Top Items:
Wall Street Journal:
The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror — The point of interrogation is intelligence, not confession. — The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality …
Discussion:
Salon, Dr. Sanity, Commentary, USA Today, JammieWearingFool, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and Riehl World View
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Washington Post:
President Obama's wise decision on dealing with the legacy of torture — THE OBAMA administration acted courageously and wisely yesterday with its dual actions on interrogation policy. The pair of decisions — one essentially forgiving government agents who may have committed heinous acts …
Discussion:
ATTACKERMAN, BBC, Concurring Opinions, TalkLeft, The Washington Independent and The Atlantic Politics Channel
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
For The Record — No mention of the torture memos appears right now on the Drudge Report (which provides news of a prank at Dominos pizza), Instapundit (which mentions the new DVD for the Lord of The Rings trilogy), Pajamas Media, or Michelle Malkin. They are reacting to the evidence …
Room for Debate:
The Memos: Torture Redefined — A screen shot of page 2 from the August 1, 2002 secret memo that details harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency. To see the other memos released by the Justice Department today, go here. — The Justice Department …
Jeffrey Toobin In / New Yorker:
JEFFREY TOOBIN: HIDING JAY BYBEE
JEFFREY TOOBIN: HIDING JAY BYBEE
Discussion:
AfterDowningStreet.org, Hullabaloo, BuzzFlash.org, Hot Air, The Anonymous Liberal, Taylor Marsh, Threat Level, The Plank and Townhall.com
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Banality Of Evil — Perhaps you are reading these documents alongside me.
The Banality Of Evil — Perhaps you are reading these documents alongside me.
New York Times:
Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.
Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.
Discussion:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Power Line, The Huffington Post, Wake up America, Sister Toldjah, Washington Post, FP Passport, Washington Times, Law Blog, Wall Street Journal, QandO, On Deadline, Los Angeles Times, The Caucus, NewsBusters.org, BAGnewsNotes, The Other McCain, United States Senator …, PERRspectives and The Democratic Daily
Rasmussen Reports:
In Texas, 31% Say State Has Right to Secede From U.S., But 75% Opt To Stay — Thirty-one percent (31%) of Texas voters say that their state has the right to secede from the United States and form an independent country. — However, the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in the state finds …
Jamie Larson / The Register Star Online:
Tedisco asks to be declared winner — COLUMBIA COUNTY — 20th Congressional District candidate Republican Jim Tedisco submitted a petition to the Dutchess County Supreme Court Thursday asking the judge to declare him the winner of the extremely close special election race …
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
We Are Now Indonesia — Greenwald points to this nugget: … And this is, in fact, the Bush-Cheney position. Because America did these things, they are not torture. This is also, by the way, the position of the news reporters and editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Little Green Footballs:
LGF on Glenn Beck — I still don't have a working cable TV connection in my new top-secret underground facility, so I missed Glenn Beck's show today (I wouldn't have been watching anyway, to be honest), but I understand from several lizardoid reports that Beck had some things to say about me.
Discussion:
PoliGazette
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Kahrin Deines / Associated Press:
New gun law aimed at asserting sovereignty — Gov. Brian Schweitzer has signed into law a bill that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation, adding firepower to a battery of legislative efforts to assert states' rights across the nation. — “It's a gun bill …
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Green Shoots and Glimmers — Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, sees “green shoots.” President Obama sees “glimmers of hope.” And the stock market has been on a tear. — So is it time to sound the all clear? Here are four reasons to be cautious about the economic outlook.
Michael Sandler / The Hill:
Dean, Emanuel bury the hatchet — The feud between Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel appears to be over. — Dean told The Hill that he recently had lunch with the White House chief of staff, signaling a thaw in their once icy relationship. — Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee …
New York Times:
Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue — WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the government's rapidly growing cybersecurity programs, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns among some officials who fear that the move could give the spy agency …
Discussion:
Washington Post
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Wall Street Journal:
Veterans a Focus of FBI Extremist Probe — WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this year launched a nationwide operation targeting white supremacists and “militia/sovereign-citizen extremist groups,” including a focus on veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan …
Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
Barack Obama's ‘New Foundation’ - a Sting in Four Parts — Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. John Kennedy gave us the New Frontier. In a major domestic policy address at Georgetown University this week, Barack Obama promised — eight times — a “New Foundation.”
Nate Silver / FiveThirtyEight:
Tea Party Nonpartisan Attendance Estimates: Now 300,000+ — I promised that I wasn't going to put much more work into estimating crowd sizes for yesterday's tea party events, but here is one last update. The important thing is that we now have a credible estimate for Atlanta at 15,000 persons …
Wall Street Journal:
Authorities Investigate Payments by Rattner — Steven Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's auto task force, was one of the executives involved with payments under scrutiny in a probe of an alleged kickback scheme at New York state's pension fund, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Discussion:
CBS News, New York Times, Hot Air, Kausfiles, NewsBusters.org, naked capitalism and JammieWearingFool
Binyamin Appelbaum / Washington Post:
Banks Rush to Repay U.S. Funds, but Cling To Other Lifelines — J.P. Morgan Says Aid Is a ‘Scarlet Letter’ — Six months after Washington rescued Wall Street, exasperated banks insist they want to leave the lifeboat. — Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of J.P. Morgan Chase …
ABCNEWS:
Blind Amputee Has to Fight AIG for New Plastic Leg, Wheelchair — While Executives Get Bonuses, John Woodson Gets “Cheapest They Could Get Away With” — An Oklahoma man who lost an eye and a leg in Iraq says the giant insurance company AIG refused to provide him a new plastic leg and fought …
Discussion:
AMERICAblog News
Mark Pittman / Bloomberg:
Fed Shrouding $2 Trillion in Bank Loans in ‘Secrecy,’ Suit Says — U.S. taxpayers need to know the risks behind the Federal Reserve's $2 trillion in lending to financial institutions because the public is now an “involuntary investor” in the nation's banks, according to a court filing by Bloomberg LP.
Discussion:
The Peking Duck
CNN:
Ex-McCain aide to call for gay marriage support — WASHINGTON (CNN) - Steve Schmidt, a key architect of John McCain's presidential campaign, is making his first public return to Washington a bold one. — Schmidt will use a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group …
Charles Bremner / Times of London:
Sarkozy snipes at ‘dim’ Spanish PM and ‘weak’ Barack Obama — The US President is weak, the Spanish leader is dim, the German Chancellor is clinging on to France's coat-tails and the head of the European Commission is irrelevant. — That, at any rate, is the world according to President Sarkozy …
CNN:
Some foreclosed homes too damaged to sell — CNN Special Investigations Unit — NASHUA, New Hampshire (CNN) — The economy in southern New Hampshire is not by any means among the worst in the nation. Still, according to city records, there are 29 foreclosed homes on the books in Nashua — many of which are in deplorable condition.
Discussion:
The Washington Independent
Bridget Johnson / The Hill:
U.S. pledges $1 billion ‘down payment’ to Pakistan — Despite stark disagreements about benchmarks for an aid package proposed by President Obama, the U.S. pledged a billion dollars to Pakistan at an international donors conference in Tokyo on Friday — a “down payment” for billions more to be sought in Congress.