Myopia of the Masses.

I, personally, am enthralled with NY 23 and the fact that Michael Steele is "juiced." But can anyone tell me why this breaking news story is a sidebar on TPM and nowhere anywhere else in the left bloggosphere at this point?

MILAN -- An Italian court on Wednesday convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was later tortured.

The judge in the case, Oscar Magi, said three other Americans, including the former Rome station chief for the CIA, were covered by diplomatic immunity.

The Americans were all tried in abstentia. A Milan prosecutor said his office would seek to have them extradited from the Untied States, but a formal decision will be made later by the Italian Justice Ministry...

Among the Americans charged in the case were Jeffrey Castelli, the former CIA station chief in Rome who allegedly oversaw the plot, and Robert Seldon Lady, the spy agency's chief in Milan, who was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping. Prosecutors sought a 13-year prison term for Castelli and a 12-year sentence for Lady.

Armando Spataro, the deputy public prosecutor in Milan, said in his closing argument Wednesday that it was "unthinkable" that the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition should trump Italian law, which forbids kidnapping.

"Here, Italian law rules, not American law or any other law," he said.

Spataro also rejected arguments by defense lawyers that at least some of the U.S. defendants should be protected by diplomatic immunity because they were based at the U.S. consulate in Milan and the U.S. embassy in Rome.

Its not that I'm surprised by the silence on this point. I've just spent several months explaining to my anxious, enraged, Obama supporting parental unit that no one who gets elected to our imperial presidency--neither democrat, nor republican, will ever roll back the tide of illegal and immoral actions that were taken in defense of our imperial way of life. Especially not internationally. But I'd like to see more discussion of this and its implication for our country going forward. Its not, to me, a question of supporting Obama or being disappointed in him. Its just a question of whether our country will ever voluntarily stop raping, torturing, looting, and kidnapping for international gain and advantage. Or whether we will simply, like other once great powers, stop using our privileged position only once we've lost the privilege to other, stronger, powers.