Mukasey Interrogated over Waterboarding - Kroger

With the new buzz surrounding President Bush's nomination for Attorney General it seems that Judge Michael Mukasey is being tortured with questions surrounding his opinion on the legality of waterboarding.

At this point you might ask, "just what is waterboarding?"

Waterboarding is a torture device that employs either strapping a person down on their back and pouring water over their face, or dunking a person head first into water. This action induces the sensation of drowning and is considered an effective method of gaining information from a prisoner.

So why the sudden interest in a torture technique?

According to ABC news there is a "presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft approving the enhanced interrogation techniques, including water boarding" (ABCNews.go.com). Human rights activists began making noise about the practice and along with a death of a detainee, in 2006 the practice was explicitly banned (CNN.com).

Bush has admitted to the use of "alternative" interrogation methods against terrorists (CNN.com) and believes that the government has a responsibility to detain and question anyone that may be a terrorist with the intent of gaining information.

So what does Judge Mukasey say is the law's stance on the matter?

In a written response to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee Judge Mukasey said that, "Hypotheticals are different from real life, and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical" (CNN.com).

This response has been consistent so far and has left Democrats without specific answer to their question, however Judge Mukasey did restate "his belief that the Constitution and federal law bar the president from ordering the use of torture" (CNN.com).

Here's the question for this week:

Should interrogation techniques for detainees be scrutinized? If yes, by whom?

Facebook Race - Thomason

The presidential race is in full swing, like it or not. With polls are out all over the place showing this and that candidate doing well or pulling a McCain, I thought it would be interesting to do my own sort of poll.

Now I'm sure everyone reading this has heard of Facebook. In case you haven't, it is a website designed to basically be an electronic yearbook. At first it was accessible only to college students but is now open to the general public. Still, the majority of people on there are college aged people. One aspect of Facebook is it allows you to create and join groups. Hundreds, if not thousands, of groups have been created either in support or against presidential candidates. I did a search in the groups by typing in various candidates' names. Here is what I found:
Largest supporting groups

Rudi Giuliani: 3,612

John Edwards: 3,833

Mike Huckabee: 4,338

Hillary Clinton: 7,884

Mitt Romney: 15,582

Ron Paul: 32,571

Barack Obama: 382,166

Stephen Colbert: 1,218,520

Now it may be a stretch to directly correlate the size of Facebook groups to votes by college students, but I was quite surprised to see the lack of support for Clinton. There was much more opposition than love being shown toward her. Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert had the largest number in support of his campaign.