1115.org

A.P.:

Negotiations between the White House and a trio of powerful GOP senators snagged Wednesday over Bush administration demands that Congress reinterpret the nation’s treaty obligations to allow tough CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Who the hell is this guy? How seriously diseased are his mental faculties? He wins two razor thin election victories – the first by dirty tricks and the thoroughly misguided intervention of the Supreme Court, the second by dirty tricks alone – and both times he acts as if he has won an overwhelming mandate. And now, with his approval ratings in the toilet, he struts around demanding we reinterpret treaties to condone torture (except we’ll all agree not to call it torture, ha ha)?

Why doesn’t someone sit him down, soothe him by reading My Pet Goat to him for five or six minutes, and then explain to him that he’s in no position politically to demand much more than a cheeseburger?

Fortunately, Sen. John Warner is not the ass-sniffing boot-licking (or vice versa?) lapdog that Sen. Arlen Specter is, so we are a little less likely to embrace torture than we are to voluntarily submit to warrantless wiretapping without meaningful oversight:

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his panel would meet Thursday to finalize an alternative to President Bush’s plan to prosecute terror suspects and redefine acts that constitute war crimes. Warner said he was aware the White House may come out in opposition of his legislation.
[…]
“The credibility of the United States is very much a factor in this negotiation,” said Warner. The Virginia Republican said another Supreme Court ruling against Bush’s policies in the war on terror would deal a “severe blow.”

Permitting torture-by-another-name is not the only bone of contention. A bill backed by three prominent Republican senators, John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and opposed by the White House and the Senate’s GOP leadership, also addresses the concerns of military lawyers about restrictions the White House wants to place on the due-process rights of defendants:

Prosecutors would be able to present evidence to the tribunal that would be kept secret from the defense and use hearsay and coerced confessions against defendants. Human rights groups have objected to those provisions as well.

Sen. Graham made the definitive statement on secret evidence:

“It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has played a key role in the drafting of alternative legislation as a member of the Armed Services Committee and a military judge. “ ‘Trust us, you’re guilty, we’re going to execute you, but we can’t tell you why’? That’s not going to pass muster; that’s not necessary.”

An awful lot of Republicans in Congress think it should become law anyway. Who cares about passing muster? And didn’t necessary fly out of the window when we agreed to invade Iraq (or at least when the Republican leadership came to insist afterwards that they would have done exactly the same thing knowing everything that we know now)?