Monday, June 01, 2009

Some Perspective

While I am disinclined to make a little uneasy about making too much political hay out of the act of one deranged individual, tempting though it is to use it to, say, shame Bill O'Reilly (and see also), these rhetorical questions from Thoreau are worth stealing in their entirety:

One more legal question

I have no idea if the suspect in custody for the murder of Dr. Tiller is in fact the guy who did it. We’ll need to see more evidence before we can draw any conclusions on that. However, let’s suppose that the cops are at least quite confident that he is the shooter, and that they also believe he has info on other people planning similar crimes. They question him, and he either refuses to talk or denies any knowledge of other planned attacks.

If the cops don’t believe him, and decide to subject him to sleep deprivation and beatings in order to extract information, should they be charged with crimes? Should superiors who signed off on these acts also be charged with crimes?

Extra credit: Would the answer to this question be any different if the witnesses said that the shooter yelled “Allahu Akbar!”?

[Added] Oh, and "About That DHS Report" ...

[Added] And you just knew Hilzoy would have some really smart things to say. It is perhaps unfair, or perhaps useful in contrast, that her words are in response to blatherings from Megan McArdle.

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