Alan Dershowitz, having wrung all the notoriety he can out of advocating torture, now seems determined to prove that Ashcroft was right about what a high-profile defense attorney would do with bin Laden.

Basic Books has a new series called "The Art of Mentoring", in which the first two books are "Letters to a Young Lawyer", by Dershowitz, and "Letters to a Young Contrarian", by Christopher Hitchens. Naturally, they thought they'd send them both on a combined book tour. It hasn't exactly worked out. In Boston, the two appeared on separate days; Hitchens went first, and when the moderator announced the upcoming reading from Dershowitz, Hitchens loudly urged the audience to stay away, arguing that advocates for torture, particularly those advancing specious legal arguments, ought to be shunned.

The poor moderator was left to sputter that hecklers usually stood on the other side of the podium...