Domestic Affairs

The Washington Post, January 14 2009, by Bob Woodward: The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.” “We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first…

The New Yorker: Chicago is not Obama’s home town, but it’s where he chose to forge his identity. Several weeks ago, he moved many of the Democratic National Committee’s operations from Washington to Chicago, making the city the unofficial capital of the Democratic Party; his campaign headquarters are in an office building in the Loop, Chicago’s downtown business district. But Chicago, with its reputation as a center of vicious and corrupt politics, may also be the place that Obama needs…

Obama: But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means…

IM conversation with an Iraqi friend now living in New York: Friend: are u following spitzer’s resignation now Friend: ? Friend: crazy Cyrus Farivar: yeah Friend: cool Friend: his wife is so pissed Friend: man that’s so cool Friend: they just resign like that Friend: when they make awful mistakes Cyrus Farivar: why is that cool? Friend: in iraq Friend: that never happened Friend: no one resigned Friend: no matter what they did Friend: they outlived the people Friend: i’m…

I’m interviewing voters as they come out of the voting booths in Oakland, Piedmont and Lafayette today for the NYT’s online feature “Voices from the Polls”. Check it out here. Update: I had to go all the way out to Danville to find Republicans. Seriously.

Big ups once again to Daniel Hernandez for his commentary on last night’s All Things Considered : “Age, Not Race, Splits Latinos’ Democratic Vote”. As he blogs: Friends, my latest commentary for NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran today. It addresses the question of whether “Latino” “tensions” and “unease” with “blacks” will prevent “Latinos” from voting for “the black candidate,” Barack Obama, in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary season. Please listen here. A bunch of those terms up there are in…

David Simon asks, in The Washington Post: What I don’t understand is this: Isn’t the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium — isn’t an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity? Or were we kidding ourselves? Was a newspaper a viable entity only so long as it had classifieds, comics and the latest sports scores? It’s hard to say that, even harder to think it. By that premise, what all…

The FBI denies all knowledge of the falafel story: Having never heard of this, I spoke to the counterterrorism managers, who in the story were identified as having hatched the plan, as well as everyone else who would have had any knowledge of it. Nobody did. At one point in the story, writer Jeff Stein opines “as ridiculous as it sounds,” in reference to the alleged food monitoring plan, which reportedly was described to Mr. Stein by “well-informed sources.” In…

WashPost: The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network. “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from…

There’s a lot of famous scenes where soldiers go through boot camp, and get yelled at and drilled until it’s instilled. But how real is that, and what does it take to go from civvie to a Semper-Fi-spewin’ Marine? The LA Times follows three kids, including one Iranian-American, to find out: While still in high school, the friends had enlisted under the Marines’ buddy program, which guaranteed they would train in the same platoon throughout boot camp. In July, a…