Padilla and Kiriakou

I don’t want to step on the Harvard symposium — I’ve moved it back to the top — but it’s worth noting that, on the same day, (1) the Fourth Circuit threw out Jose Padilla’s lawsuit seeking damages for his mistreatment while being detained and (2) the U.S. government arrested John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, for revealing critical aspects of the systematic torture regime created by the Bush administration and swept under the table by the Obama administration, the latter of the wonderfully selective “look forward, not backward” philosophy. (Though it’s worth noting that Kiriakou isn’t anti-torture himself.)

So, to sum up: torturing people fine, revealing torture criminal.

Welcome to the shining city upon a hill, circa 2012.