Monday, December 1, 2008

Recommended Reading

Fred Kaplan (Hi, Fred!) really likes Barack Obama's pick for a national security adviser.

• Posted at 10:28 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I've been looking for more footage of baby pandas for you and haven't been able to find any. Will you settle for a family of moose and a lawn sprinkler?

• Posted at 10:57 AM · LINK

Accountability

The National Bureau of Economic Research declares that not only is the U.S. in a recession but that it began in December of 2007. I can't understand how Barack Obama engineered it then but I'm sure the explanation is forthcoming.

• Posted at 10:55 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

"Matthew Alexander" is the pseudonym for an Air Force counterintelligence agent who was assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. There, he led an interrogation team that refused to engage in the torture techniques that other U.S. squads were utilizing. He found that by not torturing The Enemy, he got more and better information out of them and also concluded, "Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq." In other words, torture ain't effective and it only makes things worse.

Obama is going to stop all that, he says, but there's some question of whether this country will repudiate the insidious policies to the point where we undo some of the damage and make a start at reclaiming some moral high ground. More likely, those who broke the law to torture will walk away with pardons and Medals of Freedom, courtesy of that guy who's only got fifty more days to screw things up further.

• Posted at 10:36 AM · LINK