torture

During the Bush Administration, Rabbi Melissa Weintraub wrote a definitive condemnation of torture according to Talmudic teaching and Jewish collective memory. With the release of the CIA “torture memos,” these essays are worth revisiting. And, as Israel celebrates the 61st anniversary of its independence how does the Jewish nation itself stack up to these ideals?

As politicians argue, and our pragmatist-in-chief tries to find an angle, we can agree that not all moral dilemmas can be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis of pleasure and pain. There are some kinds of pain a morally serious person ought never to inflict.

What does it mean when a country that likes to proclaim itself a defender of freedom plays a song about liberation to people it is torturing?

Relieved that Guantanamo Bay is closing? Don’t rest easy. Until we accept our collective responsibility for torture, and the fact that it requires not just the torturer’s denial, but ours, it will prevail.

Evangelicals on torture; BornAliveTruth.org targets Obama; Focus on the Family and gays; the Evangelical Youth Vote; Regnery’s Islamophobia; the Religious Left

Withholding them at this point further fuels the idea that we have done something so horrible that it cannot be seen. This notion is a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists.

RD blogger Hussein Rashid, disturbed by the silence of the American Muslim community on torture, drafted this statement. Who will sign?

A recent poll showed that white evangelicals are the religious group most likely to support torture. How can that be?

If American Muslims do not oppose torture and participate in the conversation on American morality, they become a special interest group with little relevance. But within Islam there is a strong religious case to be made against torture.

Darwin’s abhorrence for slavery, and his determination to counter the wrongs being done in the name of science, was a spur to his research on evolution. He was committed to proving that humanity had a common ancestor.