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Bob Baer, a former CIA officer visits the set of Real Time and explains why torture doesn't work and why waterboarding is torture. Baer also notes that we haven't even seen the worst of what happened because there are ninety two CIA cases that were destroyed because what was in them was so horrific.

John Amato:

It's very annoying that we still have to bring people out to explain over and over again that waterboarding is torture and "torture is bad.

We have to blame the media on this in reality because torture apologists will do and say anything to cloud the truth, but the media endlessly debates the same things over and over again. It's settled law and has been settled for decades. Torture is illegal and torture is a crime.

From Headzup The Week in Cartoons.

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From Bill Moyers Journal April 24, 2009.

Like thunderheads roiling on the horizon, the clamor has been building as more and more Americans want to know exactly what, and who, brought on the worst economic crisis since the great depression. What happened and how do we keep it from happening again?

Congress has finally acknowledged the outcry and is supporting some 21st century version of the "Pecora hearings."

"Pecora hearings?" That's right, as in Ferdinand Pecora, the savvy immigrant from Sicily who became a Manhattan prosecutor with a memory for facts and figures that proved the undoing of a Wall Street banking world gone berserk with greed and fraud.

In the early 1930's, during the Great Depression, and under threat of subpoena, one tycoon after another, including J.P. Morgan Jr., was hauled before the Senate Banking Committee and grilled by Pecora, the committee's chief counsel.

Here he is on the cover of TIME Magazine in June 1933. "Wealth on Trial" reads the headline inside, where Pecora is described in ethnic stereotypes of the day as "The kinky-haired, olive-skinned, jut-jawed lawyer from Manhattan." To their shock, pompous financiers, unaccustomed to having their actions or integrity questioned by anyone, much less some pipsqueak legalist making $255 a month, were no match for his cross examination.

The revelations of the Pecora hearings and the public's anger led to sweeping reform, reining in the high-handed, free-wheeling banking industry. Those reforms stabilized our financial world for half a century, until the titans of finance and friendly politicians began to dismantle them.

Ferdinand Pecora, your time has come again. Your biography is being written by this man, Michael Perino. A scholar of Law and Securities Regulation, Michael teaches at St. John's University here in New York, and has been an advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency that was created because of the Pecora investigation.

And, returning to the JOURNAL is Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund who now teaches at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Just this week Simon Johnson co-founded "The Hearing," a new economics blog at washingtonpost.com.

Transcript below the fold.

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From The Cafferty File April 24, 2009.

It seems like some Republicans still haven’t realized that they lost big-time last November because the American people are sick and tired of their style of politics. And here’s Exhibit A: a conservative faction of the Republican National Committee wants the party to brand Democrats as Socialists.

Politico reports RNC member James Bopp, Jr. of Indiana is accusing President Obama of wanting to restructure American society along socialist ideals, saying: “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the evil ‘empire’ galvanized opposition to Communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to Socialism.”

16 RNC members agreed to the resolution and are petitioning Chairman Michael Steele to set a special meeting to consider it. An RNC spokesman wouldn’t say what Steele thinks about all this, but a memo from earlier this month suggests that while he agrees with hardliners who say the president is leading the country toward socialism, he’s probably not going to make it official party policy.

And it’s not just Democrats who they’re after — Bopp also wanted to criticize the three Republicans who supported the stimulus package: Senators Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. But that effort was apparently watered down — the resolution instead praises those in the party who have opposed bailouts and Democratic spending plans.

Several Republicans threw around the “socialist” label during last year’s campaign; and more recently Congressman Spencer Bachus of Alabama claimed there were 17 socialists in Congress. None of this seems like the best way for the party to attract voters.

Here’s my question to you: Is it a mistake for some Republicans to try and brand Democrats as ‘Socialists’?

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From Countdown April 24, 2009.

Olbermann:The Pentagon's top lawyer was told by the Americans responsible for defending Americans from torture by other nations no later than July 2002 said what he wanted to do to detainees was torture...We today also learned that the paper trail of the C.I.A. torture documents lead directly to Vice President Cheney's office.

From the Washington Post article Document: Military Agency Referred to 'Torture,' Questioned Its Effectiveness:

The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."

The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.

And the latest on Dick Cheney's request for documents as reported by The Plum Line: Obtained: Cheney’s Request Form Detailing The Two CIA Torture Docs He Wants.

I’ve just obtained from the National Archives the actual request form that Dick Cheney submitted for CIA documents he claims will prove that torture worked.

Cheney requested all of two CIA documents, a total of 21 pages.

You can look at Cheney’s request form right here. They open the window a bit on the scope and direction of his request, which he has claimed will prove that Bush’s torture program yielded worthwhile intelligence.

Cheney requested two CIA reports, both of them from the “detainees” folder, which suggests that the docs detail the interrogation of suspects.

One is dated July 13th, 2004, and numbers eight pages.

The other is dated June 1st, 2005, and numbers 13 pages.

The CIA has redacted the detailed description of the documents because they’re classified. In total, Cheney requested all of 21 pages to support his claim that torture worked.

From the White House blog:

This week the President reiterates a theme that has been a hallmark of his career, namely that "old habits and stale thinking" will simply not help us solve the new and immense problems our country faces. Listing off several specific changes he intends to bring, he describes his guiding principle: "To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent."

Transcript below the fold:

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April 24, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Madow Show

Rachel Maddow talks to Lawrence Wilkerson about Dick Cheney's request to selectively declassify documents to try to prove "enhanced interrogation techniques" can't be considered torture because they worked.

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From Democracy Now April 24, 2009.

The Department of Homeland Security released a report last week that warned right-wing extremist groups are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the nation’s first black president. We speak with Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is facing calls for her ouster from a number of House Republicans in the wake of a department memo that warned of right-wing political extremism in the United States.

The report, which was released last week, warns that right-wing extremist groups are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the nation’s first black president. The report predicts a worsening economy will to lead more people joining militias and skinhead groups and carrying out individual acts modeled after Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

A handful of Republicans in the House are calling for Napolitano to step down in the wake of the report. House Minority Leader John Boehner said the report includes, quote, “about two-thirds of Americans who might go to church, who may have served in the military, who may be involved in community activities…I just don’t understand how our government can look at the American people and say, ‘You’re all potential terrorist threats.’”

Idaho has long been the center of white supremacist groups in the United States. Mark Potok is the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. They recently released a report that finds the number of violent hate groups in the US has skyrocketed since 2000. He joins us via Democracy Now! stream from Alabama. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MARK POTOK: Well, thank you so much for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Mark, your reaction to the controversy now and the calls for Janet Napolitano’s ouster?

MARK POTOK: I think it is completely a tempest in a teacup. You know, the things that Boehner and others have said are very hard to square with actually reading the report. You know, basically, the report has been accused of saying that all conservatives and all veterans are this huge suspect class, people who may, you know, take up arms and start blowing up federal buildings.

The reality is, is when you read the report, it doesn’t say anything remotely like that. You know, the reference to veterans is—what it really says is that white supremacists are interested in attempting to recruit returning veterans because of their skills. It does not say, in any sense, that these people are prone to joining the groups, that we should look at all veterans with a wary eye. And it certainly doesn’t make any suggestion like that with regard to conservatives.

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Former Vice President Gore and Senator Warner testified on the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009 this morning before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) lived up to her reputation as an ultra partisan hack by attacking Al Gore's motives on climate control. Not a wise move, as she elicited snickers with her transparent attempt.

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From Real Time April 24, 2009.