This article on the usefulness, or lack thereof, of the information garnered by the NSA's FISA-free program reminds me of the somewhat secondary debate about the tactics we should use to wring information out of individuals when they know we're wringing the information. That lesser debate doesn't worry about whether the tactics are moral or legal -- it focuses on whether they actually work. I say it is secondary and lesser because it rarely plays out head-to-head in the way the moral and legal debates do; one side just tends to assume that torture must work ("why else would we use it? for fun?" Well, if you look at Abu Ghraib...) and the other side assumes that it doesn't ("start playing 'Yellow Submarine' and they'll tell you anything to make it stop").