TALK IS CHEAP:  Imagine with me that terrorists kidnap Sasha, Malia, and their little dog, too, but the good guys manage to capture one of the terrorists during the incident.  Does anyone really believe Barack Obama would sit still for a lot of rhetoric from Eric Holder about American ideals and the rule of law?  My (obviously unprovable and, pry God, never to be tested) belief is that Obama would instruct Holder to go explain his views to Michelle, with the understanding that after Michelle strangled him and his death was correctly ruled a suicide, Obama would dust off the old Bush memos, resurrect the old Bush interrogators, and find an Attorney General who would get results.

So why the current posturing from Obama?  Well, it is possible that he really is this idealistic about the rule of law and America's moral leadership of the world as long as the threat is only to abstract strangers, and he may actually be comfortable letting strangers die for his "beliefs" and in order to keep his halo nicely buffed.  That said, I'm not actually worried for my own family - if somehow my kids were caught up in such a scenario, well, my kids are cute as all get out and would surely poll well, so I expect Obama would figure out he needed to do the right thing.

"Cheap grace" is the phrase I am looking for - the guy who was, for example, committed to public campaign finance as an important principle of fair elections dropped that principle as soon as it became helpful to him to do so.  And he would drop this "no torture" rhetoric just as quickly if someone tthat mattered to him was [affected] by it.  I am just troubled by his current eagerness to pretend that the safety of the good [people] of the United States is not a priority.