Opinion: A modest budget proposal

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The Los Angeles Times does not condone torture. We think the Bush administration’s embrace of brutal interrogation techniques is immoral, has savaged America’s reputation around the world, given ammunition to every tin-pot tyrant who wants to claim that the U.S. has no more moral authority than his own blood-soaked regime, and puts American soldiers at risk. I’m still pretty much on board with that, but I’m having a slight change of heart. There is one group so heinous, so ideologically rigid and so threatening to our well-being that we may have no choice but to resort to torture to extract its cooperation.

It’s time to consider waterboarding members of the Legislature.

Some will argue that torture doesn’t work; detainees will say anything the interrogator wants them to say just to make the pain stop, whether it’s true or not. This hardly applies to politicians, who need no incentive to tell people whatever they want to hear. California has now gone 58 days without a budget. State workers are struggling to survive on minimum wage; important bills are stacking up on the governor’s desk, gathering dust because he won’t sign any until a budget is passed; Republican lawmakers are so intransigent about tax increases to close the $15.2-billion budget gap that they want to borrow billions instead, pushing the problem off to the future and worsening an already dangerous debt level; Democrats have dug in their heels over the deep spending cuts needed to balance the budget, as well as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempts to impose fiscal discipline in the future.

Both sides seem to have all but given up, and we’re running out of options. Igor, fetch the manacles.

* Photo by Richard Drew / AP