The Reality-Based Community

In point of fact, we don't.

At the Jewish New Year, observant Jews pray:

“We are not so brazen-faced and stiff-necked that we should say before thee, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, we are righteous and have not sinned; for verily, we have sinned."

This is not a uniquely Jewish concept. Obama, who knows his scripture, surely knows this verse:

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8).

Today we stand before God and the world brazen-faced and stiff-necked, saying, we are righteous and do not torture, when verily, we have tortured.

Until we admit it, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Thank you, JR. I'm really weary of Obama lecturing me about morality and leadership and reaching out to the religious right and on and on. I'm over it and I'm over him. For what it's worth, Deval Patrick here in Massachusetts is taking a page from the same playbook.

Don't you see what Obama was doing? He was appealing to an aspirational America by insisting that it was and is the "true" America. That wasn't an empirical claim: it was an attack on Bush and his cronies for acting in a completely un-American manner.

Then, for God's sake, have the courage of your convictions. Filibuster.

This is not a bad piece of legislation. It is an atrocious piece of legislation. It is egregious legislative practice - rushed through in a week and a half with the transparent purpose of creating a partisan issue.

At some point, the Democrats ought to be able to muster the moral courage to say this is wrong, and stand by it. If Rove, Bush and Cheney want to go into the elections saying that the President ought to have the authority to lock up anyone indefinitely on his own say so, they have to say "so be it. We welcome this fight."

Jeez, all any Democrat needs to do is say "We'll treat them like we did the Nazi's."

That will cover all bases on our side, and put the onus on the other side to prove that the detainees are a worse threat than the Wermacht.

And it has the virtue of being direct and easily understood. Something my Dems have trouble with.