From Democracy Now -- Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud:

Broadcasting on the road from Kansas City, Missouri, we’re joined by William Black, a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and recently took part in Occupy Kansas City. "If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing," Black says.

"Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison... That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites... I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus."

Full transcript at the link above.

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While I commend Sen. John McCain for speaking out on the Senate floor this week condemning those who have come out since the death of Osama bin Laden defending the use of waterboarding -- or as they want to call it, "enhanced interrogation" -- and claiming that the torture somehow worked to gain intelligence, McCain is still on the wrong side of the issue with saying he doesn't believe anyone should be prosecuted. Jonathan Turley rightfully pointed that out to Ed Schultz tonight.

He also expressed his disdain for the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder's decision not to investigate and hold members of the Bush administration accountable for war crimes, which I share.

TURLEY: One of the most powerful things about McCain's speech is the truism that lies beneath it where he says, you know, being tortured is simply immoral. You know, I think much of the world is shocked by the debate that we're having. This whole question of did it yield usable intelligence has long been rejected by the world and by the United States and its treaties as a viable argument for torture. Torture isn't a war crime because it's never beneficial. It's a war crime because it's immoral, because it is a war crime.

And you can imagine how we look to the world in this debate when we have all of these officials who not only say that they ordered torture, but are trying to sell the American people on how good torture really is.

I also always cynically wonder about John McCain's political motivations any time he looks like he's doing the right thing. While I have no doubt that his personal experience with being tortured as a prisoner of war has as much to do with him speaking out as anything, he also still really doesn't have any use for any of the Bushies or George W. Bush after what they did to him when he ran against Bush for president and Karl Rove ran that whisper campaign against him in South Carolina. McCain always seems to have a penchant for doing the right thing if it means getting some digs in on his political enemies and ignoring wrong doings when it's politically convenient as well.

TPM has more on his Senate speech here: McCain Denounces Torture: 'The Very Idea Of America' Is At Stake (VIDEO):

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MSNBC's Cenk Uygur talked to Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi about his new article on Wall Street and the revolving door preventing any of them from being prosecuted -- Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?:

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's f**ked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's f**ked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

Read on...

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Jeremy Scahill weighs in on Dick Cheney's softball interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and why there needs to be prosecutions of everyone from top to bottom. And that means anyone who broke the law and ordered the torture of prisoners, from the top Bush administration officials to those that carried it out. Scahill also takes the media to task for their coverage of this issue and not making sure Americans are actually aware of what's been done in their name.

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From The Ed Schultz Show, Jerrold Nadler says the appointment of a Special Prosecutor doesn't go far enough and that the law is that when torture occurs under American jurisdiction there must be an investigation of everyone who may have been involved and if warranted prosecutions. Nadler expressed concern that we aren't being aggressive enough and limiting the investigations too much. He also adds this:

Nadler: We are well into territory already, where because of the pardon of Nixon after Watergate and the people around him, because of in the Iran Contra, we're getting into territory where it becomes taken for granted that high officials can violate the law and get away with it.

Schultz: Yep.

Nadler: If high officials violated the law here, if Cheney did, if Rice did, etc., they've got to be prosecuted to show that no one is above the law.

I agree with his point that no one is above the law. I disagree that we're "getting into territory" where high officials take it for granted that they will never be held accountable for their law breaking. We're well past that point now.

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From Countdown, Keith's Special Comment after watching Dick Cheney's speech today. Keith takes former Vice President Cheney to task for defending the use of torture while refusing to accept any responsibility for his actions.

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment about Mr. Cheney's speech.

Neurotic...

Paranoid...

False to fact and false to reason...

Forever self-rationalizing...

His inner rage at his own impotence and failure dripping from every word...

And as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane, as any terrorist...

The former Vice President has today humiliated himself beyond redemption.

The delusional claims he has made this day could be proved by documentation and first-hand testimony to be the literal truth, and still he himself would be wrong, because the America he sought to impose upon the world and upon its own citizens, the dark hateful place of Dick Cheney's own soul, the place he to this hour defends and to this day prefers, is a repudiation of all that our ancestors, all that for which our brave troops of 200 years ago and two minutes ago, have sacrificed and fought.

I do have to congratulate you, Sir. No man living or dead could have passed the buck more often than you did in 35 minutes this morning.

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John McCain on Fox News Sunday is asked about the closing of Gitmo, and apparently John is for it but yet he's against it. He thinks we should close Gitmo, but only after finding another kangaroo court to replace the one we have now.

He also feels we have to find somewhere to put all of those prisoners who aren't from the United States, which Joe Biden pretty well debunked today, noting that there was only ONE of them which would fit that category. McCain also apparently thinks that Obama closing Gitmo equates to just freeing prisoners without any trials. I don't think anyone is asking for that, John.

Chris Wallace frames the following question on torture as to whether anyone at a lower level should be prosecuted as opposed to anyone in the Bush administration who ordered the torture. McCain follows right along with Wallace in his answer and only talks about those at the lower level in the CIA who followed the orders and not those they were taking orders from, and says we need to "move on". As someone who was himself tortured, this is pretty pathetic. I've got to wonder if he'd be as charitable if he ever met the person who ordered his torture.

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Maddow: One of the things I think has been so I guess challenging to the American debate about this is that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have essentially argued that they have legalized waterboarding. That they have legalized torture. They think that the actions of their Justice Department made things like waterboarding not war crimes any more. Are they right?

Levin: You can't just suddenly change something that's illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion saying that it's legal. Things can't work that way or else someone could get a lawyer to say a crime is not a crime and then that would be a defense. That is not a defense and I just, I was astounded frankly when I heard the Vice President of the United States sort of just blandly, blithely saying that oh he thought that was an appropriate thing and yes he was involved in the discussions about it.

Senator Levin, why are you shocked about this when no one who has been paying any attention to what this administration has done is shocked? And can we get a straight answer that there should be prosecutions and not hedging?