CHECKING IN ON WILLARD-MITT. Hey, it's Primary Day here in the Commonwealth (God save it!). Three decent Democratic candidates have been vigorously belaboring each other for the right to face Republican Lieutenant Governor Kerry Murphy O'Faolain O'Flaherty Maud Gonne Healey in the general election. (There is also an Independent candidate named Christy Mihos, and he's probably the happiest candidate since Hubert Humphrey bubbled off this mortal coil, but he has less chance of being governor than he does of swimming to Greenland.) Now seem like a good time to check in on the only governor we actually have, Willard Mitt Romney. What's he up to? Well, he's out there being an idiot. As you know, Willard Mitt wants to be president, but one of his biggest problems is that he's a high-rent Mormon, and an awful lot of the folks around the country were raised to believe Mormons had two heads and both of them pagan. Willard Mitt needed an issue to reach these folks and, since all the theological ones were unavailable, he apparently has settled on torture as his outreach to the good Christian folks. Here he is in today's Los Angeles Times. "I am foursquare behind President Bush," says Willard-Mitt, if you scroll down far enough. "Sen. McCain's position is mistaken on this issue." (It's in moments like these when it's helpful to remember that John McCain has to drive a car with his elbows almost straight out to the side because his arms were broken so badly by his captors in North Vietnam.) Just so we're clear -- I now live in a state governed by a man who believes that the president of the United States has the inherent authority to order the torture unto death of anyone the president sees fit to render, and that the president's authority in that regard is absolute, beyond the reach of constitutional limits, international conventions, or moral scruples. This makes you, according to the Los Angeles Times, a "centrist." This man wants to be president of the United States. This man wants to be able to torture. Being governor of Massachusetts shouldn't make you this crazy.
--Charles P. Pierce
