OK, I fully admit that's a provocative title for me to write. To be more accurate (and a lot less sensationalistic) it should probably read: "In Support Of Dick Cheney's Call To Declassify The Evidence To Prove Whether Torture Worked Or Not." Call me biased towards openness and knowing what was done in the American public's name, but I support Cheney's recent call for more (not less) disclosure in this case. Whether it makes logical sense to anyone's argument about the subject or not.

The right's argument currently is that President Obama's release of the Bush Torture Memos was "dangerous" and "irresponsible" and put our national security at risk, and even may have been aiding our enemies. This is not overstating their case -- if anything, it understates their case. The release of the memos was dangerous and naive, they argue, and was solely a political move designed to embarrass former president Bush. In other words, Obama sacrificed American national security for politics. Keep this in mind, we'll return to this argument later. But first....

Enter Dick Cheney. Now, for those of us who are accustomed to loudly humming "Darth Vader's Theme" from "Star Wars" every time Cheney is shown, an interesting side note from Maureen Dowd needs attention. She actually asked a man who should know something about the subject -- George Lucas himself -- and here is what he had to say on the matter:

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President Obama called last week for simplifying the United States income tax code. This issue may be too big for even Obama to succeed at changing, though. Because while politicians love to rail against the briar patch that is our tax code, and love to call for "reforming" or "simplifying" it, very little progress is ever actually made at doing so. But there's an easy one-step solution for this systemic problem that would go a long, long way towards simplifying the thousands of pages of instructions from the Internal Revenue Service. This idea could fit on a postcard: "Force Congress to do their own taxes. With no help. And then immediately audit all of them, and post the results publicly."

But before we get to the solution, let's take a look at the problem. Our tax code is complex, by design. There was a great overview last week on the Huffington Post which explains why this is so. In a nutshell: the tax code is written by Congress (who writes all laws). Corporations lobby Congress for favorable language in the tax code, which will benefit only them (or, at the most, only their industry). This language is purposely intended to be as obscure as possible, to hide what they're doing from everyone else (who might object to such favorable treatment as being "unfair"). Most people don't read even one-tenth of the whole tax code when filling out their own returns, which further obscures such favorable treatment. Which leaves everybody with extremely puzzling and obscure verbiage outlining how taxes are to be paid.

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Pirates are in the news these days. So is torture.

What a strange set of sentences that is to begin an article about the twenty-first century world we live in. But pirates are attacking ships with regularity off the coast of Somalia. This has been going on for years, but Americans just realized it is happening (because an American ship was just attacked). And, while the two are not connected (and I am not advocating for their connection, sorry for the slightly-misleading headline), people are finally talking about torture after President Obama released the Bush torture memos to the public. We'll get to the Bush torture memos in a bit, but I'd like to begin with a proposed solution to the pirate problem first.

While the U.S. Navy pulled off a spectacularly successful rescue last week, this should not be seen by anyone as the ultimate answer to the problem. It's not going to end this way every time, folks, no matter how much of an optimist you may be. There are millions of square miles of open ocean to patrol, and we'd have to throw something like half our Navy at the area to adequately secure it. Which just isn't going to happen. There is a better answer to the problem which I haven't heard proposed yet, which is why I am doing so now.

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The "Tea Party" tax day protests which took place yesterday apparently got mixed reviews from all concerned. They did get a lot of media coverage, most of which at least tried to be respectful of their views. That's more than most protests get from the media, but this was largely due to the fact that Fox News was a de facto sponsor of the events. They reportedly broadcast live from several locations throughout the day. One of these was in Sacramento, where a Fox News personality attended the rally. Right down the road, Fresno, California also had a big turnout for their tea party. The rural areas which surround these cities are fairly conservative, even though they are in the heart of California, so it's not too surprising that they both got a good turnout.

But what wasn't mentioned, at least not in any news that I've seen, was that Fresno has an ugly history of violent terrorist actions against the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has a processing facility here, where millions of Westerners send their tax forms each year.

On April 1, 1991, it was attacked by mortars. You read that right -- mortars. A group calling itself "Up The IRS, Inc." later claimed responsibility. The authorities took this claim seriously, since they had already claimed responsibility for a car bomb the previous February at the Los Angeles IRS office.

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American Violet is not a "horror movie." It has no monsters, zombies, or mass murderers in it. Just people. But the movie's powerful message on the role racism plays in the Drug War will likely horrify you just the same. So while American Violet is about as far from the "horror" genre in moviemaking as you can get, audiences may indeed be horrified (or perhaps outraged) at the injustice displayed by one district attorney in Texas.

This impressive new film tells one woman's story of abuse at the hands of a hostile legal system. For different reasons, it evokes such past films as Erin Brockovich, Mississippi Burning, and the works of Sidney Poitier in the Civil Rights era. American Violet tells the story of legal injustice and systemic, institutionalized racism -- and the struggle to overcome such prejudice. One big difference from these earlier films, however, is that the events which inspired American Violet happened in the year 2000. Throughout the movie, news clips are shown in the background which chronicle the election (and aftermath) between Al Gore and George W. Bush, just to remind us that this is not some story from the 1960s-era, but that this sort of thing still happens all too often in today's America.

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I have to admit, when I sat down to write about President Obama's change in America's Cuba policy, the first headline which suggested itself was: "Obama Does Exactly What He Said He Would Do -- Media Stunned." But then, that headline could apply to so many things these days, that I thought I needed to be a bit more specific.

While Obama's change in direction on Cuba is indeed stunning, it is not at all unexpected. Here is Barack Obama from the campaign trail, speaking in Miami last May:

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Tea doesn't get much respect in America. This historical snubbing will continue Wednesday, with protests across America meant to evoke the Boston Tea Party, a seminal event in the foundation of our county. How effective these protests will be is going to be open to interpretation, however.

But first, some sympathy for tea itself. Americans consume far more coffee than tea, and don't even realize that the reason they do so can be traced back to the Boston Tea Party itself. Tea is such a quintessentially English drink that during and after the Revolution, not drinking it was a simple political statement: "We're not British, we're Americans." Even today, tea is held to be somewhat suspect, rather feminine, and not as red-blooded American as drinking coffee. A quick observation of any Denny's in the country at breakfast will confirm the ratio of coffee drinkers to tea drinkers among today's Americans. If you don't believe that patriotic feelings get attached to food, then you must not remember "freedom fries" from a few years back. Such feelings sometimes get so ingrained in society that the reason behind them is lost in time. As happened with tea in America.

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A bumpersticker seen in more liberal areas of the country reads: "Jesus save me from your followers." Now, that may not be a very "Christian" way to open a column which falls on the Christian Good Friday, but I was reminded of it by yet another episode of Catholic leaders denouncing liberal politicians. To these leaders, I have to say, isn't there something about beams and dust motes and eyes which you could be more productively teaching about? Or perhaps that one about throwing the first stone?

The occasion for the outrage this time is Notre Dame -- a Catholic college -- inviting the President of the United States to speak at its graduation ceremony. Outrageous, huh? Some bishops and priests and other Catholic leaders have raised an outcry and, if Obama was Catholic, would no doubt be calling to ban him from taking communion. Their theological logic (ahem) is that since Obama supports the law he swore a holy oath to uphold for all American citizens (the Constitution), he should be shunned by the Catholic community. Yes, it was a "holy" oath, since Obama added the (non-required) words "so help me God" at the end. And yes, abortion rights are part of that law. Meaning that, to the bishops and other leaders, Obama cannot be given the right to speak at a Catholic forum, since he does not follow to the letter the holy laws laid down by the Pope.

To which I have to say: Hypocrites!

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We apologize for today's interruption in service, and are glad to announce that ChrisWeigant.com is back "on the air" (on the wire?).

At approximately 2:30 A.M., someone cut eight "trunk line" fiber optic cables in two different locations in the San Jose, California area, which knocked out phone and internet service for a multi-county area. At this time, nobody seems to know who did this, or why. Four of the cables cut belonged to AT&T, which has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible.

Not only was internet service interrupted (the reason for our site being dark all day), but also local phone service (cellular and landline both) was down as well. This led to local failures in emergency (911) services. Meaning anyone with a medical or criminal emergency was simply not able to contact help. Police and fire services did their best, cruising around more than usual, in the hopes that people could flag them down in the event of any emergency.

ATMs and credit card processing were also out for the entire region. Further details at this point are sketchy, at best. So while it is impossible to draw conclusions as to what happened, we can now at least be thankful that the break in the fiber optic cables has been repaired, and can now resume service here at ChrisWeigant.com.

We apologize for the lack of an article today, and for any inconvenience this may have caused.

-- Chris Weigant

It must be tough to be a member of the media class these days. The inside-the-Beltway crowd is getting more and more frustrated with the public's refusal to go along with the storyline they are trying to sell... oh, excuse me, that should read "tell," shouldn't it? They've been beating the drum of President Obama's supposed failure from Day One, but that rascally public keeps right on giving him roughly two-thirds approval ratings. In fact, his approval ratings have just not budged during the entire time.

So pity the poor media, especially those commenting from the right. Their frustration in not being able to control the storyline on Obama's presidency must be giving them fits. Their most recent attempt at finding the gloomy lining in Obama's silver cloud was that he is the "most polarizing president ever!" They focus in like a laser beam on a Pew Research poll which shows, in essence, that the Republican Party is shrinking down to its core base of very conservative people. Party identification and satisfaction with the Republican Party is at an all-time low, so it's not that hard to understand that whoever's left is going to be pretty committed to the cause, because all the moderates have left. But although this is the logical conclusion to draw from the data, some pundits on the right are trying to shoehorn this in to their overarching "Obama is a failure" theme.

They fail to mention that the same poll showed Obama with a 61 percent approval rating, which is more than twice his disapproval rating of 26 percent. Two polls (CNN and CBS) came out a day earlier than Pew which pegged Obama's approval at a stratospheric 66 percent. These numbers do not fit the storyline, so they are not even mentioned.

Instead, the story runs something like this:

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