Got a taste for irony? How about this bad boy?

Members of a violent gang from Queens that allegedly stole millions of dollars worth of cocaine from drug dealers are facing criminal charges in federal court that include kidnapping and torture, officials said yesterday.

A couple of months ago, I suggested that Antonin Scalia's view of the Constitution allows you to torture people suspected of being terrorists -- but not people convicted of being terrorists. Jim Lakely, bless him, suggested that this only applied to foreign nationals who aren't protected by the Constitution -- so no worries, really.

One of the great scandals of the last eight years is how successful the Bush Administration has been at avoiding appropriate accountability and oversight. Whatever else one thinks of Don Rumsfeld, he at least (appropriately) offered to resign -- twice -- after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. The president, of course, declined to accept, but such displays of honor and acceptance of responsibility have been rare during this presidency.

"Battlestar Galactica" is perhaps the smartest and most comprehensive artistic meditation on life in post-9/11 America that exists in all of popular culture. Also, it has sexy robots, which is pretty awesome.

By now you've probably heard that the goverment has released a 2003 memo to the Pentagon authorizing "harsh interrogation techniques." The memo was later rescinded, and it seems the Pentagon never got around to doing the worst of what it was authorized to do.

The most fascinating part of the coverage, to me, is this: