By this logic, holding up a bank because you need to feed your family is acting in good faith

Can William Kristol possibly get more stupefyingly, mind-bogglingly, Oh God Please Make Teh Stupid Stop dumb?

Now he's calling for not just pardons, but the Medal of Freedom for everyone who tortured, illegally spied, or did any of the Bush Administration's dirty work in the name of the so-called "war on Terror":

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning–and should at least be vociferously praising–everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

I realize that Kristol runs the Weekly Standard, having created it with fellow neocon lunatic scion John Podhoretz using Rupert Murdoch's money. But you'd think that in trying to make his rag pass as a legitimate, mainstream publication, he'd at least try to not sound like a complete idiot?

This is a perfect example of what Neal Gabler was talking about in the article I linked to earlier -- that modern conservatism has nothing to do with the documents on which this country was founded, nothing to do with the Founding Fathers or the Constitution, or any of the patriotic foofarah they trot out every time they want to make political hay, while they squat and squeeze out turd after turd all over what this country stands for. No, theirs is the conservatism of fear -- fear of change, fear of those who look different or behave differently or who have different cultural customs, or worst of all, think differently. It's a conservatism that has somehow managed to turn living in a constant state of fear into a kind of macho toughness. It's Joe McCarthy conservatism, and guys like Kristol are his heirs.