The National Twinkie Defense (Slate)

[Solly Mack]

By Dahlia Lithwick

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina loves the law. Nuts about it. We know this because he tells us this many, many times at this morning's Senate subcommittee hearing on "What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration." We know he loves the law because he says "he fact that we embrace the rule of law is a strength" and that "the only way is to operate within the law," and he says these things mere seconds after he explains that in the desperate days after 9/11, when the lawyers were crafting legal arguments to legalize conduct that was illegal, they did so because "they saw law as a nicety we couldn't afford.


Graham dismisses today's hearing as a "political stunt" because "we would not be having this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon." What this really means is that for all his talk of legality and law and the rule of law, in his view the law means one thing "in the quiet peace of the moment" and something entirely different in the immediate aftermath of a terrorism strike. It's sort of like a national Twinkie defense, but Graham is willing to strap a saddle onto that Twinkie today and ride … and ride and ride."