Matt Yglesias, having contemplated a recent Rasmussen poll showing that 58% of Americans favor waterboarding the Underpants Bomber, has a question for America's "torture-loving conservative elites":

I would be interested to know how far the public"”or how torture-lovingconservative elites"”would be willing to go on this. In a lot of waysterrorism cases strike me as unusually unpromising venues for torture.Something more banal like trying to get a low-level drug dealer tospill the beans on his supplier could really work. My view is thatroutinized deployment of brutality by government officials isn't goingto produce any systematic gains, so it doesn't make sense to uncorkthis kind of treatment on Abdulmuttalab or Generic Drug Dealer X. Butfor torture enthusiasts is there...