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.

Confirming Rahmbo, via think Progress, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs say no to torture prosecutions:

CNN’S ED HENRY: Just so I understand, you’re saying the people in the CIA who followed through on what they were told was legal, they should not be prosecuted? But why not the Bush administration lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law, why are they not being held accountable?

GIBBS: The president is focused on looking forward. That’s why.

You think some blogs might call Obama a "shill for Bush," like they did Jane Harman?

Speaking for me only

Update: Musi's mother was interviewed by the AP and is pleading for his release. She says he is 16 and was "swept up by "gangsters with money."

His mother is calling on President Barack Obama to pardon him or allow her to attend his trial.

If he needs character witnesses or mitigation witnesses, since he's indigent, the government will have to pay their travel expenses here. This sure is going to be an expensive trial for the U.S.

Update: Here's a good article on why Kenya was thought to be the place to try them. The US and EU recently signed agreeements with Kenya to try pirates. But, maybe there should be a special piracy tribunal, like the Hague. That would be expensive too. A former U.N. prosecutor who helped set up a special tribunal for Sierra Leone and indicted ousted Liberian President Charles Taylor says: [More...]

Fascinating piece in New York Magazine this week on how Wall Streeters are adapting to the new realities presented by the financial crisis.

The most telling parts of the piece, however, come not from the writer of the story but from a source identified only as a "Goldman vet"

“When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like Goldman, they would tell me, ‘If the government doesn’t bail us out, we’re going down.’ They really thought they were going to zero, and without exception, they all forget that now. They forget that their company’s stock was going to zero. It’s a state of delusion; they don’t remember those days. The flip side of that is, every guy except the Goldman guy remembers that Goldman was bailed out.”

[More...]

Via Drudge (reporting on Fox News, so should be reliable):

CHENEY: One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally asked that they be declassified now. . . I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.

Fair enough. Let's get it ALL out there, not just the memos Cheney wants out there. Sounds like Cheney is in on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Let's do it.

Speaking for me only

From TPM, Representative Jane Harman's office responds to the CQ story:

Congresswoman Harman has never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former AIPAC employees and the Department has never informed her that she was or is the subject of or involved in an investigation. If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush Administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional Intelligence Committees.

Assuming this is true, Harman has a strong point. I also find it incredibly ironic that some folks who have been quiet as church mouses on the Obama Administration's policies on Bush Administration abuses (or even before, see Senator Obama's cave in on FISA) have been on the attack against Harman.

For the record, my previous view of Rep. Harman on FISA, warrantless wiretapping and the value of primaries. See also this and this. Harman was converted on FISA long before this story broke, due to pressure from the Left flank and a primary challenge from Marcy Winograd. It did not come today. Speaking for me only

The Supreme Court accepted cert today in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, 08-1065, an Iowa case in which two men wrongfully convicted of murder sued the prosecutors. Curtis W. McGhee Jr., and Terry Harrington served 25 years of a life sentence for killing a retired police officer before being freed when it turned out prosecutors had withheld evidence about another suspect and presented false testimony from witnesses.

[Prosecutors]Richter and Hrvol argued that they were immune from lawsuits because they were acting within the scope of their job. Federal courts, however, rejected their motions to dismiss the lawsuits, saying the immunity did not extend to them.

The lower courts found immunity on the withholding evidence claim but said the prosecutors can be sued for procuring false testimony during the investigation and using it against the defendants at trial. Scotus Blog has the pleadings in the case.

As Big Tent Democrat and the New York Times noted, Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel broke the story of the number of times the C.I.A. used waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month. That's an average of 6 times a day.

Doesn't this show the ineffectiveness of the technique? Particularly when it was only one of a number of coercive techniques that were used in tandem? (Others, according to the May 30, 2005 memo were facial and abdominal slapping,walling, sleep deprivation through shackling, nudity coupled with adult diapers.) Marcy has more on this here. [More...]

Via Atrios, apparently some TARP repayment is more equal than others:

TCF Financial Corp (TCB.N) said it received approval to pay back $361 million in funds it received from the U.S. Treasury's Capital Purchase Program, and cut its quarterly dividend by 80 percent. . . . TCF Financial said it will buy back all of its 361,172 shares of its preferred stock from the U.S. Treasury at a price of $361.2 million plus a final pro rata accrued dividend.

Meanwhile, back of the megabank ranch, the Obama Administration is rearranging the deck chairs, floating the idea of converting its preferred shares to common stock. As Krugman notes, this is pointless: