END TORTURE NOW!! END TORTURE NOW!!

Tuesday afternoon after a little more painting (our glaze didn't turn out the first time so we had to paint it over actually, but now we are on track) we went to our first DC rally. To my way of thinking, this one was a no-brainer, a rally to end torture in America, so I even got into it. The rally was just to the north of the Capitol Building, so it wasn't even that far. Which was nice, because it was pretty hot and humid out and just walking that far was plenty. A couple of thousand people showed up, some people behind us had bussed in from Albany NY, and they mentioned a bus from the midwest somewhere too, so then I felt even more lucky that I live here now.

Any event where politicians speak is bound to be somewhat boring, but due to the emotional nature of the topic people stayed fairly riled up throughout. The night before David and I had watched the episode of "South Park" where Cartman saves the town from hippies, so we were making hippy jokes throughout, but really there weren't that many of them, it was a big cross section of people, Democrats, Republicans, old, young, rednecks, snobs, all sorts of people.

Something fairly interesting in my political journey is how I seem to be getting more conservative as I get older, and yet the Republican party is moving away from true conservatism at a rapid pace, leaving me stranded somewhere between being an Independant and a Libertarian. I like a lot of socially progressive ideas, but already my limited experiences with health care are reminding me that I think people should have a good dose of personal responsibility for taking care of themselves. (And be free to make the "wrong" choices if they want.) But to me this torture thing cuts right to the chase. I can get over President Bush's veto of, say, stem cell research. Agree or disagree, there is a valid argument either way. But to me he (and Cheney and Yoo and Gonzales and Rumsfeld) are stained forever with all their fancy disassembling when it comes to torture. Every day it becomes more clear that they signed off on this from the very beginning, but it is still just that girl in the photos that is sitting in jail. They sacrificed her to save themselves, thinking that would be the end of it. What kind of leadership is that?

McCain didn't show, but several senators did (FYI Ben Cardin from Maryland was the best speaker). But by far the most effective was a woman representing a group of people who had been tortured by governments. In her case it happened in Guatemala twenty some years ago. She spoke most fluently about the dangers of letting your government have the power of detaining and torturing people in secret. She was a teacher, and broke down when she told us that under the double-talk definitions of what our President has signed off on, then what happened to her doesn't qualify as torture anymore. Under the new rules, her being forced to dance naked for guards, having them urinate on her and put out their cigarettes on her breasts doesn't even count as sexual assault anymore. Everyone loves using the ticking time-bomb scenario, but in the end the only point of torture is torture. It is evil on the soul, and I don't think we should sacrifice our troops souls. They deserve better. Our country deserves better. I so wish Elizabeth Hasselback could've been there.

Another thing I learned - people who like Dennis Kucinich, *LIKE* Dennis Kucinich. Wow. I hardly heard a word he said because of a few people around me who were screaming like maniacs through his whole speech.

Bonus: free t-shirts.