...you're entitled to your own opinion, but NOT your own facts.

so glad we've gotten past THAT foolish fixation on accuracy and truth. this metarelativistic approach has certainly advanced public discourse and policy, don't you think? or don't you?

the sun rises in the east: debate among yourselves.

...will be the FIRST bluedog the white house criticizes. meanwhile, progressives get spanked and demonized. is that really better than being ignored?

can we just drop the pretense that obama is really an agent of progressive change? that he really wants to be our bigtime lib/left flagbearer but the times, or the politics, or the repubs won't let him?

he's a clinton for the 21st century. that's all. got it?

...as ombudsman, since part of the job by definition is to be available for follow-up opportunities to explain to the public she supposedly serves. see below.

but she isn't serving the public, is she? she's not independent, either. she's a flack for a cowed and cowering "news" organization that has traded away its self-regard for the security of a weasel. npr, by allowing its very use of words and their meaning to be corrupted by outside forces, means it's no better than any propaganda machine financed by the government on which it reports.

fired? far from it. she'll be seeing a little something extra in her paycheck: a bonus for having to take the heat from the big bad blogosphere.

From wikipedia: •An ombudsman (English plural: conventionally ombudsmen) is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some external constituency while representing the broad scope of constituent interests.

...what with its journalistic mission so blatantly compromised and all. i must say, such an example of this strained (not to say tortured) rationalization is highly revealing of the mentalities and forces at play.

mind you, it's unlikely npr is even feeling pressure from the administration -- something common enough under the bushites and their stooges on the npr board. no, this is merely inertial complacency: "best not to disturb the right wing. let's go along to get along."

and all it takes is a complete and utter surrender of first principles. impressive, really, at how little it takes.

...and, just as obviously, she can speak for herself quite well.

my only thought as to how she could justify using so pejorative a quote, let alone having it stand anonymously, is because it suggests the state of mind of those in the intelligence community, and how they dismiss their critics: insult and diminish them, distort the facts they cite, and generally try to muddy the trail of malfeasance.

ms. mayer might also have felt that publishing the quote was useful as a bone to throw to her source. as you note, glenn, she does refute the source's misrepresentation of brennan's service, even if much lower down.

it may be that the price for information these days includes the reflexive nod to the outmoded cliche about bloggers, untrue now as it ever was. that her source insists on invoking it shows just how weak the argument was to consider brennan in the first place, and just how slow the intel community is to recognize that their impression of the blogosphere is mccain-like, i.e. years out of date (if in fact they really believe that characterization). another reason for better humint.

...than the bleatings and lowings of the village commentariat in retreat.

the sense of these last few days seems that, while it's not there yet, the capital is reaching a tipping point on the whole issue of torture investigations, having gone from unthinkable to eventual.

the next step will be making it inevitable, and the step after that, insuring that it's not some weak-ass whitewash commission.

this is why we must continue to apply the pressure and extend the education of the public -- because the chattering classes will be doing everything they can NOT to. way to go, glenn!

...by hewing to the conventional village wisdom about no investigation/no prosecution even as he releases to the planet the contents of these damning memos.

he can say to the washington establishment, hey i'm with you on this, but he's putting out the information that will be gathered and cited by those who want those investigations and prosecutions.

effectively, it seems as though he is sidestepping history, saying i'm not going to have my administration founder on this point of principle, but if there's enough interest in an investigation, you folks who want one have got a lot more ammunition to conduct one.

he is not using his power or bully pulpit to foster the next steps, but he is a facilitator nonetheless. i actually feel better about him today than i did yesterday, when i assumed these memos wouldn't be released or if they were, it would be in abridged or redacted versions.

it almost lends credence to those who say, just wait until he's safely been re-elected: that second term will really be something.

....oh crap, i can't even finish the line. this was exactly what was expected, indeed, it was what was sought. and the BEST face you could put on the passage of this piece of garbage "law" last year was that dems caved merely because of their election-season concerns.

let's get real: the dems are now as complicit if not more so than the reps on the evisceration of our civil liberties, starting with the 4th amendment. (and obama really is no better than a 21st century clinton, formerly known as the best republican president of my lifetime.) the executive will not yield in its accrual of power, which is now essentially unchecked by either the legislative or judicial branches. and the folks running the government are hostage to the military-intelligence complex (sic).

o brave new world of vanishing rights and protections. i'm not sure this was ever as great a country as we remember, but even that pretense is gone.