Despite my intention to refrain from blogs or blogging for a time, skimming sites has become a siren-like habitual accompaniment to my coffee and Dunkin Donuts. I always end up on the rocks of incredulity. I am amazed at the dichotomy in individuals. Some are Christian soldiers on the domestic front and Roman legionnaires internationally. They believe in a large military empire and a small precinct of personal conscience. They proclaim the goodness of the empire, yet countenance all manner of evil used for its preservation. And ideology often trumps morality, law, even reason. Torture is the issue of the day, and I am astounded, more than usual, at the size of the rift between myself and those with whom I am supposed to share conservative values.

I subscribe to the school of thought that legal principles and concepts are accessible to laypeople and don't always require pre-mastication by lawyers to make them intellectually digestible. I have always held the opinion that the raw material of the law belongs to the people and lawyers use it to build edifices of various shapes, quality, and duration. Some structures are cherished and inhabited by many generations; others are as ephemeral as the fashion and perceived need of the day. The present agitation engendered by our consideration of the subject of torture may be the challenge of deciding if we want our conventions on torture to be the Pyramid of Cheops or a Quonset hut.

There is nothing I can add to the debate, other than personal opinion, that would be more helpful or relevant than a reading of the Geneva Convention, our domestic (the U.S.) former standard, and the restructured version represented in the famous or notorious Bybee memo. The question is do we want our foundation built on law or lawyering?