Recently a friend who is lawyer with the federal government was is a state of shock. It wasn't just because the United States government had said that torture was a permissible instrument of state policy -- it was that the fellow lawyers were not at all outraged and used the excuse, "we have to deal with terrorism."

My friend said, "but that's now how it works." The law is there to protect against these things, not aid and abet.

Then I thought of the famous film lines at the end of Judgment at Nuremberg:

Ernst Janning: Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. YOU must believe it, YOU MUST believe it.

Judge Dan Haywood: Herr Janning, it came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.

"Judgment at Nuremberg"

The road to corruption always begins with a very small step.