Week of Feb. 4, 2008

As luck, and poor scheduling, would have it, Barack Obama and John McCain gave their Super Tuesday victory speeches at roughly the same time last night, causing cable news directors across the dial to go split-screen. The overlapping oratories could not have been more dramatically different. One soared; the other plodded. One caused goose bumps; the other caused eyelids to flutter shut. One felt newly minted; the other could have been given by Herbert Hoover. I couldn't help but think to myself: if this is a preview of the general election, bring it on!

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri planned the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Abu Zubaydah was the mastermind of the foiled millennium terrorist attacks, which had Los Angeles airport as one of its targets. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed directed the September 11 attacks, and has claimed to have personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl.

All three men were captured by the CIA in 2002 and waterboarded in the course of their interrogations. They are also the only U.S. detainees to have been waterboarded. That fact, publicly confirmed yesterday by CIA Director Michael Hayden, shreds whatever is left to the so-called torture narrative, according to which the Bush Administration has engaged in widespread, needless and systematic torture of detainees.

On one thing, the experts seem to agree. The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.