Folks.  Ross Perot was lambasted for using the term.  Now the president uses it as often as the “you can keep…” and “period” verbiage.  As always and forevermore, it is not what is said, but who says it.

Folks.  As if those who went through enhanced interrogations were snatched from a Norman Rockwell scene and placed on a waterboard.  Hardly. 

The president, and the attorney general, still seem bent on proving that the Bush administration engaged in “torture.”  We seem to forget the moment in history in which the procedures in question were conducted.  Did Obama and Holder see the people jumping from the World Trade Center?  Now that is “torture,” and death.

Curious and complicated are the CIA spying games on the Senate apparently conducted in reference to and in pursuit of enhanced interrogation records from the previous administration.  And even more curious is that the attorney general will not conduct an investigation.  Is it the fear of discovery or already knowing who was doing what, and at whose direction, that halted any investigation?

From the same administration that slow-plays the ultimate reward that we assume Major Nadal Hasan will eventually meet, that appoints an attorney general who pro bono defended Yemeni detainees – from the same administration that expunges any reference to religious chants during the murder of 14 at Fort Hood, and who releases 5 hardcore terrorists (folks) in a unilateral move directly against the rules, we get lessons on behavior and treatment of those who wish us harm.

The reported Obama drone attacks came to find only terrorists.  Bush’s tactics dealt with “folks.”  It is difficult to fathom the lack of journalistic questioning regarding this “framing” of his activities versus the Bush operations.

Folks.  Not terrorists, not gang members, not plotters of our demise, not even drug cartel members, but folks.  No wonder we are led to conclude that videos cause rocket-propelled grenade attacks on our consulates, and that guns leap from holsters to shoot people in Chicago all by themselves.  Folks wouldn’t do those things.