DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN: I can’t go around answering all of Andrew Sullivan’s misrepresentations, but it’s telling that he can’t seem to criticize me without misrepresenting what I’ve said. In this post he links to a truncated version of my views on the torture debate on another blog. Why?

Probably because if he linked to my actual post it would reveal some uncomfortable things. First, that I’m not pro-torture despite Andrew’s pathetic eagerness to find me so, and second, that I was criticizing the Democrats’ inconsistency on the subject. Oh, and third, it appears that waterboarding, over which Andrew has exercised himself so much in recent years, and upon which he has staked his many, many, many, many claims to moral supremacy, actually stopped in 2003 — ironically, just as Andrew executed his pivot against Bush and the war — and was only used three times. This seems pretty consistent with my view of torture, which is that I’m against it, but that it’s not quite the issue Andrew wants it — perhaps I should say needs it — to be. Rather, especially for the Democrats, the torture debate has been a political tool, applied in an “any weapon to hand” fashion when politics dictate, but abandoned when they feel the need to talk tough on terrorism.

Meanwhile, at the Cato Institute, a correction to John Quiggin, who was led into error by foolishly relying on Andrew’s representations that I had renounced libertarianism.