reality-based educator

From Andrew Sullivan:

The pro-torture magazine proclaims victory. By "torture," I mean the KGB-perfected hypothermia treatment, and the "long-time-standing" technique used by the North Vietnamese against John McCain himself. These practices are now endorsed by NRO. Notice how NRO doesn't even concede that "waterboarding" is now out of bounds. It is only an "apparent" exception. How does a law allow for something "apparent." Aren't laws supposed to be clear? Not in countries where the rule of law is determined by the will of one man, the Caesar.

Can you imagine what conservatives of the Cold War era would say if they knew that National Review would one day be supporting the American government's use of methods developed by Stalin and the North Vietnamese? It is one thing for a conservative magazine to endorse the torture of prisoners detained without due process and unable to challenge their detentin in court, i.e. the torture of many innocents, as has already been documented in abundance. It is another thing for it to pretend it isn't pro-torture, and that it is merely endorsing "coercive interrogation" for those proven guilty in a court of law. But NRO's principles remain intact: whatever the Leader says. The vandalism of conservative principles and the rule of law continues.

Sully's right - conservatism these days boils down to whatever Dear Leader says and whatever helps keep the party in power.

Thus the latest conservative campaign to legalize torture and call critics of the policy "soft on terrorism."