Harry Potter is a twit. He suffers from a terrible case of Watson Disease, so common in mystery novels. _
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11:32:24 PM, Sunday 17 July 2005

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"When president George Bush said that the vile practices recorded at Abu Ghraib did not represent America, he was right. They don't. They represent his administration and his policies. Of that there can no longer be any reasonable doubt."

-Andrew Sullivan

He goes through the newly revealed report on the interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. I feel ill. I hope he's right that it's a disease of the administration, and not the military.

As some of you may remember, I used to believe in government, that since it had the power to do good, it had the obligation to do so. The trouble is when it tries to do good without knowing how; or when the people desperately want the government to do something beyond it's ability.

I do, to a certain extent, still believe that the constitution of our government will protect us from this spreading, from a police state taking root. Perhaps I'm a fool. The theory is that they managed to do these things, but they had to set up an elaborate legal sandbox. The courts would stop it from becoming widespread, from happening domestically. The Senate is braying, the search engines find results. (They wouldn't in China). It did spread to Iraq, horrifyingly. But the combination of democracy and established limits on presidential authority should end that, given time. Democracy is damned slow, and it doesn't stop evil or incompetence, just provides a way of bringing them to an end, should people want to. _
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