REGARDING MEDIA - Decency should be state policy

Regular readers of Regarding Media may recall that the late Edward R. Murrow delivered about the best possible judgment on this confusion's impact, when he decried a faux notion of journalistic fairness that is willing to concede "the word of Judas equal weight with that of Jesus."

It's the kind of he-said-she-said news coverage that would have reported the Sermon on the Mount this way: "On a mountainside in Galilee today, a popular young rabbi argued that 'the meek shall inherit the earth.' Other religious authorities, however, pointed out that if God did not want the rich to fleece the poor, he would not have allowed them to behave like sheep."

This week, Americans were treated to their latest rehearsal of this phony fairness in the coverage of U.S. Atty. Gen.-designate Michael B. Mukasey's attempts to win Senate confirmation. President George W. Bush hopes to replace the haplessly sycophantic Alberto Gonzales with the former federal judge from New York, but the nomination is in trouble because Mukasey refuses to tell members of the Senate's Judiciary Committee whether he believes waterboarding is torture and, therefore, illegal.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are insistent that any discussion of the issue is precluded by the exigencies of national security and the war on terror. Cut to the core of their real argument, however, and it boils down to the naked assertion that whatever the president says is legal is legal -- including torture, which isn't torture, if the president says it isn't.

As the Washington Post, which has done more than any other news outlet to bring to light this administration's construction of a secret gulag where torture is routine, reported this week: "Waterboarding generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning, human rights groups say. The practice dates at least to the Spanish Inquisition and has been prosecuted as torture in U.S. military courts since the Spanish-American War. The State Department has condemned its use in other countries.

"Officials have said the Bush administration authorized the use of waterboarding on at least three prisoners kept in secret detention by the CIA after the Justice Department said it was legal, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed."