As Bad as It Gets

Three worst/stupidest things I've ever done:

• Jumping from the high school grandstand onto a pole vault landing pad
• Not visiting a woman just before she died of cancer because I was too freeked out by my own recent cancer experience and by her husbands anger at everything.
• Not buying that Volvo in 1980 or buying that Saab in 2002.

Three worst/stupidest things our Congress has ever done:

• Pass the Alien and Sedition Acts
• Pass the Fugitive Slave Act
• Pass today's legislation which affirms torture and allows the President to lock up anyone, including American citizens without any legal recourse.

As Dan Froomkin says:

Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation.

How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

It's a red-letter day for the country. It's also a telling day for our political system.