Stewart, Colbert to return to the air

“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” will resume production on Jan. 7 without their striking writers, the Comedy Central network announced Thursday.

(…) In a joint statement, Stewart and Colbert said: “We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”AP

Should be interesting to see an “unplugged” edition of the two. I always found the be the interviews as interesting as the rest of the shows, so to have one without the other may be less idea, but still better than neither. Either way, my birthday is on the 6th, so thanks!

stand up comedy

April 10, 2006:

Deleting Common Sense

By now you have probably heard about the CIA deleting videos and sound recording of their “interrogation” (read: torture) of at least two individuals they previously denied even to have documents about, let alone to have tortured. If not, you can read the NY Times story here.

This story features a number of backdoor admissions by the CIA, for one that they do torture so harshly they don’t want anyone to see it. But the interesting thing is why they think no-one should know about it:

(Head of CIA) General Hayden’s statement (sent to to CIA members to warn them about the impending NY Times story) said that the tapes posed a “serious security risk,” and that if they were to become public they would have exposed C.I.A. officials “and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers.”

“What matters here is that it was done in line with the law,” he said. He said in his statement that he was informing agency employees because “the press has learned” about the destruction of the tapes. NY Times

The head of the CIA hereby officially stated the US is open to retaliation if “the enemy” finds out what we are doing.

After all the semantics of what exactly constitutes torture, this is quite the amazing statement to make. It’s exactly why such unpatriotic assholes like me have been saying torture is not only unethical, it’s also a bad idea in the long run. And now it’s been backed up by the head of the CIA that this is precisely what happens.

PS: new drinking game: have one shot every time the NY Times avoids the word “torture.”