There is a federal judge in Chicago who does more than decide cases. Richard Posner also writes on a variety of matters and fancies himself as a public intellectual. Judge Posner is conservative, but he's extremely smart. The problem for him is that he thinks that modern conservative thought leaves something to be desired, and that conservative thinking is in decline. He said this in an article a few weeks ago.

This point is most easily proven through the debate on torture and U.S. foreign policy. It's hard to believe that we are actually having this debate. Torture is against the law and totally immoral. Torture is what the barbarians do, and God help any country that tortures U.S. soldiers. But we are doing it, too, and the Bush administration denied it up and down but the evidence is there for all to see: the United States was torturing prisoners in the "war on terror" and trying to wiggle away from scrutiny by calling it "enhanced interrogations." In fact, there is evidence that the U.S. was torturing prisoners in order to prove that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. If that's the case, then in my view any U.S. official who authorized the use of torture for that purpose belongs in jail.

The modern conservative defends the use of torture because that's the only way to get information about the next terrorist attack. At least that's what the modern conservative tells us. Experts see it differently. They argue that evidence produced as a result of torture is unreliable because prisoners will say anything in order to stop the torture. There are better and more effective ways to gain this important information, though it takes time in order to get suspects to talk. But interrogators have come forward advising us that it can all be done legally.

Republicans threw in the intellectual towel a long time ago. We know this. The Republican Party had no message at all in the 2008 presidential election, and the one candidate who electrified the party last year was an anti-intellectual Republican governor from Alaska who could not answer the simplest questions and otherwise gave preposterous answers. She and others called Obama a terrorist out of desperation as the campaign died down, throwing the ultimate Hail Mary when it was clear the Republicans were going to lose.

Waterboarding is on the table now because the Republicans think that this technique produces reliable information and that terrorists need to be drowned in order to protect Americans from another terror attack. The disgusting Dick Cheney is a chief proponent of this theory, and the Republican diehards have fallen in line. But a right-wing talk radio host agreed to be waterboarded to see what it was like. He lasted only a few seconds. He was scared shitless as a result of the waterboarding exercise and declared that it was torture plain and simple.

This guy probably though he was a tough guy who could stand up to waterboarding and then be able to say that the terrorists in U.S. custody would outlast this practice. It was clear from the video, however, that he would have said anything to get out of waterboarding. I give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is, and I also give him credit for changing his mind after experiencing waterboarding. Here's the video:

Could you handle waterboarding? Probably not. In all likelihood, any "confession" as a result of this practice is useless. And the people who support waterboarding are nuts.