Complex questions

How a president with an approval rating scraping along in the 30s and a vice-president with approval ratings that would make Nixon blush could be given the power to render the Constitution as just so much pulp, I will never understand.

Over the past few months the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex. Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat? Every member of Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us. Some voted to support this bill even when the majority of their party voted the other way. I thank the legislators who brought this bill to my desk for their conviction, for their vision, and for their resolve.

Some of those legislators.

STRATFORD, Conn. -- Weighing in on Connecticut's hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture.

The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The legislation, which President Bush was expected to sign into law Tuesday, allows military commissions to prosecute suspected terrorists and spells out violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Organizers say about 100,000 commuters pass the billboard in Stratford each day. The billboard - 14 feet high and 48 feet wide - was sponsored by Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, which describes itself as a statewide interfaith network of religious leaders created in 2002.

The legislation would prohibit war crimes and define atrocities such as rape and torture but would otherwise allow the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, the treaty that sets standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

"This is a shameful law," organizer Rev. Kathleen McTigue said Monday. "It grants extraordinary power to the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, including which methods of interrogation will be considered torture."

Proponents of the bill say abusive interrogation methods, including "waterboarding" - or simulated drowning - would amount to war crimes and are prohibited.

"This is just another example of the kind of mudslinging partisanship that Joe Lieberman wants to remove from our debates about how best to keep our nation safe," said Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun. "The fact is, Joe Lieberman does not support torture. He joined 11 other Democrats as well as Sen. John McCain - who is himself a prisoner of war - in voting to uphold the Geneva Convention."

No, he joined 11 other Democrats and John McCain in giving the worst president in the history of the United States the power to say what is torture and what is not and in eliminating the right of habeas corpus for prisoners whom the president declares an enemy combatant.