Trolls

are apparently just the ticket to goad readers into commenting your blog, if SneakeTroll's effect is any indication. Biscuit's had more comments since SneakeTroll first made his appearance than ever before. So, thank you, SneakeTroll. Long time, no see, by the way. How's the basement treating you lately? Also, we noticed you were posting from a -- gasp -- Windoze machine. What happened to your Linux box?

What do I find amazing? Certainly not politics, per se. Presidents want power, and it is the job of Congress to keep them from getting it. If you hadn't noticed, however, I am pretty firmly against torture, and the idea that a President would fight his own party tooth and nail in order to retain a dubiously-derived "legal authority" to torture people -- an authority that his own lawyers invented for him -- is amazing and revolting to me. It's monstrous. I suppose I should no longer be amazed by it. But then again, if it no longer amazed me, if I thought it just normal politics to threaten to veto a bill that includes a provision to prevent the military from torturing people -- a policy that the military's own lawyers have always preferred, see the recently declassified memos on the matter -- then I'd be a bit of a monster too. (Perhaps a troll, even...)