This could anger a lot of folks on the left, but I think it’s an incredibly dangerous precedent to prosecute folks for following orders.
More from AP:
WASHINGTON -Attorney General Eric Holder says the government won’t prosecute CIA officials for using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects.
The decision comes as the Obama administration releases [...]

It is not too early to checkpoint how President Obama is progressing on “undoing the damage” of the Bush/Cheney Imperial Presidency. The most egregious offenses of the Bush/Cheney administration fall under the umbrella of expanding executive branch power at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches, with a commensurate erosion of constitutional protections. On balance – So far… all is not so good.

Also, the words “we don’t torture” will finally be true.
From NY Times:
The orders, which are the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, [...]

It’s been said before that “the point of torture is torture,” but I don’t think we fully understand the extent to which this is true, nor the extent to which the moral and utilitarian arguments against torture are intertwined. The easiest way to explain what I’m getting at here is through a hypothetical.
In this hypothetical, [...]

They finally admit it…
The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure [...]

I’ve written at length about my opinions of extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, etc., but the idea that people will vigorously defend policies that put a completely innocent man through 6 years of hell still leaves me completely baffled.
Seriously. This is one of those issues for me where there’s absolutely zero common ground because I simply [...]

I’ve been pretty harsh on philosophical neo-conservatism over the last year or so. In fact, it’s safe to say that of all the various (actual) political philosophies that form a significant portion of our governing political coalitions, I have consistently held neo-conservatism in by far the most contempt.
And without a doubt, the basic tenets of [...]

In one of the more, forgive me, torturous staffing processes, it looks like Barack Obama has finally settled on the last major appointment he had left to make, that of CIA director. Given that the Bush administration has done so much long-term, institutional damage to our intelligence superstructure, basic tenets of human rights and [...]

This is Lagan from ANP,
We sat down with James Risen, the New York Times national security corespondent who broke the domestic wiretapping stories, to talk about the dilemmas Obama faces with the unparalleled executive power he will inherit.
Dick Cheney recently said that Obama would appreciate all of the power they are handing over, but Obama [...]

A new report from the Senate Armed Services Committee places significant blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay on former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
The report’s executive summary, made public by the committee’s Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed [...]

Apparently it’s not actually torture unless the one doing the interrogation intends to cause severe pain or suffering. And if it “accidentally” happens over the course of months or years, well…you can’t make an omelet…
So how do I know this? Well, the ACLU requested the following memos under the Freedom of Information Act and pieces [...]

I’m sure you’ve heard the reports of what this process actually feels like (a slow drowning), so I’ll spare you Hitchens’ explanation.
Instead, let’s look at the aftermath…
The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel [...]

Usually it’s the cartoonist that is tortured, but the CIA got a hold of my cartoon and it disappeared for awhile.  Thank god it survived and I was able to recover it.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t like to talk much and tends to curl up in the corner of my studio. Wash Post article

Watch this time lapsed video. It’s hypnotic.

More from the New Yorker:
White has the security-camera videotape of his time in the McGraw-Hill elevator. He has watched it twice-it was recorded at forty times regular speed, which makes him look like a bug in a box. The most striking thing to him about the tape is that [...]

Greenwald has a breakdown of the stories that made the news…
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” – 102
“Mukasey and 9/11″ — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than [...]

All 70+ pages of it.
Here’s the gist…
In the March 14, 2003 memo, Yoo says the Constitution was not in play with regard to the interrogations because the Fifth Amendment (which provides for due process of law) and the Eighth Amendment (which prevents the government from employing cruel and usual punishment) does “not extend to alien [...]

The award winning documentarian trains his patented eye on the events that happened at Abu Ghraib prison in a film coming out on April 25.
From watching the following clips, as well as Frontline’s searing Bush’s War, a pretty clear picture emerges and makes it incredibly difficult for the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to put [...]

The Washington Post reports that four members of Congress, including Pelosi, were told about this interrogation method and their were no objections.
In fact…
[...] on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
Push harder? The gall of these people is [...]