Maybe this has been obvious to everyone else for awhile, but it just dawned on me.

If so-called "enhanced interrogations" (i.e., waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, cold temperatures, and other forms of torture) were used to create evidence of links between Hussein and al Qaeda links and evidence of weapons of mass destruction in order to build a more convincing case for the invasion of Iraq (where more than 4,000 American troops have died),

Then, contrary to what Cheney, Bush, and other apologists have claimed, didn't the use of "enhanced interrogations" cost American lives, and not save them?

Even before Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to the seat to be vacated by Justice Souter on the Supreme Court, I had read that her opinion in a reverse-discrimination case brought by largely white firefighters in New Haven might cause her problems.  So I read the opinions in the case, and what I found surprised me in a couple of ways.

One thing that surprised me was that Judge Sotomayor did not write any of the opinions in the case. She was simply one of three judges of the Second Circuit who decided to affirm the decision of the District Court (the trial court) without writing a new opinion. (More on this below.)

The other surprise was that the trial court opinion was largely unsurprising and unremarkable, and appeared to follow the statutes, regulations, Supreme Court precedents, and Second Circuit precedents quite carefully. In fact, the opinion of the trial judge, and the affirmation by the Second Circuit, should be viewed as an example of judicial restraint, and not any kind of "judicial activism." Is that how the Obama administration intends to present the case to the Senate?

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