If so, that would make an interesting story. I'm sure it's not though since each agency has different requirements and budgets. What would be good to see is that in 90 days they come back with more than 100 million in cuts.

However, I'm going to agree with Alex that this is kind of a weird story. Sure you are cutting the budget but this is nothing. 100 million is a rounding error at the Pentagon. What I would rather see him do is actually reduce all agencies budget's by a set percentage. That way each agency would cut an equal amount - why should state cut money when DOD is rolling in it?

This is a good start perhaps, but it needs more follow up later. I'm not sure why they even made a dog and pony show of this. Do it when you actually get something done. Politically though, perhaps the tax party stuff had an effect? Bad move if it did because the conservatives will be all over this one way or the other.

LOL perfectly said.

As much as I can't stand Cheney, I think there is some politics going on here from both sides. Obama released the memos for a reason but he's probably not going to release the "success" of those procedures for political reasons. He wants the debate to be about why torture is wrong and will not be done again. It's a valid debate that I think most democrats can agree on but if they did work, then that's an ethical debate I don't think Obama wants to have. There are many in this country that do think it's fine and if it works, that gives them all the more reason to support it. Of course this assumes that there were successes of these procedures.

Alex, instead of redirecting the debate to Cheney on selective transparency, you should focus on the information that is out there about the "successes" Cheney talks about. We all know about Cheney and his "executive privilege". That's not very interesting - information on the success or failure of torture is a much more important thing to look into.

Outside the liberal blogsphere, many people think torture is fine in certain circumstances. It's all how you define it for them. Of course they have little ethical argument to be made other than simplistic ones, but actual data might be useful to them to make their case. Terrorists/Our Enemies/Enemy Combatants are not people remember, so we can torture them and sleep well at night as long as we are safe. Why give them more reason to make this point?

Arguing with me that torture is wrong isn't going to get you anywhere. We are on the same page. Some people in this country think torture is fine, they are not hard to find. The key is to either make an ethical argument to them and keep that discussion on those grounds or let Cheney dictate the discussion towards the "successes" of torture. That's the issue I find here is that democrats allow the Hannity's to direct the discussion to issues of "security" and why it's OK to torture and not to actually see and talk about the ethical problems, which you correctly state, with torture.

Telling people that agree with Cheney that they are just wrong isn't the way to go about this. Neither is redirecting the argument to talk about transparency of Cheney in the past. The key is to keep hitting on the ethics of torture and make them make that argument in a logical way - to make an argument and not just sling mud. I think that is what Obama is doing here. Even if these memos Cheney mentions exist or are something that could be argued or stretched to show "success", he effectively loses the battle of the larger ethical issues here.

Definitely over someone like Simcox.

Use waterboarding if you need to, but it shouldn't be on the table in the first place?

Double speak much?

BTW, here is why we need to have a better debate on this. He is an acting senator and he thinks that waterboarding is OK. What others do? I'm thinking of at least 30 people right now that find this OK and they represent our country.

Someone writes stuff that you don't agree with and is getting paid well for it. I'm sure there are many instances on the left with the same type of situations. It's not like truth is a given from left-wing writers either.

I don't get it Joan.

I particularly liked his response to someone that said the media won Obama the presidency and he just shot back with a "are you f'ing stupid?" remark.

Sadly though, what will happen is he'll get canned and then picked up by CNN or MSNBC and we end up getting this totally divided media system where it's so easy to see what bias they are playing. CNN isn't as bad as MSNBC or FOX though but I'm thinking the same thing happened to Glen Beck.

It sounds like the movie didn't take away from the real story. I'll probably go see it because I like both actors and this is a very interesting story. I think you explained it well.