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Responsibility to Prosecute.
14-Nov-11Sullivan confesses that “Greenwald has a point” – that one of the reasons why so many Republican presidential candidates support waterboarding is because there are no repercussions for it. It is just another tactic in a game to them. I’m sure that waterboarding a dog would land any of them in jail, a la Michael Vick, but waterboarding a human being wouldn’t.
I had precisely the same thought independently – that continued support, at the highest levels, for an action technically illegal by our own law probably could be traced to Obama’s refusal to do anything about it. I think perhaps the situation at Penn State has reminded us that idle tolerance of crime is actually a problem, morally and pragmatically.