Marc Thiessen Knows Diddly-Squat About Torture

Marc Thiessen is a former Bush speechwriter and a denizen of The Corner who now spends most of his time promoting his employers’ use of torture (which he calls “enhanced interrogation techniques”). He participated in yesterday’s Torture Comedy Hour at Fox, and he has an op-ed in...

Moral Relativism At Its Best

By now, everyone who is awake has heard about the Jane Harman-AIPAC-wiretapping story, which Jeff Stein of CQ Politics broke this morning. Brad Porter of Donklephant has a concise and lucid summary of the facts [except that, as smintheus points out in Comments, the conversation caught by the NSA between...

White House Beat Is No Place for Generalists

Ana Marie Cox asks an interesting question, via the WaPo op-ed page: If White House correspondents have such a glamorous, desirable reporting beat, why is it that no major story has come out of a White House presser? Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of...

No Legal Immunity for Clearly Illegal Acts

The New York Times has a strong editorial today about the OLC torture memos. They cover it all: the vileness of what is in the memos, the repellent, clinical coldness of the language, the inadequacy of the “I was just following orders” defense, and the obligation — both moral and legal...

Politico’s Mike Allen Grants Anonymity to Senior Bush Official to Attack Obama on Release of Torture Memos

On the day that the OLC torture memos were released, Politico’s Mike Allen quoted an unnamed Bush official castigating that decision and questioning Obama’s motives. Here is the quote in full: A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the...