Palin's speech and torture

Palin's speech at the RNC was snarky and at times downright silly, but it was also disturbing. Her snide reference to Obama's strong stance against torture as worrying about whether or not terrorists have been "read their rights" shows her utter contempt for America's most basic principles. The fact that she would snipe at this as if being against torture is funny or foolish shows us just how little she understands the legal and moral foundations of our nation. If she's going to try to get political mileage out of the fact that her running-mate was tortured, she should at least have the decency and common sense not to implicitly condone torture in the same speech.

I would have hoped that the media would focus more on this than on the silliness of the whole "hockey mom" schtick. What we are seeing here is the emergence of her views on the nature of liberal democracy, the suggestion that our constitutional protections, domestic statutes and international treaty obligations can simply be set aside and mocked when it suits our immediate needs or responds to our current fears. Sarah Palin has revealed her contempt for the basic principle of rule of law. While it provides no end of fun to ridicule her feeble jokes about the decor at the Democratic Convention and, even better, her deliciously absurd self-comparison with a viscious breed of dog outlawed in many states for mauling children, the stupidity of these things speaks for itself. Her contempt for the basic principles of our legal system is what should be headline news.