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November 04, 2009 CNN

Project On Government Oversight: Retaliation: Whistleblower allegedly forced out after helping to expose the guard scandal at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul

TPMMuckraker: While lunatics debate whether a president should be permitted to address the nation's youth, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.

The Washington Independent: Glenn Beck's next target: Cass Sunstein

Whiskey Fire: A world-besotted wingnut attempts to imitate Swift, and ends up not so much lacerating his breast as serving human stupidity.

Let's Try Democracy: There Are So Many Days That Have Not Yet Broken

Newsifact: Right-wing mob attacks Roger Federer during doctor's visit

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(Khruschev and Nixon in Moscow - the Revere Ware took backseat)

It was this day, fifty years ago that the Cold War became something of a pissing contest between Vice-President Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev.

It all started at the Moscow Fair on July 24, 1959 during a tour of a model kitchen, put together as an example of the typical American home by The State Department.

It quickly dissolved into a shouting match over who had the better advances in technology, even down to kitchen appliances.

It all pointed out how volatile our relationship was with the Soviet Union - how we could agree on literally nothing, and how adamant each side was portraying each other as backward and neanderthal.

Still, it made for good copy and every newspaper and magazine in the world had pictures of Nixon and Khruschev flailing arms around - all for the sake of a washer/dryer combination.

Typical of their exchange:

Nixon: "You won't conceded anything, will you?"

Kruschev: "We too, as you know, don't kill flies with our nostrils!"

Back when the Cold War became just a little bit funny.

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Liz Cheney told the Washington Times that she might consider a run for some kind of political office, which was the shoe we've all been waiting to drop since we started seeing her face over all the cable channels the past couple of months:

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that running for political office is on her horizon.

"It's something I very well may do," said Elizabeth "Liz" Cheney, a lawyer and State Department appointee who has worked on two Republican presidential campaigns.

This of course set the cable heads who've had her on previously to chattering, including Chris Matthews, and she appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News program and answered the question noncommittally. Uh-huh.

Now we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, which will be for Cheney to be declared one of the "fresh upcoming faces" for the GOP as it struggles to redefine itself in the post-Bush era. Nothing like a Cheney for that task, eh?

On the other hand, now that a majority of Republicans now think Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president, they need to start looking ahead. And for all her less-appealing qualities -- particularly the sneer she shares with her father -- she is at least seemingly competent and capable and reasonably intelligent. Which makes her a big improvement on Palin right away.

One certainly can see what Republicans would like about her: As you can see from the rest of the Hannity segment, she was out there touting her charge that the looming possibility of torture investigations proves "we can't trust Democrats with national security".

In other words, she fearmongers and lies and distorts right up there with the best of 'em. But then, she learned at the knee of one of the best.

Besides, I'm not sure that it's altogether a bad thing to have such a vivid reminder of the manifest failures of Bush/Cheney conservatism as another scheming Cheney out there fronting for the GOP.

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Anderson Cooper had some tough questions for Liz Cheney, but like any good Villager comes out swinging initially but fails to do any real follow up after Cheney lies to him repeatedly. It was nice to see someone actually call bulls#@t on some of her talking points though. It's more than I can say for Chuck Todd. Cheney also basically admits that her father's reason for speaking out has more to do with protecting his own hide than national security. The transcript of the full interview is available here.

COOPER: Most former vice presidents walk off the public stage quietly, at least for a while, but not Dick Cheney. His tough talk seems to be working for him. His approval rating, now 37 percent, has jumped eight points since leaving office in January. President Bush's approval rating has risen six points, to 41 percent, from 35.

Dick Cheney's daughter Liz served in the State Department during Bush administration, has been an outspoken defender of her father's record as vice president. She joins us now.

Thanks for being here.

LIZ CHENEY: Great to be here. Thanks, Anderson.

COOPER: Is it -- is it appropriate for your father to be so out in front right now so soon after leaving office, essentially mocking the sitting president of the United States?

L. CHENEY: Well, he's not mocking the sitting president. But I think that...

COOPER: Well, saying he's pandering to Europe?

L. CHENEY: He is pandering to Europe.

I mean, I think that -- that, you know, there's sort of a level of political nicety that's important to observe, except in certain circumstances. And one of those circumstances is where the national security of the nation is at risk, as my father feels strongly that it is.

I don't think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies, that he was going to be doing things like releasing the -- the techniques themselves, so that the terrorists could now train to them, that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush administration, I think my dad began to feel very strongly that somebody needed to speak out, that this needed to be a full airing of views, and not a one-sided mischaracterization of the last eight years.

COOPER: But these -- you know, these are techniques which have been around. I mean, the Nazis used them. The -- the Khmer Rouge used them. The -- the North Koreans used them. So, it's not as if terrorists were unfamiliar with these techniques, if they wanted to train for them. And I'm not sure you really can train for torture or -- or enhanced interrogation.

L. CHENEY: Well, I think, first of all -- yes, I mean, I would question the premise there.

I think that you have got to look at the legal memos, actually, which now you can do. The legal memos are very clear. And this was a -- a very carefully designed program, and it was a program that the CIA designed, that they had the lawyers look at to make sure that the line that divided sort of rough treatment from torture wouldn't be crossed.

But the important point here, though, there's a big difference between a terrorist sort of Googling, you know, techniques that might be used and a terrorist who can now pull up these memos and actually see, OK, well, they're going to be able to do this, you know, to me for this many minutes, but I know they won't cross that line.

What the president has done is ensure that no future president can use any of these techniques. So, that's a big step. And that's a step that I think really does endanger the country.

And, frankly, if the president himself in the future is faced with a ticking-time-bomb scenario, it's not clear to me, you know, what exactly he will do, even though he's reserved to himself the right to take action like these techniques.

COOPER: Is it appropriate, though, for your father, who has had access to high-level intelligence for -- for eight years, to be very publicly waving a flag, saying, we're much weaker now than ever before? Isn't that, in fact, emboldening our enemies? Couldn't you make that argument?

L. CHENEY: I think that it is a moral obligation to stand up and say, wait a second. You know, when you...

COOPER: But you can write letters. You can -- you can have meetings with the president. He could have a meeting with the president and say very firmly, "This is what I believe," and the president would either listen to him or not.

But to stand up publicly and -- if...

Well,. Yes. No, absolutely.

COOPER: If a Democrat was doing this in a Republican administration, wouldn't be the Republicans be saying, this is traitorous?

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Part 1

Rachel Maddow talks to former State Department lawyer under Condoleeza Rice, Philip Zelikow who says that the Bush administration attempted to destroy all copies of an alternative memo on interrogation techniques he wrote in 2005.

From Philip Zelikow's blog at Foreign Policy magazine The OLC "torture memos": thoughts from a dissenter:

At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

Stated in a shorthand way, mainly for the benefit of other specialists who work these issues, my main concerns were:

• the case law on the "shocks the conscience" standard for interrogations would proscribe the CIA's methods;

• the OLC memo basically ignored standard 8th Amendment "conditions of confinement" analysis (long incorporated into the 5th amendment as a matter of substantive due process and thus applicable to detentions like these). That case law would regard the conditions of confinement in the CIA facilities as unlawful.

• the use of a balancing test to measure constitutional validity (national security gain vs. harm to individuals) is lawful for some techniques, but other kinds of cruel treatment should be barred categorically under U.S. law -- whatever the alleged gain.

The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

Part two below the fold.

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January 02, 2009 C-SPAN

...told President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last month that there were too few troops in Iraq, according to people familiar with official records of the meeting. Read here