Grading PolitiFact: Missing context doesn't count against Obama's manufacturing jobs claim

 MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Bridget Hall Grumet:  editor


Analysis:

PolitiFact's fact checking on this one is slightly deeper than "President Obama tells the truth, therefore it's true."

PolitiFact doesn't provide much context with this claim.  Real Clear Politics has a transcript, though (bold emphasis added):

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we're getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best:  We're making things again.
(APPLAUSE)
I've met workers in Detroit and Toledo who feared they'd never build another American car. And today, they can't build them fast enough, because we reinvented a dying auto industry that's back on top of the world.
(APPLAUSE)
I've worked with business leaders who are bringing jobs back to America, not because our workers make less pay, but because we make better products. Because we work harder and smarter than anyone else.
(APPLAUSE)
I've signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers, goods that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.
(APPLAUSE)
After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years. And now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America. We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years. You can make that happen. You can choose that future.

Mr. Obama made his remarks in drawing a supposed contrast between his leadership, past and future, with that of his Republican opponent in the presidential election ("You can choose that future").  Obama therefore takes credit to some extent for the increase in manufacturing jobs.  PolitiFact, contrary to its supposed policy, does not bother to rate the degree to which the president was responsible.

PolitiFact just grades whether the numbers add up:

The rise in manufacturing jobs that Obama is referring to may be modest compared to the prior decade’s decline, but he has described the numbers carefully. We rate his statement True.

PolitiFact's "True" rating, of course, supposedly means "The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing." 

But significant information was missing from Mr. Obama's claim.  A CNN fact check noted:

(A)s with other statistics cited during the three-day Democratic convention, it's not quite the whole picture. Manufacturing sector employment is still down by about 500,000 since Obama took office and by more than 3.7 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.

"Nothing significant missing"?

There is a real growth in manufacturing owing largely to exports.  But a Brookings Institution report offers scant evidence that the reasons Mr. Obama gives provide the explanation for the increase.  Brookings does credit Mr. Obama's free trade agreements with Panama, Columbia and South Korea for helping to stimulate foreign trade.  But Brookings and the president omit mentioning that the negotiation of the free trade agreements preceded Mr. Obama's presidency and also fail to mention the subsequent delay in finalizing the deals.

Politico:

The United States and South Korea had originally signed the FTA back in June 2007. The one with Columbia had been signed in November 2006 while the Panama FTA was signed in July 2007.

Maybe if those agreements had passed through the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2008 it might have lessened the effects of the recession and accelerated the recovery of American manufacturing.

PolitiFact's fact check, consisting of eight short paragraphs and a total of three reference sources, doesn't show much effort at reaching the truth.  It acknowledges parts of the story omitted by Mr. Obama yet fails to figure the lack of context in when making its final ruling.  The ruling claims Mr. Obama "describes the numbers carefully" but shows no evidence that the president mentioned the relevant caveats.

It resembles a rubber stamp more than a fact check.


The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Bridget Hall Grumet:  F

No "A" for effort.


Afters:

Readers might register surprise at what counts as a manufactured export.

(click image for enlarged view)

Update Sept. 10, 2012:

Sometimes the transcript doesn't do justice to the original.  With the live speech, Mr. Obama apparently ad-libbed on the text of his speech.  Rather than the three proud words "Made in America" he said something a bit different:




Hat tip to Power Line.

Grading PolitiFact: Power Line and the Pelosi Paradox

"The Amazing Criswell"

The Amazing Criswell was a dimestore prophet who parlayed his act into a series of appearances in the films of Edward D. Wood Jr., the latter widely recognized as one of the worst film directors of all time.  The following snippet from the script of the film "Ed Wood" will help explain why the image of Criswell leads off this review:

                             ED
               Hey Cris, how'd you know we'd be
               living on Mars by 1970?  How'd you
               know it wouldn't be 1975, or even
               1980?

                             CRISWELL
               I guessed.

                             ED
               I don't understand.

                             CRISWELL
               I made it up.  It's horseshit!

The issue:

Now for a more customary image:

Though PolitiFact credits the statement to "various posts on the web," all four owe (and offer) credit directly to John Hinderaker at the Power Line blog.

The fact checkers:

Louis Jacobson:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

We note at the outset that the headline and deck material (image copied above) are accompanied at the PolititFact site by the "Truth-O-Meter" graphic set at "Half True."

Let's get the explanation from PolitiFact:

On May 2, 2011, the conservative PowerLine blog posted a quote it said came from Pelosi in 2006. Others followed, including Michelle Malkin’s blog, Fox Nation and Commentary magazine. Here’s the PowerLine version:

"(E)ven if (Osama bin Laden) is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done is done. And even to capture him now I don’t think makes us any safer."

The "PowerLine version" is the same as all the other versions, of course, because they are all the Power Line version.

PolitiFact:

The blog paired that with a statement that Pelosi -- the former House speaker and now the House minority leader -- released shortly after President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death to the nation on May 1:

"The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. … (T)he death of Osama bin Laden is historic."

Again, the blogs that reproduced Power Line's side-by-side comparison of Pelosi quotations used exactly the same version.  On with the fact check:

PowerLine went on to argue that her seemingly different sentiments may have been colored by the fact that the White House in 2006 was occupied by a Republican (George W. Bush) and in 2011 by a Democrat (Obama).

"It is unfortunate that many public figures are unable to view events otherwise than through a partisan prism," PowerLine argued. "Osama bin Laden's operational significance had undoubtedly dwindled over the years, and al-Qaida, after nine years of relentless attacks, is a shadow of its former self. But bin Laden's death is obviously an important and helpful milestone in the long war against radical Islam. …

PolitiFact uses the root term "argument" in a broad sense.  Hinderaker doesn't bother offering trying to convince anybody of anything.  He quotes Pelosi and then offers a direct assessment.  Hinderaker does not state his premises and inferences directly.

PolitiFact presents Pelosi's quotation in context, stating that Pelosi at the time was charging Republicans with failing to implement all of the 9-11 Commission recommendations.  PolitiFact says "bloggers" quoted Pelosi accurately:

We think the bloggers are accurate in reporting Pelosi’s 2006 quote. She did indeed say that taking out bin Laden wouldn’t make the U.S. any safer, though we should also note that, from the context, it’s clear that she thought bin Laden should be pursued regardless.

The bloggers’ reporting of the second Pelosi quote -- the one from after bin Laden’s killing -- is incomplete, however. The final sentence of Pelosi’s statement reads, "Though the death of Osama bin Laden is historic, it does not diminish our relentless pursuit of terrorists who threaten our country" (emphasis added). In other words, the full text of what Pelosi said on May 1 communicates a more nuanced view, and one that’s less in conflict with her 2006 statement.

As to the former paragraph from PolitiFact, it would have been interesting to hear Pelosi describe why bin Laden should be pursued if it wouldn't make us safer.  Would the pursuit occur solely for the purpose of retributive justice?

As to the latter of PolitiFact's paragraphs, is the omitted portion of Pelosi's statement important to Hinderaker's point?  PolitiFact claims, without any developed argument, that the missing context makes for "a more nuanced view" "less in conflict" with her earlier statement.

How much conflict does Hinderaker need to make his point?  And can PolitiFact sustain its point without determining Hinderaker's need?  PolitiFact appears to concede that the two statements conflict to at least some degree.

PolitiFact:

Ultimately, we think the bloggers overstated the degree to which Pelosi’s 2006 and 2011 comments were contradictory.

To what degree did "the bloggers" overstate the degree to which Pelosi's two statements contradict each other?  As noted above, Hinderaker simply makes a short assessment after quoting Pelosi directly and (according to PolitiFact) accurately.  Hinderaker does not mention contradiction, paradox or compatibility.  We only see that type of thing only in the headline used in the Fox news aggregation ("Pelosi Caught Flip-Flopping Big Time on Bin Laden").

How does PolitiFact know that Hinderaker overstated the degree of contradiction?  They guessed.  They made it up.  It's horseshit.

Hinderaker's point about an ideological prism stands perfectly well with any degree of disagreement between Pelosi's two statements.  In the former case, Pelosi seemed prepared to minimize the significance of bin Laden's death if accomplished by the Bush administration.  In the latter case, Pelosi spared no superlative in lauding the accomplishment of the Obama administration.  Wasn't that clearly Hinderaker's point?  And didn't he obviously convey the point without exaggerating the discrepancy?

The grades:

Louis Jacobson:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

We have another case where if somebody doesn't quite state the fact PolitiFact wants to check they'll be happy to pretend otherwise.

"A Trip Down Memory Lane" with Evan Coyne Maloney

Hat tip to Power Line.

Maloney provides a series of archival video clips he collected from various anti-Bush protests.  The video helps provide some needed perspective as the Left decries the violent tendencies of the Tea Party movement and such.  Be forewarned of protest signs featuring f-bombs, swastikas and such.

Obama dodges question on past use of nuclear weapons

Hat tip to Power Line. Please visit Power Line for a good set of comments on this incident.

Power Line: Press acts as watchdog for Republicans in power, lapdog for Democrats

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line offers an indictment of media reporting on the economy:

On Friday, the government announced the unemployment figures for May. The numbers were grim -- unemployment soared from 8.9 percent to 9.4 percent, the highest level since 1983.

On Saturday, the Washington Post ran two front-page stories about unemployment. One concerned the consequences of long-term unemployment on people's "lifestyles" (to use the term in the story's headline). The other was about how a spa offered free injections of Botox to 50 of its jobless clients.

The story about the May unemployment data appeared on page 9. It was previewed on page 1 with the teaser that said: "A smaller decline -- the pace of job losses slows in May, raising hopes for recovery." In short, good news.

Mirengoff does appear to have provided an example that shows the press uncharacteristically presenting bad economic news as a good sign. Yes, it is true that a lesser decline in employment counts as a type of good news. But overall, the news is still bad.

Can it be that, under the Obama administration, the press has realized its important role in building consumer confidence in order to boost the economy? That would be Hope 'n Change!

Research project: Check major U.S. dailies systematically to see how they report on changes in unemployment numbers.

Offhand, I can think of one legitimate journalistic reason why it would make sense for the press to emphasize the positive in a field of negative. The media emphasize the unusual. When economic data are bad over an extended period of time, the news emphasis may flip-flop to the opposite pole. Put another way, once it becomes commonplace for man to bit dog more than the reverse, dog bites man acquires news value.

Mirengoff's example fits with the plausible hypothesis that the liberal-dominated press wants Obama to succeed and is willing to help, at least subconsciously. And his might even be the best explanation of the facts. The case is short of airtight, however.

Explaining the change

John Hinderaker at Power Line noted Barack Obama's changed approach to greeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Hinderaker offered that Obama learned from his earlier mistake, when he appeared to bow before the Saudi king.

Poppycock, I say. The explanation is obvious. Given that Obama bent at the waist during that earlier meeting to grasp the shorter King Abdullah's hand with two hands during that first meeting, the solution is simple: King Abdullah has grown since then.

Or Obama's arms are now longer than they were. Or something.

Power Line on "Dueling Speeches"

President Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney both made speeches on national defense yesterday.

Power Line has a terrific series of posts delving into the comparison between the two speeches.

Highly recommended.

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

Excerpt:

For Barack Obama to repeat the canard that the Bush administration shredded the Constitution, operated outside the law, etc., is false and dishonorable. It is also damaging to our country. Barack Obama is slandering his own government--his own nation, really--for political advantage. This is one more in a growing list of contemptible actions by our new President.

A pretty good sign of media bias

Granted it involves a mere two major newspapers and editorial positions, but Power Line provides the details that end up with this capper:

So the (New York) Times, like the Star Tribune, is in favor of the filibuster when the Democrats are in the minority in the Senate, but opposed to it when the Republicans are in the minority. That's an easily understandable position. It would be nice if these papers, and hundreds of others like them, would come out and say--just one time before they sink beneath the waters of Chapter 11--that they are shills for the Democratic Party, and their editorials are paraphrases of faxes they get from the Democratic National Committee. Would that really be so painful? After all, it's not as though they're fooling anyone.

Indeed, the drift in principle is rather difficult to understand minus a significant ideological bias.

Hinderaker zings Congress

John Hinderaker, writing at Power Line, produced a delightful zinger aimed at Congress in the wake of their reception of representatives of the Big Three:

Congress has not taken anywhere near enough abuse for treating automobile company executives as morons because their expenses exceed their revenues. In truth, the auto companies made exactly the same mistake Congress did: they failed to anticipate the costs of the pension and health care benefits that they agreed to pay their retired workers.

That will leave a mark, albeit many in Congress are too numb above the neck to take much notice.

More jaw-dropping stupidity from the political left

Massive hat-tip to Power Line, especially for the commentary following the video:

Schumer appears to make the astonishing claim that if the government can regulate anything, it logically follows that it can regulate everything. Schumer is a dope, but he and his fellow Democrats are probably serious about their threat to drive talk radio off the air. If they follow through, it could trigger one of the great donnybrooks of all time.

A sufficiently liberal Supreme Court could, I suppose, find that the First Amendment does not protect political speech that reaches large numbers of people. After all, the Constitution explicitly grants that Congress may "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution."

Change?

Gaffemaster Biden spins another hit

Power Line points out another delightful gaffe by Sen. Joe Biden during last night's vice presidential debate:

I wanted to read the transcript before commenting; here was Gwen Ifill's question:

Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?

Here is Biden's answer, in full:

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

For a man of Biden's experience, this is a surprising series of misstatements. First of all, he gets wrong one of the most basic facts about the Constitution: Article 1 establishes the legislative branch, not, as Biden said, the executive branch. This is not exactly an obscure fact; my 17-year-old daughter pointed it out at the time.

Click the link and read more about Biden's difficult-to-understand failure to understand the vice president's role in the Senate after spending over a quarter century serving in that body.

Explaining the subprime mess

A GenX-style video explanation of the subprime mortgage crisis



Hat tip to Power Line.

Mainstream media meltdown mode?

Yes, the mainstream media are dominated by ideological leftists top to bottom. But I've always thought them eager to report fairly, on balance.

Yes, we have many indications that the mainstream press sustains a preference for Barack Obama in the upcoming election.

But the reporting on Sarah Palin is so far over the top as to virtually defy belief. The week's news provides some absolutely stunning examples of reporter ineptitude. I pointed out one where Newsweek reported a judge's order barring Palin from disparaging her sister's ex-husband in front of the couple's children as though the judge's order applied as well to the ex's supervisors.

Power Line and others point to Charlie Gibson's cluelessness in asking Governor Palin about a portion of one of her public prayers that he took out of context.

In the interview with Sarah Palin broadcast on ABC last night, Charles Gibson tried to trip her up in the following exchange:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

As Allahpundit points out, however, what Palin actually said was this:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

To borrow a Lincolnian formulation in honor of the Lincolnian formulation of Palin's prayer: the difference between what Palin actually said and what Gibson quoted her as saying is akin to the difference between a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse.

Power Line notes a flub in the same class from The Washington Post:

As part of its campaign to discredit Governor Sarah Palin, the Washington Post carries a front page article this morning by Anne Kornblut that headlines, falsely: "Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska." The article begins:

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.

News flash to Ms. Kornblut: the Alaska National Guard isn't going to Iraq to fight "the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein."

This type of shocking ineptitude underscores the problem with the ideologically tilted press: They can't report objectively any longer because they don't have an effective check on their own bias. These examples featuring Palin may only be the tip of the iceberg.

As I have opined in the past, the press routinely recycles its own misconceptions as factual background information for the (ahem) benefit of its readers.

Is the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization or not?

Power Line catches foreign policy neophyte Barack Obama offering a no and a yes to that question.

Earlier this year, three-fourths of the Senate voted in favor of a resoution designating the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization. Among those who voted for the resolution were Hillary Clinton, Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Obama voted against it.

Yesterday, however, Obama told the AIPAC convention that the Iranian National Guard is, in fact, a terrorist organization. He attempted to explain his recent vote to the contrary by claiming that the resolution contained language about military action. But this is false, and transparently so -- if it had contained such language Clinton, Durbin, Reid, and Schumer would have opposed it.

The new politics looks suspiciously like John Kerryesque waffling.

clipped from finishmywaffle.com

Vaclav Klaus on global warming and environmental alarmism

Power Line blog posted a portion of an address by former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus.

I was prepared to post a portion of what Power Line posted, on the relationship between communism and the modern environmental movement--but another portion of the excerpt drew my attention because it appropriately frames the entire issue:

The real debate is and should be about costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future, about what kind and size of solidarity with much wealthier future generations is justified, about the size of externalities and their eventual appropriate internalization, about how much to trust the impersonal functioning of the markets in solving any human problem, including global warming, and how much to distrust the very visible hand of very human politicians and their bureaucrats.
(Power Line)

That last line sums up the trepidations I have about a unified US government under President Obama. By all accounts an ambitious man whose historic footprints trail through leftist fens.

Update: The Czech proprietor of The Reference Frame, Luboš Motl, stopped by the comments section and left a link to a video of the press club event at which Klaus spoke--at CSPAN. Sincere thanks to Luboš.

Power Line on Power

As expected, Power Line wasn't exactly torn up about Samantha Power's resignation from the Obama campaign.

John Hinderaker's post on the topic was short and concise, and the latter paragraph well worth quoting:

So Power is gone from the scene, at least for now. But there is still a lesson to be learned, as Paul has documented in a series of posts, from the fact that Obama sought her out as a key foreign policy adviser. For the reasons Paul has noted, Power deserved to be controversial long before she started saying what the Obama camp really thinks about Hillary Clinton.
(Power Line)

*****

Power Outage? (Updated)

Fox News radio just reported that Samanta Power has resigned from the Obama campaign after fallout from her comments about Sen. Clinton being a "monster."

The good folks at Power Line blog will no doubt welcome the news, though it isn't likely to draw them onto the Obama bandwagon.

Power seems cut from the same mold as Obama in some ways. She figures to have an impressive intellect, but put her in front of the media to talk issues and the foot goes in the mouth. At least Bush could fall back on a history of malapropism. Eloquent types are allowed less leeway.

Update:
Rush Limbaugh's guest host was talking about an apology for Samantha Powers' remarks without mentioning the resignation, so I thought I might have suffered an auditory malfunction while listening to the news.

Not so much:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - An aide to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Samantha Power, stepped down from the campaign on Friday amid uproar over a comment she made to a British newspaper referring to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a "monster."

"She made the decision to resign and we accepted it," said Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director:

(Reuters)

*****

The "Pick Flick"/"Vote Clinton" parallel

SlateV put together a little patchwork video building the parallel between Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) from "Election" and presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY).

I found it amusing; you be the judge as to whether it leaves a mark.



Ouch. The default dimensions were really something. No fair overlapping "Day By Day."

Hat tip to Power Line.

*****

John Yoo: Terrorists waging "lawfare"

Thanks go to the good folks at Power Line (via RealClearPolitics) for highlighting this important story.

After being sued by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, I wonder whether our nation today has the same unity and tenacity to defeat the great security challenge of our day, the rise of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. Even as our brave young soldiers fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, and our intelligence agents succeed in disrupting follow-ups to the 9/11 attacks, terrorists are using our own legal system as a weapon against us.

They use cases such as Padilla's to harass the men and women in our government, force the revelation of valuable intelligence and press novel theories that have failed at the ballot box and before the president and Congress.

"Lawfare" has become another dimension of warfare.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

The United States' legal system offers a number of avenues for exploitation by terrorists. Of particular concern, here, is the propensity of Americans to offer assistance to the terrorists in advancing these legal attacks.

John Hinderaker tacked a comment on the end of Scott Johnson's post at Power Line:

Just be grateful those folks are so patriotic. God only knows what they would do if they weren't.

Exactly.

*****

The Mukasey snag

Powerline and Captain's Quarters each take a stab at unraveling the objections against Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General.

Mukasey has refused to opine about waterboarding on the ground that he doesn't know what's involved in the technique. But this will not remain a tenable basis for not answering, since it's not difficult to find out what waterboarding entails.

Mukasey should testify that waterboarding is legal in exigent circumstances. Alternatively, he should find another basis for refusing to answer the question.
(Power Line)

Captain Ed's take reminds me of my commentary from a week ago (though certainly not in a plagiaristic kind of way!).

And here is the core of the silliness in this standoff. Here we have Congress, as represented by the Judiciary Committee, demanding that an AG candidate declare a specific act illegal. They have it completely backwards. Congress has the responsibility to pass laws and make the determination of legality and illegality -- and the AG has the responsibility to enforce those laws.
(Captain's Quarters)

Contrast these opinions with that of Robyn Blumner (from her editorial last week):

On the issue of torture, Mukasey's first dance was with the committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont. Mukasey condemned torture because that "is not what this country is about," but when asked about particular interrogation practices such as waterboarding, Mukasey refused to call those methods illegal. On hearing Day Two, Mukasey told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., "If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

Notice the big "if."

This is essentially the same tactic used by the president in defending against torture allegations. Bush insists we don't torture, because the pain and suffering we inflict on our prisoners has been defined in the Unabridged Bush Presidency Dictionary as something other than torture. (A little dunk in water, as the vice president might say.) If Mukasey buys into this semantical legerdemain, as he seems to, then he's not worthy of the job.

(St. Petersburg Times)

Blumner takes for granted that Mukasey should regard water boarding as illegal even if there is no law against it.

It is absurd for Mukasey to rule water boarding illegal on his own authority, particularly because (as Ed Morrissey reminded us) the technique is used by the U.S. government on our own soldiers as part of their training.

*****