Lithwick v. Wittes

Well, it was perhaps more of a conversation than a debate, but it was provocative.

Some important points:

The realization that, in creating a legal system, we do calibrate our laws to the situation. We would not want to have trials in which no one was convicted, and thus we may end up changing our laws in ways to achieve that. Ben points out a useful contrast with the Nuremberg trials and those at Guantanamo: in Nuremberg, any trial was a concession, whereas at Gitmo our baseline is a civilian trial.

Lithwick did not actually have a point of clash with Ben's view (part of this, of course, is because Ben is rather moderate and likes the image of the radical more than the argument of him - unlike many people). However, she staunchly held that, "after waterboarding is in the picture, all bets are off" because you can't salvage anything from the previous legal procedure - essentially, you can't put on trial any of the tortured detainees. I don't quite understand this argument, because she also agrees that we shouldn't have wholly civilian trials state-side.

Ben made a great point that Scalia tends to have as much - or more - empathy with victims as do the liberal justices on the Supreme Court. He simply defines victimhood differently than the rest of us might.

I always admire that Ben is able to catch liberals in their rhetoric, when they have latched onto a side of an issue because of the particulars of the short-term, rather than because it is right in the details, the philosophy, or the long-term. That I truly respect.