krauthammer_image_195x272It is too late to eat crow with Charles Krauthammer, according to the Center for the American Experiment. The conservative Minneapolis think tank’s June 1 annual dinner, with the Washington Post columnist as keynoter, is sold out. I lambasted Krauthammer when the event was announced last January and had no reason to change my tune until yesterday, when I found myself agreeing with large helpings of his column in the Star Tribune titled, “Obama asks: What would W. have done?”

In the piece, Krauthammer helpfully provides a one-stop shop for policies that other conservative columnists have observed Obama carrying over from Bush, starting the list by quoting the National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson, who backed Bush:

The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e. slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e. the surge) — and now Guantanamo.

Krauthammer adds, in a paraphrase of conservative Jack Goldsmith in the New Republic:

rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

For Krauthammer, who led a staggering recent run of pro-torture columns on the Strib’s op-ed pages with not one but two recent pieces, crow has to be a recommended dietary staple. I’d join him next Monday, but the Center for the American Experiment tells me tickets are gone — from the $25,000 table to the $250 cheap seats.