal because, among other things, it would depend on the circumstances, he’s not sure if the CIA actually uses it, and he wouldn’t want any CIA interrogators who might have used it to think they could be in legal trouble. This is garbage.
UCLA’s Edythe London defends her use of animals in her medical research. Novelist Amos Oz explains how literature can help bridge the gulf between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. And columnist Patt Morrison asks if we’re all punchlines for Stephen Colbert.
The editorial board asks indicted Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona to resign. The board notes that, given the several recent toy recalls, the Consumer Product Safety Commission could probably use more resources. And finally the board says that Hillary Clinton can’t avoid discussing important issues just because she’s the frontrunner.
Readers respond to columnist Jonah Goldberg’s thoughts on small government. Toluca Lake’s Terrence Hartwell says, ‘Jonah Goldberg takes a very long-winded tome of Gipper nostalgia to claim that Americans simply don’t want smaller government, so better to have big Republican government than big Democratic government. His simplistic theory misses the nonpolitical truth: People really just want a government that works.’