|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Blaine Harden
$10.20
 . '/' . substr('9781582437842',-6,3) . '/' . '9781582437842' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Dana Johnson
$15.95
$17
|
|
|
|
Wikimedia Commons / Prolineserver
|
Clearly, Paul Krugman, pictured above, is no fan of federal Judge Jay Bybee, legislative enabler of the “enhanced interrogation technique” that’s become one shameful symbol of the past eight years: waterboarding. You know it’s not good when Newt Gingrich is held up as a paragon of a bygone, and preferable, brand of Republicanism.
|
|
What has emboldened Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to so brazenly criticize the new administration? Has Cheney lost his trademark sneer since he left the White House? All this and more in this clip from Wednesday’s “Daily Show” episode.
|
White House / Chris Greenberg
|
President Bush’s memo fetish is well documented, but the Obama administration has just made public a series of memos that said the executive had extraordinary powers far beyond those traditionally considered legal. According to the crack legal minds of the Bush administration, the president could overrule the other branches of government.
|
DoD
|
A 2006 memo from the State Department to the U.S. Transportation Command suggested holding Guantanamo detainees after they had been cleared in order to avoid bad press. “Got it ... Thank you,” was the reply, and indeed, no prisoners flew out of Guantanamo for three months.
|
change.gov
|
If the secret policy wonk in you has always hankered to sit in on those exciting meetings that happen in elite circles of government, you’re in luck—members of the Obama transition team have found another way to use the Web with their new “Seat at the Table” initiative.
|
Composite: realclearpolitics.com / Flickr (marcn)
|
Don’t count John McCain out just yet. His personal pollster recently told the campaign that “impressive strides over the last week of tracking” mean the race could “easily be too close to call by next Tuesday.” That sounds like obligatory fluff to some politicos, but NBC’s Chuck Todd sees it differently.
|
Flickr / aesop
|
Team McCain has rejected the “vicious smear” that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books from the local library, but the campaign’s 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin’s mayoral predecessor recalls, “She asked the library how she could go about banning books.” According to the Anchorage Daily News, she also fired the library director “without warning” for “not fully supporting her efforts to govern.”
|
Flickr / exfordy
|
The GOP was already bracing for a tough political year, but losses in three special elections prompted Rep. Tom Davis to send a panicked note to Republican leaders: “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006 when we lost thirty seats.”
|
Washington Post / Karen Ballard
|
A recently declassified memo shines the spotlight once again on John “Take Them to the Point of Death” Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor and once deputy legal counsel in the Justice Department.
|
|
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating memos and opinions rendered by the department that endorsed the practice of waterboarding, which many consider to be torture. The inquiry is unrelated to the FBI’s criminal investigation of the CIA, which destroyed video recordings of the waterboarding of suspects.
|
White House photo / Eric Draper
|
In a terse State Department memo, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker admonishes America’s acceptance of Iraqi refugees as critically slow. Crocker estimates that it would take the U.S. nearly two years to process and admit 10,000 refugees referred for resettlement to the U.S.
|
men.style.com/GQ
|
The former defense secretary graces the pages of October’s GQ (of all places) to make some bold assertions, claiming he was not a driving force behind the Iraq war and that he warned the president of many of the problems that have come to pass.
|
|
Wouldn’t it have been chillingly fascinating to watch White House bigwigs in action sometime around 2003, while they played fast and loose with executive power and international law?
|
MichaelMoore.com
|
A Blue Cross exec sent out a memo with talking points to help company employees handle the fallout resulting from filmmaker Michael Moore’s scathing take on the American healthcare system, “SiCKO”—and Moore got his hands on it. Oops! (H/t: Crooks and Liars)
|
|
In a memo distributed to top executives, Starbucks’ chairman warned that rapid expansion had unfortunately contributed to the “dilution” and “commoditization of the Starbucks experience.” Howard Schultz charmingly went on to lament specific examples of the company’s “cookie cutter” problem, but then concluded the letter in a manner one would expect from a Starbucks executive: “This must be eradicated.”
|
gothamgazette.com
|
Likely presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s campaign has soured before it even began, after a strategic black book went missing. The document outlines the former New York mayor’s fund-raising plans, as well as his weaknesses, offering an edge to prospective opponents.
|
DoD / R.D. Ward
|
Another confidential memo has landed in the hands of The New York Times, this one written by Don Rumsfeld himself. The disgraced former defense secretary suggested major changes in Iraq strategy, including the possibility of troop withdrawals: “In my view it is time for a major adjustment.” Bush apparently agreed, firing Rumsfeld just two days later.
|
Left: mosnews.com / Right: turkishpress.com
|
The New York Times has obtained a secret memo by National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley that offers a frank assessment of the Iraqi prime minister: “... The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests [Nouri al-Maliki] is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
|
huffingtonpost.com
|
The Huffington Post has obtained an internal memo from Fox News outlining the network’s strategy following the U.S. midterm election: “And let’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.”
|
Media Matters
|
An ABC Radio Networks internal memo lists almost 100 companies, including FedEx, McDonald’s and Microsoft, that refuse to have their ads run during Air America programming. (h/t: Think Progress)
|
|
A terrorism memo sent from Richard Clarke to Condoleezza Rice in 2001 directly contradicts what the secretary of state told reporters Monday. Raw Story has the details.
|
|
Think Progress got ahold of Majority Leader John Boehner?s confidential strategy memo for Thursday?s congressional debate on the Iraq war. Think Progress says the memo aims to “exploit,” “attack” and “create a false choice.”
|
From MarkDanner.com
|
New Yorker staff writer and Berkeley professor Mark Danner has a new book exploring America’s scandalous indifference to the Downing Street Memo—the “smoking gun” that all but proves Bush was set on going to war in Iraq eight months before the actual invasion.
Read the Buzzflash interview
|
|
Josh Bolten, the president’s new chief of staff, has reportedly counseled Bush that talking tough on Iran will shore up his national security polling numbers.
Update: Oh, yeah: Iran may pull out of the nonproliferation treaty.
|
Eric Gay / AP
|
Bush said no one “anticipated the breach of the levees.” Well, actually, 48 hours before the storm hit, the Dept. of Homeland Security sent the White House a memo warning exactly of that. | story
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned On Climate Change
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
