Digby's Hullabaloo

Go Team God!

by digby

Weighing in on Connecticut’s hotly contested congressional races, a group of religious activists have unveiled a giant billboard off busy Interstate 95 that accuses four candidates of voting to allow torture.

The billboard in Stratford names Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and Republican Reps. Christopher Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson as supporters of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The legislation, which President Bush was expected to sign into law Tuesday, allows military commissions to prosecute suspected terrorists and spells out violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Organizers say about 100,000 commuters pass the billboard in Stratford each day. The billboard – 14 feet high and 48 feet wide – was sponsored by Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, which describes itself as a statewide interfaith network of religious leaders created in 2002.

The legislation would prohibit war crimes and define atrocities such as rape and torture but would otherwise allow the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, the treaty that sets standards for the treatment of war prisoners.

“This is a shameful law,” organizer Rev. Kathleen McTigue said Monday. “It grants extraordinary power to the president to interpret the Geneva Conventions, including which methods of interrogation will be considered torture.”

And what about Connecticut’s most awesomely religious and moral candidate?

“This is just another example of the kind of mudslinging partisanship that Joe Lieberman wants to remove from our debates about how best to keep our nation safe,” said Lieberman spokeswoman Tammy Sun. “The fact is, Joe Lieberman does not support torture. He joined 11 other Democrats as well as Sen. John McCain – who is himself a prisoner of war – in voting to uphold the Geneva Convention.”

And that is just another example of the kind of slick, Rovian PR spin that Democrats across the country want to remove from our debates about right and wrong. The fact is, Joe Lieberman joined 11 other Democrats and John McCain — who is himself a man with no principles — in voting for a law that allows the president to unilaterally decide what constitutes torture, gives him the power to imprison people (including American citizens) indefinitely, try them in a kangaroo court based on heresay and coerced evidence and then sentence them to death with no right to appeal.