The IG Warrantless Surveillance Report

Here is a roundup of commentary about the report (h/t Glenn), which came out on Friday. First, what it is — and is not: The 2008 legislation that “amended” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — which in reality simply codified all of the illegal activity that the Bush...

Obama Official Claims Post-Acquittal Right to Detain

I suppose I have to get used to maintaining a nothing-surprises-me attitude toward the Obama administration when it comes to anything related to civil liberties or human rights — just as I had to during the previous administration. Spencer Ackerman has the latest example of that truth: Defense...

Matthew Alexander: Torture Has Cost Us American Lives

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this video is worth at least a hundred thousand: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfYov5o5_2s&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Via The Huffington...

The Dick and Liz Cheney Traveling Road Show

Steve Benen wrote on Friday about the extraordinary ubiquitousness of Liz Cheney lately. In the past 10 days (as of Friday afternoon) she had appeared on a dozen different tv shows — mostly Fox News and right-wing talk show hosts like Joe Scarborough and Sean Hannity. It’s perfectly...

The Paul Bunyan of National Security

The trouble with Dick Cheney is that he believes his own tall tales — and he wants everyone else to believe them, too: Reporting from Washington — In the bitter debate over the nation’s counter-terrorism policies, former Vice President Dick Cheney has introduced an assertion that...

Cheney: Still Cherry-Picking After All These Years

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy goes through the long list of lies, distortions, and convenient omissions in Cheney’s “national security” speech yesterday: In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques...