Glenn Greenwald has a great interview with Manfred Nowak, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Professor Nowak assures us that our President’s proposal for an advance blanket amnesty of torturers is right out: all nations that signed the Torture Conventions (and that includes the United States) have an obligation to investigate allegations of torture. Period. Professor Nowak tells us that the investigations, at least, do not have to be criminal in nature, but if crimes of torture are uncovered during those investigations, they must be referred to prosecutors who, in the course of their discretion, may or may not prosecute...

The elevator may not have gone to the top in the Bush Administration… but, as McClatchy is now reporting, memos obtained revealed that the authorization for torture did go right to the top: former Vice President Dick Cheney and then-national security advisor Condi Rice. [H/T to Make them Accountable for many of today’s items, btw.] To his credit, former President George W. Bush is maintaining a low profile these days, knowing that the impetus to accountability against him personally may just not be there, as his own role is arguably somewhat murky, and he can always have the dodge of...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney [my interview with the former V.P. is here] has suggested that, while the Obama Administration is weakening the United States and doing other “unhelpful” things like shaking hands with [Bush Administration Creation] Hugo Chavez… the Obama Administration was giving us a misleading assessment of torture in its release of Bush-era torture memos by… wait for it… not releasing memos showing all the successes generated by torture. Poor Vice President Cheney. First we held back the memos showing the evidence of WMDs in Iraq and Saddam’s direct links to al Qaeda, and now the Obama Administration...

Back from a fortnight’s holiday visiting with dear friends, and ready for action… well, back anyway. And what did we miss? We’ll try to spare each other the more obvious, such as the bleakonomic news, and move on to really happy stuff… like… The White House press secretary laughing it up with the White House press corps over… torture. Absolutely hilarious… the equivalent of a fraternity prank, perhaps? Look: I know there are others who will provide more useful analysis of the whole torture memo thing… so I’ll get right to it. What got me most among the 100 pages...

Don’t know why I’m in such a “happy happy fun fun” mood today, but I thought I’d just give you a sampling of other “happy” people… (I will note that the young ‘un today made her Dear Old Dad proud today when, amidst a technical operation which required the generalized plea to providence, “Let’s hope this works out”… said, smiling and in as sunny a manner as possible, “I’m a PESSIMIST!”) Anyway, h/t for a number of these items to Make them Accountable. We’ll start with this Der Spiegel interview of Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, former chief economist...

Candace tells us that Judge John Bates did our Constitution a huge solid today by ruling that three Bagram detainees who were moved there from outside of Afghanistan could challenge the legality of their detention in American courts, citing the Supreme Court’s rulings that the U.S. government cannot evade the Constitution by moving prisoners to locations it claims are beyond law. Judge Bates has made a number of rulings with respect to Candace’s client al-Ghizzawi with which we have disagreed… but today, he deserves all of our props for a courageous ruling that means that the concept of zones of...

Richard Bruce Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States of America until January 20th of this year, having previously served as a member of Congress, Secretary of Defense and White House Chief of Staff. On April 1, 2009, I had the privilege of interviewing Vice President Cheney by telephone, from an undisclosed location; what follows are my interview notes. The Talking Dog: Mr. Vice President, let me thank you for doing this interview; as you know, I have not always agreed with policies you and President Bush put in place, so let me commend you on...

The good news is that the Obama Administration has doubled the number of GTMO detainees it has released as a result of its executive review process. The bad news is that it has doubled that number… to two, with the release of a Yemeni orthopedist, Ayman Batarfi. Dr. Batarfi fell into that category of those swept up who were guilty of “being in Afghanistan while Arab,” a category that was far more likely to pick up aid workers than actual jihadists. Apparently, after seven years, the government has concluded that Batarfi… was an aid worker. The pace will have to...

George Clarke is a member of the law firm of Miller & Chevalier in Washington, D.C., specializing in tax law and related matters. For the past four years, he has represented two Chinese (Uighur) and two Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay, two of whom have been determined to be “not enemy combatants” (or whatever nomenclature will replace that term) and one of whom has been “cleared for transfer or release” (two years ago and is still sitting in Guantamano) . On March 26, 2009, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Clarke in New York. What follows are my interview...

I’m tempted to just say “what Krugman said,” and leave it at that. What he said is that just a generation or two ago in the not so boring 1960’s, the boring banking and insurance sectors combined sucked out a seemingly reasonable 4% of American GDP for their services of greasing the wheels of capitalism, in a time of real growth at a pace never seen before or since. Fast forward to current times, and Professor Krugman notes, those sectors alone suck out a princely 8% of GDP… we won’t even talk about immense fees paid to mutual funds, pension...