Since we’re returning to the roots of the administration’s sanction of torture in the aftermath of 9/11…
Here’s a 2002 Justice Department court filing showing William Haynes, the Defense Department’s general counsel, authorizing interrogators to “take the gloves off” when interrogating John Walker Lindh.
Dad of accused coke trafficker takes over as Rudy’s South Carolina campaign chair.
Reasonable doubt or benefit of the doubt?
Romney wishes well to his staffer who allegedly impersonated state troopers.
For those of you who are following the ‘greedy Rudy’ story, note that yesterday, just in passing, Tim Russert said that he’d spoken to several members of the Iraq Study Group (aka, Baker-Hamilton Commission). And they told him that nothing came up at the time from Rudy about his membership somehow conflicting with his presidential run. (Rudy has claimed, less than convincingly, that he bagged because he didn’t want presidential politics to get enmeshed in the commission’s work.) That never came up. It was all about showing up to meeting and Rudy’s inability to do so because he had so many $100k speeches scheduled.
If you want to see it, it comes up at about 4:20 in in today’s episode of TPMtv linked below.
Cheney’s “dumb explanation,” Pat Buchanan’s horde of immigrant criminals, Rudy’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, and of course, a little Iraq talk. All that and more in today’s Sunday Show Roundup edition of TPMtv …
I mentioned earlier that we’re working on lining up interviews with the presidential candidates for TPMtv. And we’ve gotten a lot of great questions that you’ve sent in over the last few days. But I was having coffee with a friend this morning who proposed another idea — not to supplant the traditional sit-down interviews but as an addition, and one that might play more to the strengths of the medium. He suggested we come up with specific questions for the candidates, tape them, and then invite the candidates to answer.
If you want them to answer the question, tell them. If they respond, we’ll prominently broadcast their answer, unedited on TPMtv.
Sit-downs have a number of advantages — follow-up being the most obvious, but also to gauge some of the candidates’ ability to think on their feet, the ability to push them beyond the scripted and vetted answers. For these and other reasons we’re still going to schedule these interviews. But there’s something to be said too for putting a key question out there, giving them (and/or whoever else thinks on their behalf) time to come up with a considered answer and then go on the record. If it dodges the question or answers it only in platitudes I think that fact will speak for itself.
Tell us what you think and we’ll try to refine the idea.
ABC apes Fox …
ABC News has apologized for mistakenly running a picture of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry when it was promoting a “World News” story about a man suing a dry cleaner for $54 million for losing his pants.
Both Roy L. Pearson, who filed the lawsuit, and Barry are black. Barry’s picture ran for East Coast feeds Tuesday when Pearson’s story was “teased” at the beginning of the news. It was corrected for later editions, spokeswoman Natalie Raabe said.
The mistake happened because both men happened to be in a Washington court that day and ABC got video of both, Raabe said. Barry was acquitted this week of drunken driving charges.
Okay, gloves are off.
Edwards campaign blasts The New York Times over its Friday story alleging cynical motives behind his antipoverty nonprofit.