I sincerely doubt that Yoo's lawyer would advise him to pursue a libel/defamation action against Glenn Greenwald. As you may be aware, a defense to libel is the truth. Furthermore, Glenn's analysis that Yoo is a war criminal is based upon the contents of Yoo's memo, a reading of the Geneva Conventions and the precedents set at the Nuremburg trials.

To your second point, Yoo would not be hampered in bringing a libel action because the memo that is the basis for the charge that Yoo is a war criminal is now public! Indeed, it never should have been classified in the first place.

Essentially, the charge that Yoo is a war criminal means that Yoo has taken actions that violate the Geneva Conventions. Again, I seriously doubt that Yoo's lawyer would advise him to file a libel suit, especially since Yoo would have to testify at any such trial and have to answer all the questions that the Bush Administration has been trying to keep secret for the past seven years.

BTW, I do not know if you saw my last post on the previous thread, but I again invite you to meet with me if you do happen to live in Cook County. I would enjoy discussing these issues face to face.

Thomas H. Keen is the CEO of THK Consulting, LLC. The mailing address is P.o. Box 810, Far Hills, NJ 07932. The physical address is 49 U.S. Highway 202, Far Hills, NJ 07931-2445. Yahoo Yellow pages lists the phone number as (908) 304-0770. No website that I could find. THK is a New Jersey Limited Liability Company. It is registered with the New Jersey Secretary of State, but there is a charge to find out the status information.

My contact information is for Thomas H. Kean (sorry about the spelling) the former governor of NJ and the Chair of the 9/11 Commission. Thank you for pointing that out.

My pleasure.

BTW, wasn't Lee Hamilton going to endorse Obama some time this week? Perhaps the Obama campaign should be questioned regarding Hamilton's refusal to respond to your inquiry. Of course, that would require you to stop swooning over Obama's "flowerly rhetoric," at least according to Elephantman.

Obviously, I have not had time to read all of the letter, so I suspect that at least one person has probably already made this point. At the start of the primary season she had all of the advantages: Former first lady, starting her second term in the U.S. Senate, many of the party big wigs in her corner, a huge fundraising advantage over her opponents, the most name recognition.

If Hillary Clinton and her supporters wanted a winner take all Democratic Party primary, then they could have pushed for that. Instead, they went with the system that was in place and approved by Hillary and the powers that be within the DNC.

Counterfactuals can be informative, but only if as many potential changes as possible are taken into account. That has not been done in this article.

I asked a colleague at work last night whether he would be watching the debate. He said he was not even aware that there was a debate, and he has been an avid follower of this election. I said I would not be watching the debate because nothing substantive ever comes from "debates." From what I have heard and read about, I am glad I did not waste my time.

My co-worker and I then turned our conversation to the Bush Administration and the role of the media. We got onto the topic of the media and their need for "access" to the Bush Administration as a major reason why the media has not covered many stories in the fashion we would expect. He said that the media is afraid of taking any position contrary to Bush and his cronies because they will lose future access to breaking news and stories. I responded that I was unaware of what breaking stories the media would not get if they did not have access to the Bush Administration. I also said that "access" cannot be the be all and end all of journalism.

That got me to thinking about the last true journalistic investigation into presidential criminal misconduct - Watergate. To my recollection, Woodward and Bernstein never actually spoke to Richard Nixon. Access was not important to them, but trying to figure out what happened. They did this by continually asking questions and pursuing leads until people started relenting, and the story expanded from their until they were able to tie Nixon to the wrongdoing.

The irony of the 24/7 cable news networks is that they should be able to do more of the types of investigations that were undertaken during Watergate, but instead provide endless repeats of the same non-stories spoken by people who do not know what they are saying.

One thing I have noticed more of since I started reading Glenn's posts is how many of our pre-eminent "news personalities" never completed college. I just did a search on Brian Williams and found out that he attended three different colleges but never graduated. Yet this hack was able to become the White House correspondent for NBC and eventually its lead anchor. Other notable college drop-outs include Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity. Coincidence?

Of course, a college education does not guarantee that an individual will be any better at her job (see, e.g., future Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan). Frankly, I am not certain that a person with a journalism degree is a better "news personality" than someone without one. The main problem with the current crop of "news personalities" seems to be that they have not been exposed to the need for critical thinking.