From the Washington Times: On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that…
When reading this: A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods…
White House spokesmen said on Sunday that there would be no prosecutions of those involved in writing legal memos or making policy that embraced torture. But on Tuesday, in the…
I’ve watched footage of the White House press corps engaging with press secretary Robert Gibbs on the Obama about-face on a torture investigation several times now. Sam Stein has a…
It’s not just Spain, apparently. The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock finds that “European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban…
Writers labor to make the visual world visible in fiction. There are many ways to do it. Here’s how William Makepeace Thackeray, age 33, made us see the world, in…
From Chris Lehmann: My ill-starred tenure at New York magazine was, among other things, a crash course in the staggering unselfawareness of Manhattan class privilege. Sure, there was the magazine’s…
From the Washington Post: The global economic crisis has hit home for Tom Friedman. When the New York Times columnist married heiress Ann Bucksbaum in 1978, he joined one of…
The Daily Show segment last night, which captured Bush administration apologists offering up their latest justifications for torture, was riveting television. A particular highlight: this exchange between Chris Wallace of…
From The Center for Public Integrity: They’ve put the black rock on billboards in the swing states, and they’ve splashed it on full-page ads in CQ Weekly, Roll Call, Politico,…
Eugene Robinson just won a Pulitzer, but like most commentators he doesn’t seem to have read the book, Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano, a copy of which…
Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean takes a look at the calls for impeachment of Jay Bybee, and finds the road is pretty tough. Essentially, Dean believes that Bybee…
Caught in the Web, 1860. The Department of Justice released four Office of Legal Counsel memos, issued in 2002 and 2005, to address CIA concerns that interrogation methods used on…
Paul Krugman: Before I do some economics posts, I think I ought to say something about the torture memos — namely, that there is now no way to view the…
The nation’s paper of record reviews the latest batch of torture papers and reaches the fairly obvious conclusion that a thorough investigation of this disgraceful episode should start with the…
Much of the discussion of the newly released torture memos has focused, appropriately enough, on their content. But the circumstances in which they were prepared and the process that led…
Why did Jane Harman, the congresswoman from Venice, California, so well known for her devotion to intelligence, and particularly counterterrorism matters, who was poised to assume the chair of the…
From CQ: Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would…
I disagree with James Wolcott’s main thesis here that the media is “wired” towards Republican power. The Washington media is wired for power alone (and perhaps a tinge of celebrity).…
En Viena hay diez muchachas, un hombro donde solloza la muerte y un bosque de palomas disecadas. Hay un fragmento de la mañana en el museo de la escarcha. Hay…
On Thursday the spirit of George Orwell visited America, three times. The first visit can be found in four memoranda prepared by Bush Administration lawyers which gave the actual go-ahead…
A number of readers have written to ask why I have no post up discussing the new OLC memos. Be assured it’s in the works—check back later. Being on the…
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A friend called the other day from a bench in New York’s Hudson Valley to report that the weather was, at last, perfect for reading outside. As his first book…
From the Washington Post: Three senior House Democrats revealed sharp declines in donations for the first quarter of 2009 after the shuttering of a lobbying firm that in previous election…
From ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times: Civilian workers who suffered devastating injuries while supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home to a grinding battle…
Harper’s readers are cordially invited to attend a panel discussion in New York City, Sunday, 19th April, 12–2pm. Liberalism, Imperialism & the Politics of Human Rights Jacob Stevens (Chair)—Verso Books…
Five years ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by a number of major American energy firms operating in…
From the Washington Post: A House Democrat from Indiana has conducted an extensive audit of his political committees, after a lobbying firm that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for…