Torture and the drug war

Radley Balko reports on the torture of Lester Eugene Siler, an illiterate man, by five sheriff's deputies in Campbell County, Tennessee, trying to get him to consent to search warrant without telling him what it said. The deputies denied nearly beating him to death, hooking electrodes to his testicles and shocking him, and threatening to kill him and go after his family, but his wife was present and got it on audio tape, which is available online.

After the story was picked up by Andrew Sullivan, who wonders about whether this became possible as a result of the climate created by the Bush administration, which right wing bloggers have mocked by mischaracterizing his position, as described in a followup by Balko.