Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The extroidinary rendition of AlGore's mind

Tigerhawk:

While we're on the subject of the loyal opposition's wholesale memory failure, perhaps it is worth reviewing Al Gore's support for the practice of "extraordinary rendition" (aggressively anti-rendition Wikipedia entry here). I stumbled across this passage in Richard Clarke's Against all Enemies, published last year in a fairly blatant attempt to compare the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts unfavorably with those of Bill Clinton:

Snatches, or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government.... The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." (pp. 143-144)

This passage is especially interesting in light of Gore's more recent speechifying, in which he specifically denounced rendition. No more "go grab his ass."

...