Now that Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign to persuade us that torture “worked,” perhaps it’s worth recalling that George W. Bush’s own FBI director said in an interview last year that he wasn’t aware of a single planned terror attack on America that had been foiled by information obtained through torture.
Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:
I ask Mueller: So far as …

The Bush administration did not inform Congress that it had waterboarded detainees in classified briefings, after the agency had already done so, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged Thursday.
Pelosi told reporters that the administration officials only told her and those in a classified briefing in the fall of 2002 that they believed they had the legal authority to do so, based on Office of Legal Counsel memos which have recently been released by the Obama administration.
“In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that …

Hey, I guess it’s time to talk more about this, but remember, we can’t comment on current investigations.
As part of the craigslist customer service team, even I’ve worked with cops and DAs to send away a number of crooks.
Jim puts it better, in a new article:
Craigslist CEO: Crooks who use site will be caught:
The chief executive of Craigslist has a message for people who try
to use the popular Internet advertising site to commit crimes: You’re
going to get caught.
Violent crimes linked to Craigslist
ads in Boston and Minnesota have made headlines, but …

What happened today in Washington was, as Senator Russ Feingold called it, “historic.” Thirty-eight years nearly to the day when a young John Kerry shocked the nation with his fiery anti-Vietnam war testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rick Reyes, a former US Marine Corporal, delivered an equally puissant testimony in which he expressed his disenchantment with the war in Afghanistan. How appropriate Kerry should be sitting directly across from Reyes as Committee Chairman, listening attentively as Congress heard one of the first major voices of dissent …

Responding to the somewhat overwrought critique that Obama did not properly stand up to hostile Latin American leaders during a trip to the region this past week, David Axelrod accused critics of missing the point.
“I think some people misinterpreted what happened this past weekend,” said the president’s close adviser. “I think the real message of what happened this past weekend with the Cuban regime’s response to the president’s decision on remittances, or the overtures from president Chavez. I think what has happened is that anti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore.”
The remarks were …

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. cut about 140 jobs companywide last week as it tries to trim costs during its bankruptcy reorganization.
Read the whole story: Crain’s Chicago Business
Filed by Ben Goldberger

Remarks made by Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on Monday provide the clearest indication to date that the White House is not only uninterested in pursuing investigations of Bush officials involved in torture but views them as a distraction from a larger governing agenda.
Speaking before the Religious Action Center, a Reform Judaism advocacy organization, Axelrod warned against re-litigating the past, arguing that the current White House didn’t need such a distraction when it already had so much on its plate.
“The president believes strongly that we need to be looking forward,” …

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will attend a meeting Thursday with executives from top credit card companies as his administration moves to crack down on certain fees and other penalties, a White House spokeswoman said.
When the meeting was announced last week, Mr. Obama was not expected to attend. Instead, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers were expected to represent the administration’s position.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal
Filed by Marcus Baram

I was woken by a phone call on the morning of September 11th, 2001. It was an unbearable day. I cried my eyes out while I watched the nightmare unfold on television. I felt disconnected walking outside, knowing the horror and wondering how my pop was doing on his moose hunt. He wouldn’t know of the attacks for two weeks. It didn’t matter. Just because he was in the wilds of Alaska, didn’t make the horror less real.
Sitting with Christy Harvey of the Center …

In an interview with ABC News, Jeffrey Davidow — a senior adviser to President Obama on Latin American affairs and director of the Summit of the Americas — said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez rushed a photograph of he and President Obama shaking hands onto his government’s website because Mr. Obama is more popular than Mr. Chavez in Venezuela.
“Every president and political leader in Latin America, and many in the rest of the world as well — maybe not every one of them — really sees political benefit in being …