Quote of the day: Stephen Colbert knows how to get stubborn horses to drink (Plus: Keith O has a problem with the president's ban on thinking)

"They say you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Well, I say pry open that horse's mouth, cram a hose down its gullet, and turn it on full-blast. Believe me, that horse is going to feel thirsty right quick."
--Stephen Colbert, on last night's Colbert Report

Okay, there might be a tiny methodological problem here. Like, you know, the way they now have to add those statements in tiny type after movies and TV shows that involve animals, swearing that no animals were harmed in the course of making this timeless extravaganza.

But come on, people, what's the big deal now that we've evolved to the point where it's okay to torture humans as long as we have a good reason, like maybe we don't like the way they looked at us, or perhaps talked to us?

Are you talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?

(My goodness, is that what this is? The Travis Bickle school of international relations?)


ALSO TALKING--Keith Olbermann says, "Bush owes us an apology"

"The President needs to regain our confidence, that he has some basic understanding of what this country represents--of what it must maintain if we are to defeat not only terrorists, but if we are also to defeat what is ever more increasingly apparent, as an attempt to re-define the way we live here, and what we mean, when we say the word 'freedom.'"

The bizarre press-conference tirade prompted by former Secretary of State Colin Powell's honest, earnest thoughts about the direction of American foreign policy got Keith's attention, and led to a "special comment" he delivered on-air last night, which you can, and should, read in full on his blog. Here's a taste:

In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five and a half years--the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.

“It's unacceptable to think," he said.

It is never unacceptable to think.

And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context, he takes us toward a new and fearful path--one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.

That flash of lightning freezes at the distant horizon, and we can just make out a world in which authority can actually suggest it has become unacceptable to think.

Thus the lightning flash reveals not merely a President we have already seen, the one who believes he has a monopoly on current truth. 

It now shows us a President who has decided that of all our commanders-in-chief, ever, he alone has had the knowledge necessary to alter and reshape our inalienable rights.

This is a frightening, and a dangerous, delusion, Mr. President.