After attending a Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice, a Bay Area interfaith peace organization. steering committee meeting, where one of the major topics was our endorsement of an anti-torture campaign, I was flipping through the channels when I came across Bill O'Reilly interviewing Rev. Jim Wallis (editor of Sojourners). They were discussing an advertisement run in the New York Times by an organization called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) that called for America to put an end to torture. O'Reilly asked Rev. Wallis a simple question, which I was surprised to see Rev. Wallis fumble. Granted, an armchair quarterback always feels better prepared than the person truly in the hot seat, but, Rev. Wallis is acting as a spokesperson for this campaign and I wish he had a more accurate response to O'Reilly's question.

The question from O'Reilly was "What torture?" He wanted to know what examples of torture could be cited to justify a campaign against it, specifically a campaign that accused the United States of torturing people. Instead of citing specific examples, Rev. Wallis gave the impression that the campaign was more philosophical, and that investigations were necessary to show whether the United States was, or was not, conducting or condoning torture.

Fellow Kossack Mike Stark, the gadfly who frequently calls right-wing talk show hosts to debunk their talking points, has made Paul Krugman's column tomorrow. Krugman, in a brilliantly-written piece, talks about how the story that Iraq had no WMD's is so much like the fairy tale in which the emperor had no clothes.

Stark, writes Krugman, was the man who said the emperor had no clothes. Krugman points to O'Reilly's response in which he screams he will stalk him by going to his house and surprising him:

I've laid my hands on additional material, which Andersen failed to publish, describing what happened after the imperial procession was over.

The talk-show host Bill O'Reilly yelled, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" at the little boy. Calling the boy a nut, he threatened to go to the boy's house and "surprise" him.