Peter King: the Virtue of Consistency

Alex Massie, over at TNR's The Plank, notes that Congressman Peter King's full-throated defense of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld torture was actually consistent with his past positions.

Says King:

"I just think John McCain is wrong on this. If we capture bin Laden tomorrow and we have to hold his head under water to find out when the next attack is going to happen, we ought to be able to do it."

Pretty blunt. Not if you know King's past. As Massie notes, King was the IRA terrorist group's biggest defender in Congress for years, defending a group that routinely resorted to mass murder, execution, drug-dealing, extortion, and bank robbing. To King, they were "the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland."

At least King is consistently morally repugnant. How a person responds to the Bush torture policy says a lot about their character.