For those who are sensitive to the whims of the zeitgeist, the narrative seems to be changing. Unbelievably, some reporters are actually looking at the “legal parsing” under the Republican “compromise” on torture. In fact, Times reporter Adam Liptak comes perilously close to actually getting it:

Detainee Deal Comes With Contradictions
The compromise [Hey, where are the irony quotes?] reached on Thursday between Congressional Republicans and the White House on the interrogations and trials of terrorism suspects is, legal experts said yesterday, a series of interlocking paradoxes.

It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.

Well, who decides what’s legal, then? The only answer:

The Decider.

That means the President is both deciding what the law means, enforcing it, and, with signing statements, rewriting laws he doesn’t like. That gives the President judicial, executive, and legislative powers, completely subverting the checks and balances the Founders built into the Constitution. And that means tyranny. See Federalist 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

Yes, Adam almost gets it. The tipoff is that word “paradoxical” (interlocking or no).

As any programmer or logician know, a system with paradoxes or internal contradictions doesn’t work. It crashes.

So, cui bono? Who benefits from a legal regime that crashes? Gosh, I wonder….