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A disturbing New York Times Op Ed piece from May 12th entitled "President Apostate?" by Edward N. Luttwak indicates that Barack Obama would be viewed in the Muslim world as an apostate, given he was born to a Muslim father but left the faith, a crime that under Muslim law, Luttwak states, is punishable by death. Luttwak keeps his commentary to what he perceives to be the diplomatic complications engendered by this situation were Obama to become president, however the implied threat of assassination is not without serious resonance.

Andrew Lobaczewski studied at close range a deviant category of humans who, when they manage to grab pivotal positions of power, hold a devastating potential for raining death and destruction down on humanity, simply to further their own interests. These individuals are known as psychopaths, and they move skillfully and purposely throughout the higher echelons of the global body politic. And like clockwork, they slot themselves into all the significant seats of power.

One such individual interests us today. It seems that dangerous moves are afoot which threaten the safety of the entire planet, and that he plays a key role.

At last. A report from the Justice Department that is on the correct side of the torture issue. Yesterday morning, the Inspector General of the Justice Department posted a long-awaited report on the FBI's role in interrogations (PDF) - and how the rest of the Bush administration swept aside the concerns of FBI agents who complained about the CIA and Defense Department using torture.

The report does not reflect any change of heart for Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Instead, the Inspector General is the internal watchdog, the only office in the Justice Department that isn't controlled by the Bush Administration politicos.

The stunning 370-page IG report is a tour-de-force of new facts about perhaps the most serious, deliberate, and systematic plan to violate due process and human rights in our nation's history. For anyone who still believes that the torture seen at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo was simply the work of a few bad eggs, reading just two or three pages - almost any two or three pages in the lengthy report - will show that torture was a widespread and deliberate practice.

It used to be so simple.

Even five years ago there was no room for moral ambiguity.

Here is President Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union:

"Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained - by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning."

At this point, the transcript mentions an outbreak of (Applause.)

Not that long ago, then, we were not only opposed to torture inflicted upon Americans (such as the kicking, clubbing, burning with cigarettes and waterboarding of American POWs as practiced by Japanese soldiers; they received between 15 and 25 years of hard labor for their transgressions): We were also quite opposed to torture inflicted upon Iraqis for the mere purpose of extracting from them what we then called "forced confessions".

It used to be simple.