UPDATE - Blair sounds like a problem to me.

Sandy Levinson noted that President Obama said to the CIA yesterday that:

What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so....

However, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said upon the release of the torture memos:

The Denver Post takes a bold step today in an editorial, urging the feds to end the war on drugs and legalize marijuana.

The Post points out it's not just pot users calling for legalization: [More...]

Colorado is a major step closer to eliminating the death penalty. The bill to repeal it and use the savings on solving cold cases passed the House by a single vote today. It now goes to the Senate.

The last death penalty case in Colorado cost $1.4 million to prosecute. It costs about $70,000 for a non-capital murder case.

AP:

President Barack Obama . . . is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics. . . . Obama did say . . . he could support a Hill investigation if it were conducted in a bipartisan way. [President Obama] also said that it is up to the attorney general whether to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote the memos approving these tactics.

Rahmbo and Gibbs are contradicted by the President. Clearly a walkback. What will it mean? We'll find out. Video on the flip.

Abduhl Wali-i-Musi, the sole surviving pirate of the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama and kidnapping of Captain Richard Phillips has arrived in New York. He will be arraigned today in federal court.

Omar Jamal, Director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, a group that helps Somali immigrants with legal and social issues, said Musi's family has asked his organization to assist in his defense.

The AP has details on his background...he's called "Muse" and he could be 16 or 18. He wasn't born in a hospital and Somalis don't keep birth records. [More...]

More . . .

A federal judge has denied former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's request to modify his bond so he can go to Costa Rica and participate in a reality show.

The Judge had some good advice for Blago:

He also said Blagojevich needs to stick around to read the government's evidence, because only then will he be able to understand the jeopardy he is in.

Scott Shane and Peter Baker:

Pressure mounted on President Obama on Monday for more thorough investigation into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration . . . Mr. Obama said it was time to admit “mistakes” and “move forward.” But there were signs that he might not be able to avoid a protracted inquiry into the use of interrogation techniques that the president’s top aides and many critics say crossed the line into torture.

More . . .

Like me, Sully sees Cheney's request for more disclosure on torture as an opportunity for a Truth Commission:

[T]his seems to me to be a real opportunity to set up the Truth Commission many of us have been asking for. Release all the data on the torture - all of it - alongside the intelligence we got from it. . . . This will take time - and should be done carefully and exhaustively. But it is vital if the US is to remain within the legal and moral bounds of Western civilization.

I agree. See also Jason Zengerle, Spencer Ackerman, Jules Crittenden, and others. Speaking for me only

Many are outraged at the very thought that Rep. Jane Harman may have interceded with the Justice Department regarding the AIPAC prosecutions (Harman has denied the allegation and no one has stated that she did. To the contrary, the NYTimes reports that "David Szady, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former top counterintelligence official who ran the investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, said in an interview Monday that he was confident Ms. Harman had never intervened."), but when it comes to the intercession of President Obama regarding torture prosecutions, many of these same people are quiet as church mice. Why is it okay for, as Glenn Greenwald states it, to interfere with "the very important (and overlooked) duty of the responsibilities of the Attorney General to make decisions about prosecutions free and independent of the political desires of the President" but no okay for a congressperson to ask for clemency?

More . . .

Laura Rozen:

Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders including Representatives Pelosi and Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement." Who was the lone person the article identified as objecting to the program? Jane Harman.

[MORE . . .]

Sheriff Joe Arapaio is a national disgrace. Among the Pulitzer prizes awarded today was one to Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Arizona) for its coverage of Arpaio's immigration enforcement policies.

The Pulitzer committee noted that Gabrielson and Giblin received the award for “their adroit use of limited resources to reveal, in print and online, how a popular sheriff’s focus on immigration enforcement endangered investigation of violent crime and other aspects of public safety.“

Arpaio makes a mockery of the Constitution. Here's the five part series that won the Pulitzer. TalkLeft's posts on Sheriff Joe over the years are assembled here.