Obama is hitting his stride (finally). Bravo!

[JDPriestly]

I just finished watching the press conference Obama gave last night (second time I watched it). He sounded energetic, confident but not arrogant. He listened carefully to each question and answered each just as carefully.

He is hitting his stride -- at long last. Now if he can just keep this up, he will be a wonderful president.

Nevertheless, he needs to revisit the eavesdropping policies that I suspect have changed little if at all since the Bush administration. We are all shocked at the repression in Iran. But if the government is reading and possibly listening in to all our electronic transmissions, we have less freedom of speech, meaning freedom to communicate and associate with whomever we wish, than do the Iranians under their current regime.

Further, the Obama administration needs to answer the following question and answer it loud and clear and in public: Is torturing prisoners a matter of policy or a crime?

If it is a crime, if it is a violation of international and American law, then those who are found to have authorized torture should be indicted. If it is not a crime, then the Obama administration needs to state forthrightly that torture is merely a matter of policy, not a crime.

I don't think that the Obama administration, thus far, is facing its choices on this matter: indict those who authorized torture because it is a crime or not indict and classify torture as just matter of policy, not a crime.

I personally believe that torture is a crime and that those who authorized, regardless of what country they lead, are crimnals. Torture is malum per se (malum in se). It is evil even if it is legal. Before the NAZIs massacred the Jews, they made it legal. Their lawyers pronounced in legal. Was the slaughter of millions of Jews merely a matter of policy? Malum in se is not a policy matter. I repeat, torture is malum in se.

Malum in se (plural mala in se) is a Latin phrase meaning wrong or evil in itself. This concept is a part of the value consensus model explanation of the origins of the criminal law. The phrase is used to refer to conduct assessed as inherently wrong by nature, independent of regulations governing the conduct. It is distinguished from malum prohibitum, which is wrong only because it is prohibited. For example, murder of human beings is universally agreed to be wrong by other human beings, regardless of whether a law exists or where the conduct occurs, and is thus recognizably malum in se. In contrast, consider driving laws. In the U.S., people drive on the right-hand side of the road. In the UK and other states of the Commonwealth, people drive on the left-hand side. Violation of these rules is an example of a malum prohibitum law because the act is not inherently bad, but is forbidden by policy, as set forth by the policy-makers of the jurisdiction. Malum prohibitum crimes are criminal not because they are inherently bad, but because the prohibited act is forbidden by the policy of the state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se