I have been suffering from a pervasive underlying sense of depression, almost despair, at what is happening to this country. We are to the point where a former CIA director publicly calls our Vice President a Vice President for Torture, and where the Washington Post calls our current CIA director a Director for Torture, and yet we cannot get a bill through Congress that would return to our half-century tradition of complying with the Geneva Conventions and extending the obligation not to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment to the CIA. We are going to stand by and let possibly tens of thousands of Pakistanis die in the high mountains in brutal conditions, while Britain and the UN do their best to help, when it is absolutely clear that improving perceptions of the U.S. in Pakistan and then throughout the Muslim world is one of our major strategic priorities and, were we not tied down and floundering in Iraq, we could have actually led a global effort along the lines of the Berlin Airlift to help. And two months after Hurricane Katrina, we have not even been able to restore power to major parts of New Orleans, as we were unable to restore power in Baghdad for months and months and months. A group of Woodrow Wilson School students who went to New Orleans to work over fall break at the end of October report that the French Quarter is thriving, in part through construction workers coming from all over the country for good jobs rebuilding some parts of the city, while the 9th ward remains full of people who had no where to go before the hurricane and no way to get there and now are living in unspeakable conditions of rubble, waste, and toxic mold. And the New Orleans Times-Picayune, while noting some bright spots, writes of Congressional indifference and the "creeping abandonment of greater New Orleans."

I could go on. But it is Thanksgiving, and I am more aware this year than possibly ever before how fortunate I and my family are. In the spirit of the day, let me offer and give thanks for the few bright spots I can make out on the present political landscape.

Thanks to John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who at last have actually tried to do something about what is right now an offical public American endorsement of torture, betraying our values, harming our soldiers, and utterly destroying our legitimacy not only in the Muslim world but in large parts of Europe.

Read more »