I agree with the lady or gentleman who said that Wall Street LOVES layoffs. Thier long term plans must now be to see how they can still make a killing off of a severely contracted economy that is unlikely to ever rebound to the levels of consumption we saw circa 1994-2006. But if they can keep inflation under control, and lots of out of work people certainly helps that, they can get some Obama infrastructure spending and tax cuts, keep the obscenely high "defense" outlays, and shift to new strategies for bilking the shunken pie of American wealth. I fear Obama lacks either the will or the ability to wrest control from the top 10% who still don't seem all that upset about this economic meltdown.

But the idea that he's only been President for three weeks, cut him some slack, lacks credibility. He ran for President for a year and a half, and was supposed to be thinking about these issues. He had three months to get his legislative priorities straight. He's had plenty of time to wiegh the merits of many highly intelligent dissidents who have pointed out the bankruptcy of the system for years: Nader, Chalmers Johnson, Andrew Bacevitch, James Galbraith, Kucinich, Ron Paul, Michael Klare, Doug Henwood, Barbara Ehrenreich, and dozens more. He appointed none of them to any office. He seems reluctant to take on the idiotic military/imperial establishment, and seems more interested in making nice with Republicans than punishing the people who got us into this mess. You can call me all the nasty names you want, but these are facts, and worrisome facts to boot. Obama is unquestionably better than McCain. But McCain was inept and toxic. Obama being kindly, bright, and ineffectual may be better, but it is not good enough, and we the People have a right to expect more.

Waterboarding, if it was done to US soldiers or civilians, would demand the harshest retirbution, I'm sure. Those least offended by it being done to people who have been found guilty of precisely nothing would be most viturpiratively calling for the blood of those who committed such actions against "our boys." Nevertheless, I fear that such practices were far from the worst atrocities committed in this demented "war on terror." Waterboarding is a distraction from the principle of the thing and likely a cover for worse activities.

And before Kuffy baby starts to wet himself in fear and outrage, I tell you all this: if found guilty of murdering civilians, I'd line the al Qaida people up against a wall and shoot them. But I want to be damn certain I'm shooting the right people. And I want to do it in a way that eliminates terrorists, not spawn new ones or encouraging millions of Muslims to support them or turn a blind eye to their activities.

Justice is ON our side, not the terrorists, so long as we act justly and within the rules of law and war.

Of course, he may now know that our civil liberties have been violated so comprehensively for so long that it is no longer an issue of going back. I'm not sure of this, but I have a funny feeling that the boys at Fort Meade have been doing data mining since the days of Ronald Reagan and using nasty stuff they find to blackmail and intimidate political and religious leaders for decades--hell, we know Hoover used tapes of MLK having sex with women who were not his wife to warn him off being too "uppity".

Welcome to the Panopticon, Obama!

In the 1920s Secretary of State Hull banned the proactice of using codebreakers to decrypt allied and neutral diplomatic traffic. "Gentlemen" he said at the time, "do not read each other's mail." Unbeknownst to him, the apparatus for doing what he banned, and the personnel to do it, stayed in place. In 1969 Richard Nixon supposedly "banned" all "offensive" germ warfare experimentation and ordered all stockpiles of said weapons destroyed. There is significant evidence that Nixon's order was circumvented. Obama may have singed some papers in the Oval Office, but unless he has a trusted, powerful official ride this thing into the grpound, the chances that the Apparatchiks will obey is dubious. The best way he can make anyone take his orders seriously is to reveal the whole nasty operation and punish the offending parties. If Obama does no such thing, it is unwise to take his public pronouncements seriously.

"If you could have one superpower, which one would it be? The ability to pose the right questions at precisely the right moments and receive, in turn, the exact answers I'm looking for."

Notice, the man wants an answer he can use, or is looking for, not specifically a turthful answer. Shouldn't he want the power to ask questions and get real, truthful answers? I guess not. I guess the point is to get usable answers or ones that conform to his prejudice or that will further his career.

Dweeb.

Without a full disclosure of all existing documents, giving these shits immunity to go before a panel and excuse and defend their actions (which is exactly what they will do) is insane. How Conason didn't think of that before writing this article is incomprehensible.

You could do this in South Africa because the bastards who perpetrated the crimes were never again going to be within ten miles of power. These Republicans could be back in the driver's seat in four years, perpetrating the same, or worse, crimes (why not! they got away scot free the first time). Conason better write a retraction or I will doubt not only his credibility, but his sanity, from here on in.