In an interview with yesterday's Guardian, Makan discusses his relationship with Neda, her political involvement, and the attempts by the government to suppress the truth following her violent death. Neda's death was one of 80 reported during the protests against the presidential elections, but unlike the others, Neda died live on camera, in a clip that quickly traveled around the world, turning Neda into a symbol of reform-minded Iranians' struggle. According to eyewitness reports, Neda was shot by a member of the religious militia. Her face, and the face of her death, became a central image in the protests, a rallying point for people all over the globe. But as the Guardian notes, "symbols destroy lives." And Neda's was not the last.

In the days following Neda's murder, Makan spoke out to foreign news stations, before suddenly disappearing. It was soon learned that Makan was being held in the Evin Prison in Tehran, where he would stay for more than two months. During his time in prison, Makan was subjected to weeks of solitary confinement, interrogation, beatings, and psychological torture. He recalls being asked to lie about Neda, to say that she was a member of a group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. "They insisted on saying that Neda and I were members of a group with plans to cause these events," he said. They also suggested that Neda had gone intentionally to her death in order to undermine the state, but he could see that even they did not believe this;

"They weren't serious. It was pretty clear that they themselves didn't believe the accusations they were making." What was clear was the damage they felt Neda's death had dealt the Islamic Republic and that he had made it much worse by speaking out.

Then they changed tack. "They said 'The Iranian government is proud of you.' They brought me ice cream and biscuits. Then they wanted me to return to my cell. I went back feeling a little relieved. I thought, OK, let me turn off my light. It was like a searchlight shining straight on my face. Then I realised there was no switch to turn it off."

After months of torture, Makan was finally released on bail, thanks to the pressure placed on the regime by Neda's family, Amnesty, and other international organizations. Once released on bail, Makan's family and friends urged him to flee the country. Despite his initial reluctance to run, he finally escaped. "I didn't want to leave. For one, I believe this movement has not died out, and will never die out. But when I saw the constraints I was under, that they had me under constant surveillance, and that I had to keep silent, I really couldn't stand it," he said. And exile does have certain benefits: Now Makan can speak out, and more fully continue his mission to keep Neda's memory alive. "Now I have left Iran, I can cry out. To break the silence."

He also speaks about the days leading up to Neda's death, and her involvement in the protests. While neither Neda nor Caspian were particularly political, he says that Neda "joined the protesters from the beginning" and had only one goal: "democracy and freedom for Iranians." He recalls discussions they had about the dangers of the demonstrations:

"She said, 'You support me in everything I do, why not this?' I said, 'You don't understand these people. What happens if they catch you?' She said, 'It's not important, Caspian. It's my duty.' She said: 'Caspian, let me tell you the truth. I think that under the circumstances we now have, we're all responsible. Even if we'd had a child, I'd carry my child to these demos on my back.' That's when I realised I couldn't prevent her from going."

He says Neda attended virtually every demonstration. Although he sometimes went with her, Makan was not with Neda on the day of her death. He was taking photographs of demonstrators in another part of the city (Makan worked as a photographer), capturing image after image of security guards beating the protesters. He heard news of his girlfriend's death in the early morning, around the same time that the video clip of Neda, blood pouring from her face as her father screamed, was making its way around the world.

Makan now lives in a small apartment in a city he does not know. He keeps his whereabouts unknown, out of fear for the long reach of the Iranian secret police. Neda's parents, who still reside in Iran, face similar difficulties, but like Makan, they refuse to be silent. On November 4th, Neda's parents were attacked and detailed at a protest. A source told the Times of London that members of the security forces threatened them, saying they could meet the same fate as their daughter. Even more recently, Neda's tombstone was destroyed by supporters of Iran's current regime. A recording captured Hajar Rostami, Neda's mother, weeping over her desecrated grave and crying "My child has no gravestone... You bastards! Why don't you leave my child alone?" From exile, Makan added:

"The breaking of Neda's gravestone broke the hearts of millions of freedom-loving people around the world. The repressors, believing they can stifle the cries for freedom, have even attacked, beaten, threatened and insulted Neda's parents. This is while the Islamic Republic of Iran denies Neda's murder."

Caspar Makan: I Cannot Believe It Yet. I Still Think I Will See Neda Again." [Guardian]
Grave Of Neda Soltan Desecrated By Supporters Of The Regime [Times]

Related: Neda Soltani: Student & Symbol (And Why She Ought To Be Both)

A Times profile by Mark Leibovich makes Liz Cheney sound like the Hobgoblin to her dad's Green Goblin. Says Mary Cheney,

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any daylight at all between Liz's and my father's views. It's not because she's been indoctrinated. It's because he's right.

Right about what, exactly? Well, she told Sam Donaldson that "waterboarding isn't torture." And in the Larry King clip above, she says the reason birthers are so angry is that Obama isn't defending America. Cheney echoed this sentiment at the Nashville Smart Girl Summit, an event for conservative women also attended by such luminaries as Michelle Malkin. In her speech there, she asked,

Mr. President, in a ticking time-bomb scenario, with American lives at stake, are you really unwilling to subject a terrorist to enhanced interrogation to get information that would prevent an attack?

Cheney is currently helping her dad write his memoirs, which she says will occupy her until 2011, but she won't say whether she'll run for office after that. Since Dick Cheney is remembered by many as basically evil incarnate, it's not clear whether she would be a viable candidate — Leibovitch mentions "the question of whether the 'Cheney message' on national security - which essentially translates to an aggressive and interventionist approach - is something the Republican Party should be trumpeting, or burying." But the former VP's approval rating has actually risen since he left office, and some are calling his daughter a promising young "rock star." Conservative blogger Fingers Malloy says she's "one of the fresh faces of our movement," and Republican foreign-policy adviser Dan Senor says, "I think Liz is ably representing the next wave of voices."

It's hard to see someone whose views are identical to Dick Cheney's as a "fresh face," especially since neoconservatism now seems, despite its prefix, hopelessly dated. Nonetheless, Liz Cheney's pro-torture hawkishness and criticisms of Obama are clearly popular with the xenophobic set, if no one else. It's possible to imagine a pretty terrifying 2012 ticket with Sarah Palin at the top and Liz Cheney as VP. We'll take Meghan McCain over that any day.

New Cheney Taking Stage For The G.O.P. [NYT]

That's former Vice President Dick Cheney talking to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday yesterday. Initially, when the Cheney interview broke and I had a chance to read over the transcripts, I laughed. Let's leave aside the fact of some of the more blatant reversals (like the one I quoted above) and his constant return to the chest-beating declarations of having saved millions of American lives by preventing more attacks.

This is all ridiculously obvious, right?

The New York Times' summary explains:

Mr. Cheney described the inquiry as an "intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration" intended to placate the left wing of the Democratic Party. "It's clearly a political move," he said. "I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this."

In naming the prosecutor last week, Mr. Holder said he had no choice but to move forward with the investigation after the Justice Department's ethics office recommended a new review of several interrogation cases and he reviewed a 2004 report on the interrogation program by the C.I.A. inspector general that was released Monday under a court order.

The report described a variety of abuses, including suggestions about sexually assaulting a detainee's relatives and staging mock executions as well as the accounts of one prisoner who was repeatedly knocked out with pressure applied to his carotid artery and another who was lifted off the grounds by his arms, which were tied behind his back.

There's no rationale for this? We are describing crimes of war that were either sanctioned or encouraged by our government. We aren't talking about what the definition of "is" is anymore; we're seeing a former Vice President defend torture and other unsanctioned behavior as part of a larger terror strategy. Don't get me wrong, perjury is serious business. But it's interesting to see where the rule of law seems to matter greatly (in which we ask the President about his sex life) and where it is being brushed under the rug (in which we protect our nation by ignoring the founding documents and moral codes of conduct.) Time magazine's Swampland blog adds a interesting twist to the conversation, noting:

Power drills and mock executions are not the only extralegal techniques that CIA employees are alleged to have committed. One CIA contractor, according to the CIA Inspector General, is alleged to have beaten an Afghan detainee to death with a large metal flashlight and his foot. Released criminal records show that another CIA employee was interrogating a detainee at Abu Ghraib prison in a stress position with a bag over his head, when the detainee died of asphyxiation. Assuming that Cheney did not misspeak, his statement to Wallace suggests that he believes these deaths are "OK' given the circumstances.

There are the beginnings here of a possible pattern in Cheney's thoughts—the suggestion that violations of law in the service of a greater national good are forgivable. As TIME's Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf wrote in a cover story last month, the disagreement between President George Bush and Cheney over the pardoning of Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby similarly focused on this question of whether the rule of law should be sacrosanct. Bush saw his administration as a sort of repudiation of failings of the Bill Clinton, who was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for his statements to prosecutors about Monica Lewinsky. [...]

In the end, the Bush decision not to pardon Libby came down to Bush's conviction that the rule of law must be respected. It would be interesting to know if the former President now agrees with Cheney's contention that it was "OK" for CIA interrogators to go beyond what the law allowed.

So, no one is above the law, except the people who are above the law, who should not be questioned because it is obvious that they are serving the greater good. Right.

Also yesterday: Cheney's daughter Liz foolishly decided to stick with the lie that waterboarding isn't torture (Christopher Hitchens had a few thousand words to say about that), while John McCain decided to break with the party line, while still hedging:

"I was radically opposed to (harsh interrogations)," he said. "I think it harmed us. I think torturing harmed us. I have a number of anecdotes that could substantiate that. And I think it harmed our image in the world, but for us now to go back, I think would be a serious mistake."

John Kerry was a bit more frank, saying on "This Week":

"Dick Cheney has shown through the years, frankly, a disrespect for the constitution for sharing of information to Congress and a [dis]respect for the law and I'm not surprised that he's upset about this."

But will these strong statements in opposition be enough to unseat the idea that torture is justifiable in a civil society?

Perhaps not.

The media has been slammed (by other members of the media) for cosigning much of Cheney's claims. There was a widely panned op-ed published in the New York Times by a writer/novelist who openly accuses U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of playing politics while saying that Holder's decision "serves to delegitimize our government itself." Andrew Sullivan dismissed the Fox News interview, writing:

"When it comes to Cheney, one of the most incompetent vice-presidents in the country's history, with a record of two grotesquely botched wars, war crimes and a crippling debt, Chris Wallace sounds like a teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers. "

In addition, a Washington Post puff piece on Saturday which made it seem like Khalid Sheik Mohammed was really happy to help us discover the inner secrets of terrorism (after a few rounds with the drills and waterboarding sessions) was eviscerated at the Politico, Salon, and the Daily Dish, with Andrew Sullivan coming off vacation to say:

What is interesting to me is the Washington Post's editorial and institutional position in favor of not calling waterboarding and sleep deprivation what they have always been called in every court of law and every society including the US in recent times: torture. They refuse to use the word "torture" for an act that is memorialized in Cambodia's museum of torture. That's how deeply the Washington Post is enmeshed in the pro-torture forces in Washington. The refusal to use this word is a clear, political act by the Post in defense of the Bush administration's torture and abuse policies. It places the Washington Post as an adjunct to the Bush-Cheney policy of torturing thousands of prisoners across every theater of war and across the globe.

However, in all the din and angry reactions the articles, interviews, and reactions brought bubbling to the surface, there is still one question that I have not heard answered. If Cheney's assertions are true, and there are those who believe that protecting the nation comes before any rule of law or constitutional ideal, what do these people think they are saving?

RAW DATA: Transcript of Cheney on 'FOX News Sunday' [Fox News]
Cheney Offers Sharp Defense of C.I.A. Interrogation Tactics [NY Times]
Bill Clinton and the Meaning of "Is" [Slate]
What is the Rule of Law? [University of Iowa]
Dick Cheney And The Rule Of Law [Swampland]
Cheney digs in [Politico]
Believe Me, It's Torture [Vanity Fair]
McCain says CIA torture probe 'a mistake' [UPI]
Kerry Slams Cheney on 'This Week' [ABC News]
The C.I.A. in Double Jeopardy [NY Times]
Chris Wallace, A Teenage Girl Interviewing The Jonas Brothers [The Daily Dish]
How a Detainee Became An Asset [Washington Post]
Post Story Blosters Cheney [Politico]
The Washington Post's Cheney-ite defense of torture [Salon]
The Washington Post's Support For Torture [The Daily Dish]

• Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum suggests that Barack Obama, as an example to "African-American males," not take Michelle out on any more fancy dates, but just head to a local bar, throw back a beer, and head home. [Salon]

• Sarah Palin is gearing up for a trip to (honest!) Auburn, New York to celebrate the birth of William Seward, who bought Alaska from those pesky Russians she keeps seeing from her back porch. [Newser]
• Newt Gingrich feels bad for calling Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist when he just meant to describe every thing she's ever said as racist. [Time]
• In unrelated news, 54 percent of Americans — some of whose votes Gingrich would need to win the Presidency in 2012 — think Sotomayor should be confirmed. Another 19 percent don't care about either Sotomayor or Newt. [LA Times]
• More depressingly, thanks to Dick Cheney, half of Americans think torture is justified. Why be an exception when we can just be as bad as every country, legal system, government and ideology we used to want not to emulate? [MSNBC]
• Both al Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden issued statements about how much Barack Obama sucks upon his arrival in Saudi Arabia earlier today. [UPI, Washington Post]
• Unlike his immediate predecessor, Obama has not held hands with anyone in the Middle East nation. [Washington Post]
• Obama, taking a page from John McCain's erstwhile health care plan, has said he's open to taxing employer-sponsored health insurance. [MSNBC]
• He nominated Republican Congressman John McHugh to be Secretary of the Army, apparently as part of his plan to isolate Republicans and make them seem even crazier. I doubt they need the help! [NY Times, Politico]
• And, with Tim Pawlenty announcing he won't seek a third term as governor of Minnesota, you have to wonder how far up Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's ass he plans to crawl after the Minnesota Supreme Court rules that Norm Coleman still isn't the Senator. [Talking Points Memo]

[Beverly Hills, May 27. Image via Getty]

A woman attends a demonstration on May 27, 2009 in front of the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, to protest US President Barack Obama's opposition to the release of photos documenting detainee abuse in US facilities during the war in Iraq. Obama is to make remarks at a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

• The Justice Department is asking a judge to dismiss the stupid lawsuit trying to prevent Hillary Clinton from serving as Secretary of State because she served in Congress. Clinton is the only former elected official in the Cabinet facing such a lawsuit. [Huffington Post]

• President Obama has voiced his own animatronic robot in Disney's Hall of Presidents; he also gave Disney his real measurements. People are calling the thing, naturally, "Robobama," even though "Robama" is a clearly superior nickname. [NY Times]
• The lifelike animated corpse of the GOP, otherwise known as "Dick Cheney," gave a dick speech about how waterboarding isn't torture and the country is less safe now that we stopped torturing people we think are terrorists into confession. [Washington Post]
• Obama disagrees, thinks Dick Cheney is a dick and that a Supermax prison can probably manage to keep a terrorist from escaping and getting to Iraq to attack our soldiers. [Huffington Post]
• Bush says he likes cleaning up dog shit better than being President. [MSNBC]
• John Kerry doesn't mind Nancy Pelosi accusing the CIA of misleading her, since they did it to him. [Huffington Post]
• The House isn't going to create a bipartisan panel to give Republicans more time on TV to attack Pelosi investigate whether or not the CIA lied to her. [MSNBC]
• Republican Congressman Paul Broun wants to make 2010 the Year of the Bible because 2010 is an election year and he needs to get re-elected despite doing stupid stuff like spending time trying to make 2010 the Year of the Bible. [Politico]
• The RNC thinks that having slavery enshrined in the Constitution was a-okay. Man, they're all really pissed at Michael Steele! [Media Matters]

• In news that will resonate with parents everywhere, Sasha and Malia Obama are apparently shirking their doggie duties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Says mom: "I'm still up at 5:15 a.m. taking my dog out." [People]

• Speaking of dog fights, despite the protestations of his colleagues, Supreme Court Justice David Souter - who was instrumental in preventing the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 1992 - is planning to retire at the end of the Court's current term, this June. Prepare for more wingnuttery, i.e. a highly entertaining confirmation battle. [NY Times]
• Three (female) names being bandied about as Souter's replacement: Sonia Sotomayor, Diane P. Wood, Elena Kagan. Oh, and these formidable ladies: Kathleen M. Sullivan, Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jennifer M. Granholm, Leah Ward Sears. [Washington Post]
• More details on the female contenders, here: [The Nation]
• Notre Dame will not be awarding its top honor during commencement this year: its intended recipient, law professor and anti-choicer Mary Ann Glendon, turned it down in protest over the decision to have President Obama speak to the university's graduates. [Time]
• Other Catholics are not so up in arms: according to a poll, only 25% oppose the university's decision to invite the President to speak. [US News]
• In less surprising survey results, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that churchgoers are more likely to support torturing terror suspects. There's a blasphemous joke about the Crucifixion to be made here, but I'm not the one to make it. [CNN]
• The truth about the United States' torture program continues to seep out: Two of its architects, psychologists and former military men Bruce Jensen and Jim Mitchell, boasted about being paid $1,000 a day to oversee the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques. [ABC News]
• Guess who's still not talking about the CIA's interrogation memos? [LA Times]
• No surprise here: "Now, the recent release of Justice Department memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques has given [Abu Ghraib guard Charles] Graner and other soldiers new reason to argue that they were made scapegoats for policies approved at high levels." [Washington Post]
• Get me a truth commission! Does Peggy Noonan's latest torturous WSJ column compare the country's chief executive to the unnamed romantic interest in a famous Roberta Flack/Fugees song? [WSJ]
• Michael "Heckuva Job" Brownie is criticizing the Obama Administration's response to the threat of swine flu, alleging that the threat level has been raised because the White House wants more "attention" and "legitimacy". A suggestion for Mr. Brown: Stop while you're ahead. Oh, and the WHO raises the threat level, not the White House. [US News]
• How long before Daily Show editors or some enterprising videographer makes a response to this absolutely insane "rebranding" video cooked up by the GOP? [Politico]

Programming note: Megan is ailing today, hence the different byline - and completely boring, straightforward take - on the items in the News at 10 post. My apologies.

• Barack Obama shot some hoops with the women of the NCAA champion Huskies and won. (Pic at left is from early April.) The jersey they gave him, though, was a bit too small. [The Swamp]

• He then had Rahm Emanuel rip a new asshole for the guy that approved the Air Force One photo op over New York City yesterday that scared the bejesus out of everyone. [ABC News, Politico]
• About two-thirds of Americans continue to think Obama's doing a good job, and another third are Republicans and tea-baggers. [Real Clear Politics]
• White people still think black people have it pretty good in America, and a lot of black people know that, just because we have an African-American President, it doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. [NY Times]
• In other poll news, most Americans don't want some big series of hearings on torture because they would rather our government focus on fixing the fucking economy. [CBS News]
• Republicans want to prove that the Democrats didn't care about it in 2002 any more than a lot of Americans do now. [Politico]
• Newt Gingrich wasn't a fan of torture before Republicans took the White House. Apparently, Newt's moral compass points in the direction of whatever gets him elected when it's not pointing in the direction of a new piece of ass. [Huffington Post]
• More people will continue to crap their pants because of pigs. [Time]
• Obama is there, though, to hold the nation's hair out of the toilet. [NY Times]
• Mostly because Republicans are still pissed that a Democratic nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn't plan to try to reverse Roe v. Wade and thus they don't want her confirmed. [Plum Line]
• Please take a minute to note that abortion politics weren't remotely part of the debate when a man was the nominee. Just sayin'.
• According to official talking points of wing-nuttery, Obama imported the piggie disease just to ram through the Sebelius nomination. [Washington Independent]
• Five members of Congress were arrested at the Sudanese embassy in a protest over Darfur because no one's paying attention to it anymore. [Politico]
• GM released its restructuring plan and it calls for the elimination of 21,000 jobs, 2,600 dealers, Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn and Saab. [LA Times]
• The universe of gun-owners — including Ducks Unlimited — is pissed at Rush Limbaugh for doing commercials for the Humane Society. Normally, I'd say not to piss off dudes with guns, but I'm sort of fine with Limbaugh pissing off dudes with guns. [Washington Times]

• Renowned male supremacist Larry Summers just couldn't keep his eyes open during a meeting with credit card company executives and Barack Obama yesterday afternoon. Shit's boring! [ThinkProgress]

• The purpose of the meeting, by the way, was to warn credit card companies to stop jacking up rates and adding unexpected fees to bills. But Larry Summers is rich, bitch, so what the fuck does he care? [LA Times]
• Obama still has a 56% approval rating, despite the public fuck-ups of many of the people working for him. [Real Clear Politics]
• He has, however, publicly rebuffed the idea of truth commissions for the Bushies, so that number might go down. [Washington Post]
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is providing him political cover by rejecting the idea, too. [Politico]
• Liz Cheney has decided that the definition of torture doesn't include anything we would do to our own people. [ThinkProgress]
• By the way, even Bush's FBI Director said that all that torture didn't stop a single terror plot. [Plum Line]
• When even Meghan McCain thinks Cheney should shut up and go away, he should probably take it under consideration. [Time]
• Sarah Palin's got a brand new legal defense fund to pay all her legal bills for the unethical shit she plans on continuing to do. [Wall Street Journal]
• Randi Rhodes, the "left-wing" talk show host that called Hillary Clinton a "big fucking whore" last year, is getting another shot at a radio show. [Huffington Post]
• Michael Steele is caving to right-wing pressure regarding Kathleen Sebelius' nomination and the fact that she's pro-choice. [Breitbart]
• Michelle Obama did a kiddie press conference yesterday, and said Bo the dog likes to nibble toes. I didn't know Dick Morris was dead, let alone that he'd been reincarnated! [ABC News]

• Who knew? New York Post editors spend their days fantasizing about Chelsea Clinton in a bikini. Apparently, looking good in one is the only reason she would ever exercise. [NY Post]

• Condi Rice signed off on torture pretty early on... as if her penchant for knee-high boots didn't give that one away. [Washington Post]
• Reporter and Jezebel-fave Spencer Ackerman discovered that the Bushies did such a good job as destroying Rice aide Phillip Zelikow's torture dissent memo that even Hillary Clinton's State Department associates can't find it. [Washington Independent, YouTube]
• Marcy Wheeler discovered that the intel that Dick Cheney was so proud of having tortured people to obtain amounted to exactly 10 pieces of intelligence, only one of which led to an arrest. [Huffington Post]
• Of , Hillary Clinton said, "I don't consider him a particularly reliable source of information." [Politico]
• One of Cheney's butt-boys got on MSNBC yesterday and announced that he "saw the face of terror" when visiting the (dark-skinned, Muslim) detainees at Gitmo who have never been tried or convicted. Apparently, the face of terror is specifically dark-skinned and Muslim — I guess someone should inform the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing! [TPM]
• Fox News' Sean Hannity offered to get waterboarded, which I really think America should take him up on even if he's not going to look anywhere as sexy in a wet T-shirt as Playboy reporter Mike Guy. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post]
• But lest you think Fox is completely pro-torture, anchor Shepard Smith won my heart yet again when he got on the air yesterday and said this:
  

  "We are America!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!"

  God, he's sexy when he's mad. [Huffington Post]

• Congress is going to hold hearings; too bad no one will pound his or her desk like Shepard. [MSNBC]
• Levi Johnston's got a lawyer to represent him as he tries to work out some sort of legal custody arrangement with Bristol Palin, even though he doesn't have any money to pay child support. Also, he started growing a terrible goatee that his far-too-invested sister needs to get him to shave off. [CNN]
• Hillary Clinton is mixing it up with Pakistan and Iran, and looking good doing it. [Washington Post, Newser]
• Nancy Pelosi knew ages ago that the NSA was wiretapping Jane Harman over her alleged quid pro quo for Israeli spies. [Politico]
• The Justice Department might end up dropping the case. [Washington Post]
• And Pelosi has got her hands full pushing for Vermont Senator Pat Leahy's Truth Commissions. It's funny that Congress has to pass legislation to get truth out of politicians! [Wall Street Journal]
• Hey, look! There's one profitable bank in the world now. [BBC]
• A bunch of General Electric investors are pissed at MSNBC for its liberal bent. I thought Republicans were all supposed to be free market and laissez faire and shit. When GE stock is trading at $11 a share, assholes, let's talk profit instead of politics, okay? [Matthew Yglesias]

• Meghan McCain thinks older Republicans are scared shitless at the thought of changing their position on same-sex marriage. She doesn't realize that it's because their boyfriends might start demanding it. [Huffington Post]

• American journalist Roxana Seberi has been jailed in Iran on charges of spying that even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad considers specious. [NY Times]
• That's slightly different than Congresswoman Jane Harman trying to get actual charges for actual spies dropped in exchange for lobbyists to work on getting her a Committee gavel. [CQ]
• Hey, y'all, apparently Rahm Emanuel needed some guy in Israel to remind him he's Jewish. Was there a picture snapped of him eating bacon? [Jerusalem Post]
• At the Summit of the Americas, there was no violence and Obama promised to pay attention to human rights abuses and not assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales. [NY Times]
• Republicans, naturally, are pissed. [Politico]
• Former CIA-chief and torture apologist Michael Hayden says that Obama, by releasing details of all the ways Hayden liked to torture people, Obama is putting America at risk. And, by America, he means "Michael Hayden." [CNN]
• He should be scared, because the UN is calling for his prosecution. Just kidding! [ThinkProgress]
• Rush Limbaugh says that John McCain is proof that torture works. He doesn't care that he just announced his support for re-making the American government in the image of North Vietnam. [ThinkProgress]
• Senator Claire McCaskill and lots of other people think it's unseemly to have a torture-advocate on the federal bench as a judge, and so they might try to impeach him. [ThinkProgress]
• There's a dude in the White House whose sole job it is to read letters and give 10 a day to Obama. [NY Times]
• Pat Robertson called the bureaucrats at DHS a bunch of closet cases. For one, Pat Robertson should know. For two, members of the party of Larry Craig should probably be careful of starting gay witch hunts. [ThinkProgress]

England, who served 521 days in prison for her role in the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, is now living in a trailer with her parents in rural West Virginia, and spends most of her time with her lawyer, Roy, a Gulf War veteran who seems proud of his client's infamous conduct. England is perhaps the best known face of the Abu Ghraib scandal, as photographs showing her dragging a prisoner by a leash came to best represent the horrors being committed at the prison; the fact that England was a woman only horrified people more, and as Brockes notes, she "wasn't the only woman soldier in the photographs - Sabrina Harman and Megan Ambuhl were both court martialled for their roles - but England was the most arresting looking, like a 14-year-old boy who shouldn't have been there in the first place. Her legal defence, that she was unduly influenced by Specialist Charles Graner, the father of her child and the only soldier still serving time for abuses at Abu Ghraib, was compounded outside the courtroom by assumptions about her background; that she came from a place where people didn't know better."

Back in her hometown, England is now having trouble finding work, due to her record as a felon and her notoriety. She claims that she's received both hate mail and fan mail, and recalls her time at Abu Ghraib with a type of weird fondness, a laughter that springs up at strange times. When Brockes asks England about any female prisoners at Abu Ghraib, England responds, while laughing:"At one point we had four. Oh my God, this one, she was crazy. They had to take her to the loony bin. We called her the wolf lady coz she had all this hair. She was screaming and whatever."

England becomes incredibly defensive when Brockes suggests that perhaps Megan Ambuhl, a fellow female soldier, was smart enough to stay out of the photographs: "She didn't plan that. It just happened. She wasn't clever. She's a pothead. She was just there. She wasn't in a lot of photos because she didn't want to be. She would just walk away," and later claims that she was coerced into taking the photos by Specialist Charles Graner (who also happens to be the father of her son), ""I didn't want them. But he was so persistent. Go on! Just for me! If you loved me, you'd do it. I'm like, gee, OK just take the damned picture."

Though Graner is still in prison for his role in the scandal, as Brockes notes, "it is England's rather than Graner's face that will be remembered. The photographer invites England to accompany him for photos, but she is reluctant; she lingers at the table and fidgets. Roy jokes, 'How about I find you a hood and some wires?' England laughs, mirthlessly. 'You know me too well.'"

England tells Brockes that she's still processing the events that took place at the prison: ""I mean, I had a lot of time to think about it after the trial and what I'd learned. Thinking back ... I don't want to say I matured more, but I realised that I was so naive and trusting. But what happens in war, happens. It just happened to be photographed and come out. Of course, a lot of people said if you guys had just shut up or killed them, there wouldn't have been any trouble. I could think of it like that, but ... I mean, I don't even know how to describe it. They were the enemy. I don't want to say they deserved what they got, but they ... um. They ... This is my problem. I can't think of words."

Perhaps the weirdest element of the interview is the bubble England and her lawyer, Roy, seem to live in. Despite (or, perhaps due to) the fact that she and her child have to live in a trailer with her parents, that she can't get a decent job, she seems to latch on to the Abu Ghraib days like some people latch on to high school or college memories; one gets the sense that it was the only time she felt like she was wanted or belonged somewhere, a horrible idea, considering that the bond these people shared was the torture of other human beings. Though she says she'll be on antidepressants for the rest of her life, one wonders if she has even begun to process her actions or how they affected others; for now, it seems, England's life revolves around a sequence of hiding, passing the blame, and waiting for the rest of the world to forget.

She's Home From Prison, But Lynndie England Can't Escape Abu Ghraib [The Guardian]

JASON: Good morning, sunshine.

MEGAN: Harrumph. My mother used to mock me in the mornings like that when I lived at home.

JASON: I'm sure your mother didn't see it as mocking you.

MEGAN: No, you haven't met my parents, mocking one another's foibles is part of our deal. We tend to talk a lot about my father's bathroom habits, too.

JASON: The whole Carpentier family coat-of-arms must be disturbing to look at!

MEGAN: Holidays are fun in my house. One year, after chili was consumed, we forced my father to fart outside, only it was so cold that when he went out there his asshole puckered up too tight to squeeze it out. We still tell that story with glee.

JASON: Wow. Now if that doesn't read like the lost verse of the Little Drummer Boy! "My asshole is frozen shut, pa-rump-pump-pump-pum!"

MEGAN: The real problem is finding a news story to tie to that, which I'm at a loss for, so I'm just going to embed "Jizz in My Pants" at this moment, which is what prompted all my scatological Christmas memories.

Which reminded me of my friend ****, who about 10 years ago around this time told me how he did that exact same thing over Thanksgiving break at a strip club in front of all his friends. And, finally, I can embed a news story. Indian authorities are making the Mumbai terrorist parade around in nothing but his undies to prevent him from killing himself. I'm assuming that, if he were like my friend, keeping him in his underwear might actually provoke suicide.

JASON: "Jizz In My Pants" will be the first single from INCREDIBAD, by Andy Samberg's old comedy group, The Lonely Island, who are the people behind the SNL Digital Shorts.

MEGAN: For whatever reason, I read "Lonely Island" as "Long Island," but that might be because that's from whence my quick-to-the-draw friend hails.

JASON: Look, I'm just glad that someone has a definition of "extreme lengths" that stops at "making him wear nothing but underwear" and doesn't involve the sort of things that make Mike Mukasey jizz in his pants. "I hook electrodes, to a brown man's balls and I JIZZ IN MY PANTS."

MEGAN: You know whom else I'm betting lets loose with a couple of teaspoons-full now and again? Michael Chertoff, when he's listening to illegal wiretap tapes. Also, a ton of liberals when Bush said "Welcome to my hanging" this weekend.

JASON: Oh, no doubt. Though Chertoff mostly spews graveyard dust out of his dessicated ghoul-cock. You know Chertoff is a guy that Baby Jesus hates the most. "Waaah. Living-dead abomination! Jizzing graveyeard dust!"

MEGAN: He is, without a doubt, the creepiest-looking guy in Washington. You'd think that he'd look less creepy in person, that maybe it's the TV lights or something. But, no. He really does look exactly that frightening.

JASON: Yeah. And you know, he's not scary-looking? Like we don't even get any sort of terrorist deterrence out of the fact that he's the creepiest fuck in the world. He'd actually be better off if he drew a mad face on a paper bag and wore it around Washington. I guess after Obama takes office it's back to the Jim Rose Sideshow with that guy!

MEGAN: Nah, his wife might get mad if he wore it outside of the bedroom.

JASON: Does he have a wife? I naturally assumed the man fucked mummies, like Dick Morris.

MEGAN: Looking like Chertoff does have it's advantages, though. Like, he always has a Halloween costume. I mean, who does a better Holocaust victim than Michael Chertoff, really?

JASON: OHHH!

MEGAN: Too soon?

JASON: No, no, this was inevitable! Of course, Janet Napolitano has all those qualities that Ed Rendell finds so fascinating.

MEGAN: Tits? Tell me Ed Rendell isn't a titty-fucker. Girls with big boobs recognize 'em a mile away.

JASON: He said: "Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it."

MEGAN: And, in context of titty-fucking, that statement becomes truly hilarious. If Ed Rendell had a bigger dick, I'd say she'd need a chin guard to prevent bruising. But he doesn't, so I won't. 19-20 hours, though, he'd' best buy stock in Astroglide.

JASON: It's important to point out, AGAIN, something I pointed out throughout the election. And that is that Ed Rendell is the dopiest dumbass in politics. I have no idea how this goober-fuck became Governor of Pennsylvania. It certainly doesn't speak well of Pennsylvanians, and I'm almost sad that Chris Matthews looks like he's gonna re-up at MSNBC, because the Pennsylvanians would have a good chance to prove just how inane they are by putting his dumb ass in the Senate.

MEGAN: Now, let's be fair. Rendell wouldn't even rank in the bottom 10 of dope-y Senators.

JASON: Well, he ranks well among Governors.

MEGAN: He might be number 11, sure, but I don't even think he's stellar enough at being a dumbfuck to rank that high in the Senate.

JASON: He's just such a side-splitting ass, and like Matthews, he's got all these pretensions of knowing what it's like to be working class.

MEGAN: Well, speaking of assholes who like to pretend they're down with the average Joe, Bill Jefferson finally lost re-election in Louisiana. To a Republican community organizer.

JASON: I feel like the Dems in Congress got lucky, there. Now they don't have to make excuses for why they never gave that shitheel Jefferson the mad shun when he was in office.

MEGAN: Nope, now they can focus on not talking about why they won't do anything about Corruption King Charlie Rangel, whose stupefying corruption in office makes Jefferson's bribes seem tame by comparison.

JASON: His legislative director was named one of The Hill's Fifty Most Beautiful People in 2008. They said she had "a mysterious kind of beauty - the kind that unfolds by the minute." I said, "But she works for Louisiana Representative William Jefferson, so hidden in those folds are thousands of dollars in bribes." Yeah, they like, uncover something new and shady about ol' Charlie everyday, don't they? He's become an embarrassment, too.

MEGAN: It's sad, actually, some of his staff were really, really good and they all got completely fucked by his bribe-schemes. Hell, even his colleagues he worked with on African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) saw their accomplishments tarnished by Jefferson's use of the act to gin up money for himself and his relatives.

JASON: Yep. For the 300,000 people applying to put the change in change.gov, I recommend you vet your prospective boss at least as thoroughly as they're vetting you.

MEGAN: Charlie Rangel is beyond embarrassing. You have the chairman of the committee in charge of taxation — including a push to close the tax gap, i.e., reduce cheating — cheating on his fucking taxes. Let alone keeping multi-million dollars in tax breaks afloat for big donors to his library, let alone hitting up every lobbyist in his office for said donations. Let alone using affordable housing units for his offices to avoid having to put his Harlem office in a less ritzy part of Harlem when there's a crisis in affordable housing in New York City.

JASON: I mean, take a walk through his Wikipedia page, and it's a long list of embarrassing offenses. He's probably got one of the safest seats in the goddamn world, though.

MEGAN: Charlie Rangel puts Dollar Bill Jefferson's penny-ante "pay me money and I'll introduce you to African dictators" scheme to shame. But, yeah, he's not going anywhere in his district. And I guarantee the "Ethics" Committee's "investigation" will result in a light tap on the wrist — the kind these very Democrats castigated them for when they did it to Tom DeLay — and they'll hope everyone forgets about it.

JASON: They need to find his fridge full of money.

MEGAN: Bitch, please. Charlie Rangel's probably got it in the floorboards of his house in the Dominican Republic. Too bad you can't ask his wife, since he halted their divorce so she couldn't testify.

JASON: True that. Look, this is why I tell people: send your incumbents home! This is what happens when people never lose their seats, ever. Give them a taste of that undeserved immortality...

MEGAN: Another thing to tell people: do not make Fran Drescher the Senator from New York.

JASON: OY. Whatever the opposite of jizzing in my pants is, I just did it.

MEGAN: Well, then, the thought of George Bush kissing Barbra Streisand can't make it any worse.

JASON: Yep. Basically, my left ball is now off on a merry adventure in my bowels.

MEGAN: Hopefully, it will re-emerge by the time your extremely cute wife gets home from work. Otherwise, please apologize to her from me. I don't try to ruin other women's sex lives.

JASON: Hey, he'll just re-emerge stronger.

MEGAN: Is it weird that I'm having a vision of a Lemmiwinks-like quest for your nut?

JASON: Yes. Yes it is.

MEGAN: Sorry. It's been that kind of morning. I just hope you don't cough it up.

JASON: I'm just going to remember touching Kate Beckinsale last week, and I'll be fine.

• Barack Obama and John McCain met this afternoon in which they talked about combating government waste and bitter partisanship and took some pretty, pretty pictures for us peons. [Washington Post]
• Vetting Bill Clinton's sketchy dealings in Central Asia and the donor list for his library might well cost Hillary Clinton her SecState job and prove that Obama was right to have been demanding those get released during the primaries. [Politico]
• But Obama is firmly against torture and keeping Guantanamo Bay open, so that's good at least. [Washington Independent]

• Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) introduced legislation today to make it illegal to sell the free Inauguration tickets (punishable by a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison) or to forge them. Yipes. Get them legal or watch it on TV, ladies. [CNN]
• Connecticut Senator Joe "Benedict Arnold" Lieberman is now expected to keep his chairmanship but lose his subcommittee chairmanship as his "punishment" for betraying the Democratic party. I guess we know about how hard Harry Reid intends to push back on, like, anything now that he's solidified power. [Huffington Post]
• With that news, former Senator John "The Inseminator" Edwards has decided to stage his own comeback. [Daily Beast]
• Alabama Senator Richard Shelby — who's been the GOP's point person on negging the auto bailout — scolded South Carolina GOP Senator Jim DeMint — who's been gunning for more power in the party — for saying the Republican losses this year were the fault of John McCain's betrayal of the (social) conservative brand of the GOP. Abortion and gay marriage, that's all the GOP should be against, totally. [CNN]
• By the way, New Gingrich says that we are all a part of a "a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it." Yeah, fuck us for being all like "separation of church and state" and trying to take advantage of "equal protection under the law" and exercising our First Amendment rights to assemble and petition the government and shit. What fascists we all are. [Media Matters]

ANA MARIE: I AM AWAKE!

MEGAN: Hooray! I am too. Are you appropriately grumpy about it?

ANA MARIE: Could be worse. We could be talking about BLOGGING AND POLITICS.

MEGAN: Like, oh my God, Ana, when are bloggers going to get ethics like real journalists?

ANA MARIE: As soon as we gain enough power to mislead a country into a stupid war.
The best thing about this election so far, I have to say, is not so much that the press has goaded itself into becoming more watchdog-y, but that they're doing the watchdogging with such petulant snarkiness. Almost like bloggers. From the NYT's editorial board blog yesterday:

What’s Spanish for ‘Lies’?
By The Editorial Board

It's "mentiras," I think, but I'm sure that's not the point!

MEGAN: It is way more than I thought, since I was too busy laughing at the thought of the New York Times editorial board getting so upset that John McCain was misleading voters. I guess it's a fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and we'll publish a number of glowing pieces about how Saddam has nukes kind of thing.

ANA MARIE: Almost like he was exaggerating the threats posed by Iraq or something!
Fool me three times and we'll write a snarky blog post! THAT WILL SHOW HIM.

MEGAN: What if all the newspapers became actually snarky? Like, what if they decided that the only way to compete with new media was to out-blog us? Would The Onion have to become an outlet of serious journalism? Would democracy as we know it die? (You did see that article about how cynicism is killing democracy...)

ANA MARIE: WHAT IF NICK DENTON RAN THE NYT? I think we would develop a shortage of first-hand journalism. But EVERYONE would know who Julia Allison is.

MEGAN: You don't need to leave your desk to know stuff, obviously! Wait, are there people who don't know about Julia Allison yet? I thought she was part of the citizenship exam by now.

ANA MARIE: She's actually being launched into space soon. So that she's, like, one of the first things aliens learn about us. You know: Beethoven, math... Julia Allison.

MEGAN: They'll like her better than math, that's for sure. Gawker certainly does.

ANA MARIE: There's some kind of segue between Julia and this about Tucker Bounds, but I'm still coffee-less, so I'll let you make it. They really need to stop sending the twelve-year-old intern out to the morning shows. Or cable shows, I mean. I think I was thinking "morning show" because he's getting his ass kicked, in all cases, by heavily rougued faux-next-girls! GIRLS!

MEGAN: Actually, the man just needs to, like, fucking prepare before he goes. Your candidate is out lying like he's Dick Cheney or something, you gotta put your big boy panties on just like Ari Fleischer did and take it. I think the real problem is that Tucker Bounds likes getting spanked by hot women.

ANA MARIE: YOU CAN TOTALLY TELL. He totally knows the shit the campaign is trying to pull and just enjoys being called on it. "TELL ME AGAIN HOW WE LIE, CAMPBELL. MAKE IT HURT."

MEGAN: "I know I've been naughty, Megyn. Tell me I've been naughty."

ANA MARIE: Oh, breaking!

Senator McCain, on a round of seven morning shows, says on CNBC’s Squawk Box that he favors a 9/11-commission-style body to look into the Wall Street meltdown: “Everybody’s at fault here – the regulatory agencies, who were clearly asleep at the stick … That’s why I think maybe we ought to have a 9/11 commission type thing, because this crisis is very serious and … certainly a threat to our economy. … I understand the economy. I was chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversights every part of our economy. I have a far, far longer record of addressing these issue than my opponent does. And I certainly don’t think we should raise taxes in these difficult times.”

MEGAN: Is oversight a verb?

ANA MARIE: Look, he was a POW, ok? He is allowed to verb anything.

MEGAN: Wait, John McCain was tortured? I didn't know that.

ANA MARIE: Do you think somewhere lying around the WH is a memo entitled, "Wall Street Determined to Strike Inside the US"?

MEGAN: So, by the way, the 9/11 Commission report only took a year to commission and two to write, which means McCain's financial crisis commission will issue its report on the current financial crisis in 2011, which is 2 years before McCain wants to start pulling troops out of Iraq but possibly a little late to have any effect on the deepening financial crisis. But, read his lips: No New Taxes.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of which, I actually wrote someone on the McCain campaign yesterday to ask if the candidate had finished Alan Greenspan's book by now.

MEGAN: And did you get a response that wasn't vetted 15 ways from Sunday?

ANA MARIE: Er, yes.

MEGAN: I wonder if Steve Schmidt has taken away everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: Maybe he's just installed some kind of filter. The answer I got was, basically, "Fuck off." It was a little nicer than that.

MEGAN: I think, then, that Steve Schmidt is controlling everyone's BlackBerries.

ANA MARIE: No, Steve would have actually written "Fuck off." He's from Jersey, you know, where that is a term of endearment.

MEGAN: Maybe that's the filter! He types "fuck off" and a computer somewhere translates it into something polite. I could totally use one of those, if they made it into one of those little boxes you use to talk after throat cancer surgery.

ANA MARIE: Speaking of cancer (I'm getting better at segues!): Bristol Palin's tanning bed.

MEGAN: I was just thinking, actually, that Todd looks equally suspiciously tan for the start of winter. But he works outside, if he wanted to submit to a tan line inspection to prove it's not from the bed, I'm happy to judge.

ANA MARIE: Wait, isn't he part Eskimo? Does that make your question racist?

MEGAN: He's like an eighth or something? I have been too busy noticing that he's cute and kind of silent which is how I too prefer the cute men.

ANA MARIE: And I think he's also controlling and a little insane. He's perfect for you!

MEGAN: Insane, definitely! I try to only date the mentally ill, it makes it so much easier to blame the break-ups on them. Controlling, well, that shit just annoys me in about 2 seconds. I dumped a guy once for questioning who I was talking to on the telephone.

ANA MARIE: So you probably wouldn't let him, say, write your state budget, huh?

MEGAN: I probably wouldn't let him know the balance in our joint checking account.

ANA MARIE: So here's a question: What are the gender politics of Todd being so up in his wife's business, as it were?

MEGAN: Well, metaphorically speaking, I am all for Todd being all up in his wife's business.

ANA MARIE: I am actually quite sure that they have hot Christian sex all the time.

MEGAN: But, other than that, it's a little weird on a state level. Especially because state budgets are really complex and stuff, and I don't recall Todd having a degree in public management or accounting. Or anything, really.

ANA MARIE: So when HRC got all up in Bill's (completely literal) business, that was ok... Because she was sharing expertise.

MEGAN: Well, only it wasn't, right? Because then she was a nagging, first-wifely harpy. At least that was the Republican talking point...

ANA MARIE: It was. And now the Dem talking point looks like it might be, "Todd is pulling all the strings, a bullying, first-dudely Machiavelli." From my friend Mike's admittedly amusing Salon piece, out last night:

"No one has accused Todd Palin of interfering in state business for his own personal benefit — instead, the situation has remained somewhat inscrutable, if not odd. According to local politicos and observers, he lurks around the capitol if he doesn't have anything better to do, which, since he works seasonal jobs in oil and fishing, is fairly often."

MEGAN: I love how he's "lurking." And that with 4 and now 5 kids at home, he doesn't have anything better to do.

ANA MARIE: But here's the thing: switch the genders — our standard mode of cultural critique this year, practically so mandatory that I'm thinking Chris and I will just go as each other for Halloween — and what do you think? "Sarah Palin, with 5 kids at home, has no right lurking around her husband's place of work like she has any idea what's going on."

MEGAN: I'm of two minds, as I am with everything else. On the one hand, free advice is good. Free decision-making, not so good.

ANA MARIE: I agree. It's just really awesome to see Rs having to grapple with this. I wrote a piece a couple of months ago about how, along with Woodstock and the moon landing, another major event McCain missed while in prison (yes, he was in a Vietnamese prison! true story!) was the women's movement, which is obviously where a lot of these questions were first framed on a national level. He's totally having to make up for lost time, in a way, but without any of the intellectual or historical work that went into the first round of discussions.

MEGAN: I think a lot of her politicians missed the women's movement in some pretty significant ways.

ANA MARIE: They weren't even really the "first" of course.
Well, yes. But do you get what I mean about how the R's new-found feminism is missing a lot of the context and thoughtfulness that, well, makes it a real argument rather than a talking point?

MEGAN: Well, I think the Republican party's newfound "feminism" is born of, oh, God, too early, what's the word that means you're taking advantage of the situation? Anyway, I think the Republican party hasn't found feminism.

ANA MARIE: You're right. Or, rather, they've just found the word "sexism."

MEGAN: They've found the power of the word sexism to attract a certain class of voters.

ANA MARIE: Well, weirdly, it's not! I mean, HRC supporters ARE NOT flocking to Palin

MEGAN: And they've discovered the sheer joy of Schadenfreude, watching all of this. No, they're not flocking if they are committed Dems, but I think plenty of Hillary supporters weren't committed Dems.

ANA MARIE: The sexism charge is mainly working as a proxy for the standard "media bias" charge. Which is as old as the hills, though not as old as John McCain.

MEGAN: I think the sexism charge is connecting hard with Republican women, bringing up old grievances with feminists and the feminist movement connected to their life choices. The idea that feminists disrespect women who stay home with the kids or are pro-life, those feelings.

ANA MARIE: So, really, they're just co-opting the words. We're not actually having a productive discussion.

MEGAN: It's politics! Productive discussions aren't allowed.

ANA MARIE: Which makes it a perfect time to segue back into Julia Allison!

MEGAN: Um, she called herself a journalist.

ANA MARIE: But, and this is important:

"I don't want people to think that I think I'm Woodward and Bernstein."

Which sort of makes me think she's actually Sarah Palin.

MEGAN: I believe journalism just died. Actually, I think she slunk into its hospital room, climbed on it's bed, slapped it around, smothered it with a pillow and then stabbed it 39 times for emphasis.

ANA MARIE: I was just thinking: I think Julia Allison had sex with journalism, THEN killed it. It's the best end journalism can hope for. It would be much worse to have sex with Woodward and Bernstein before dying.

11:16 ET: There is still a fuckload of balloons in the rafters. They're recycling songs now, and I still need to leave the secure area to get some goddamned liquor, so I'll let the delegates play with balloons while I try to find the bus to my party. I'll see you all in Crappy Hour tomorrow and promise to be appropriately hung over.

11:12 ET: Gold confetti streamers shoot at the crowd. I realize that the system dropped the post for a few seconds.

11:08 ET: Balloons and confetti continue dropping to "Barracuda."

11:07 ET: Balloon drop! Its the real moment everyone's been waiting for, except for the janitors that will have to clean those and the confetti up in a couple of hours.

11:04 ET: "Raising McCain" starts playing (again). Cindy comes out. They stand and wave. The out come Sarah and Todd Palin. Cindy walks to stand on the other side of John so he's next to Sarah Palin for the photo op and he puts his hands on Cindy's waist and moves her back again. She smiles embarrassed.

11:02 ET: He invites the crowd to fight with him and they stand up to cheer, and he talks through the cheers because prime time is over. I don't really know what he said because I couldn't here.

11:00 ET: He's not running for President because he thinks he was annointed by God or anything like Obama supposedly thinks. Please see time stamp 10:10 to recall the point where the narrator said that he was American's good fortune.

10:58 ET: Tortured so bad he broke, but Bob Kramer helped him get over it.

10:57 ET: Really Tortured, yo.

10:56 ET: Did you know John McCain was really tortured? And he served in Vietnam.

10:55 ET: John McCain's an imperfect servant.

10:53 ET: Did you know John McCain was tortured? "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Also, some people are shouting "zero, zero" about Obama. Laaame.

10:52 ET: America is great and perfect, we just need to change everything about it. You know, if he were a woman talking about the man she planned on marrying, I'd be warning them not to go through with it. Don't go through with it America!

10:50 ET: He hates war. He doesn't want other families to suffer the way his did, unless their kids are in Iraq right now, in which case, you know, it'll be ok, he'll totes pull out by 2013.

10:49 ET: Eeeeevil exists! John McCain knows how to fight it! Flashlight under the bed, for real.

10:48 ET: Iran, Russia and Georgia. Believe that Randy Scheunemann wrote this part since, um, he just ignored the part where Georgia crossed into non-Georgian territory first. Ahem.

10:46 ET: "It's time to show the world again how Americans lead." You can't really lead at the point of the gun, though, 'cause technically for it to work you have to be behind the other person.

10:45 ET: Drilling gets big cheers and they break out into "Drill, baby, drill!" People applaud new nuclear power plants.

10:43 ET: School choice is not a big applause line. Six people applaud charter schools. I think this issue isn't that exciting anymore.

10:40 ET: He's going to change the unemployment system. But I'm sure in a way that will be totes better for the unemployed.

10:39 ET: Obama's plan with make it so a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor. People boo. Show me a private insurance plan where a bureaucrat doesn't stand between me and my doctor, John McCain. Oh, wait, right, you've never had private health insurance. Never mind. But I'm sure having government bureaucrats doing it has been so very tough on you.

10:38 ET: They see nothing ironic in a minute later McCain saying that government shouldn't make your choices for you.

10:37 ET: Abortion mention!

10:36 ET: "[From random white people] to the Latina daughter of migrant workers, we're all God's children and we're all Americans." Except for maybe that Latina's parents.

10:36 ET: "The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics." I don't really know what that means.

10:33 ET: Shout out to "real" people.

10:32 ET: Did you know he was tortured?

10:31 ET: He was right about The Surge, and would rather have lost an election than the war, blah blah blah.

10:29 ET: He's been called a maverick. About 100 times tonight. It's because he doesn't work for the party, "it's because I work for you," he tells a room full of Republicans.

10:27 ET: Change is coming to Washington because Palin is coming to Washington. Or something.

10:24 ET: It's all about Sarah. People are seemingly more enthusiastic about her than McCain.

10:23 ET: Another protestor made it in and gets shouted down again. She's up in the stands on the other side of the stadium. McCain tells people "Please don't get distracted by the ground noise and the static. I'm going to talk about it some more because Americans want us to stop yelling at each other." People cheer. He starts up again, the yeller keeps yelling, and the cheers start up again.

10:21 ET: "We are dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Nice Gettysburg/Lincoln shout out. It's the first subtle reference of the night. Also, when he says that "we are going to win this elections," the cheers are legit loud.

10:20 ET: He loves his mama, and she's 96 years old. Also, he won't let down the supporters who stood by him when the odds were down. Ahem. Well, that's not that many people in this room, probably.

10:18 ET: Protester led away. John thinks Cindy's awesome and will make a great first lady.

10:17 ET: The sign got yanked out of his hands. The protestor shouts again. The crowd starts cheering to drown him out. John McCain starts up to be nice ato GWB, Laura, GHWB and Barbara. The protester guy is still there 3 minutes later.

10:15 ET: Cheers end. Now's a good time to point out that he's standing at a podium and I can see his ass. It's the first ass of the night. A protester begins yelling above my head. The crowd drowns him out. Republicans around him try to grab his sign. Security still not there a minute later.

10:14 ET: "U.S.A.! U.S.A!"

10:13 ET: Palin got much louder cheers last night, but John McCain is probably just a little deaf so he can't tell.

10:12 ET: Tortured in a Box. "When you live in a box, you spend your life trying to make sure that other people don't have to." Unless they are brown and from the Middle East. Then, fuck those guys. Torture away.

10:11 ET: Really, really tortured.

10:10 ET: "What a life, what a faith, what a family. What good fortune than America will choose this leader at this time." What good fortune that I didn't throw my coffee cup away so that I have something to vom in.

10:08 ET: No, really, he was tortured. Really, really tortured.

10:07 ET: Did you know John McCain was tortured a lot?

10:06 ET: Did you know John McCain was tortured?

10:06 ET: They show a picture of a young Roberta. Yowza. She was a total hottie!

10:04 ET: The movie starts! It's the "Dallas" music again. Who shot J.R.? Some people call John McCain an asshole, but his mama calls him a mama's boy. More Roberta, Steve Schmidt, you asshole.

10:02 ET: "Rock This Town" plays, I'm 90 percent certain it's the Brian Setzer version (again) but feel free to correct me in the comments. Nah, it's definitely Brian Setzer and not the original.

9:59 ET: Kool and The Gang "Celebrate" good times with the Republican convention. People shout "Whoo-hoo!" off-key.

9:56 ET: Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." Less inspired dancing than "Rock Around The Clock" got last night, but some people are catching the significance of the chorus and singing along "Go, Johnny, go, go!"

9:55 ET: Bye, Cindy Lou Who! We'll see you at the end of John's interminable speech...

9:55 ET: She's gonna protect our freedom, too! Just not our reproductive freedom.

9:52 ET: Cindy makes the audience applaud Earnestine from Kigali. Least authentic applause all night even though Earnestine seems awfully worth applauding — more so than insults about community organizers anyway.

9:50 ET: Another report leans over and asks, "So do you think that Bridget represents 10 percent of the diversity here tonight?" Cindy says "Viet-namn" again.

9:50 ET: You know, I always sort of wondered why she only kept Bridget. Was the other Bangladeshi girl not good enough? Okay the smirking way she mentioned Bridget made me cringe.

9:46 ET: Did you know John McCain was tortured? (Also... she called it "Viet-namn" instead of "Viet-nahm.")

9:45 ET: Hockey mom! Pistol packin' mother of 5! International experience? Pshaw. Bitch hunts meese.

9:44 ET: Shouts out Sarah Palin: "I've always thought it's a good idea to have a woman's hand on the wheel as well." What is "wheel" code for? Penis?

9:42 ET: She hit a home run by marrying John McCain. Really?

9:41 ET: She's kind of a stiff speaker. She would be better with a platform than a wireless mike, even though you'd see less of the suit.

9:36 ET: She sort of makes low-income America sound like a third world country. Also, her solution is to get government out of the way of people trying to help... like community organizers, perhaps?

9:35 ET: You gotta give Cindy props on that suit. She looks fucking excellent. They also got even his first kids on stage.

9:34 ET: The also skip the drug addiction part when showing her with the medical supplies and stuff.

9:32 ET: Cindy does good things! And had short hair! I liked short-haired Cindy, actually.

9:31 ET: The skip over the part where he was married when they met. Also, they call him "handsome." They showed pictures, and we in the snark section beg to differ.

9:30 ET: "Cindy Lou Hensley got all the attention of her father." Totes true — just ask her half sister.

9:28 ET: Cindy McCain's real middle name? Lou. I didn't know that when I titled this post! Also, Cindy's dad was shot down, like JOHN MCCAIN, only he wasn't tortured. I do believe they are eliding over her dad's first wife. Whoops.

MEGAN: Are you sad you aren't enjoying everything that Minnesota has to offer?

SPENCER: My knowledge of MPLS is limited to two things: the bands on Profane Existence and the account of the Hennepin County prison/detox system that I read about in The Night Of The Gun. One thing I wondered, though: did Joe Lieberman look worse on the closed-circuit feed you saw him on? Because he looked surprisingly good in HD.

MEGAN: I didn't see him on closed-circuit TV, I saw his ass from the media stands and his face on one of the really big screens. From what I could tell, he looked much less pale and tragic than normal, which I'm going to guess means he either secretly stood in line at Invesco or the GOP has better makeup artists than he normally uses. He sounded exactly the same. Like, he sounded like the imitation they did of him talking on the phone to Ron Klain in Recount.

SPENCER: On the drive to the Denver airport, me and some of the FDL dudes were PRAYING for Lieberman to get the VP nod so we could reprise Joe's greatest hits. But this guy defies parody. Do you remember the part where he called Obama an "eloquent young man"? Tell me that isn't racist euphemism.

MEGAN: It totally was, but I spent the whole time going, man, What Would Zell Miller Have Said. Zell knew how to bring a brand of GOP-inspiring crazy that Joementum will never be able to touch. And he wouldn't have gone with some mealy-mouthed encoded racial reference either. But that's so like Lieberman, to stick the shank so slowly in your back that you almost don't feel it.

SPENCER: I saw Hadassah sitting next to Cindy, and she probably knows something about not feeling it.

MEGAN: Please, let us vow here and now to work as many dick jokes as possible into today's Crappy Hour.

SPENCER: But did you notice how he used that line about how you'll always know where McCain stands? That was Bush's closing line against Kerry. If ever there was a milemarker on the road to Joe Lieberman's descent into embarrassing crank, it's that right there. Another question: who could possibly be inspired by that speech? Who even watched till the end? Who thought that the only man capable of following spit-hot-fire Fred Thompson was Joe Lieberman? Actually that's three questions, but you get the gist.

MEGAN: Why did we have to listen to all the various degrees of torture McCain underwent? To make us empathize more with him once we were tortured ourselves? I did think it really strange that they ended on Lieberman, though less so when I read this morning that Joe was really intended to be the nominee but everyone talked McCain out of it at the last minute.

SPENCER: That was the least self-aware moment of the convention. That crowd has spent four years cheering the torture of hundreds-if-not-thousands of detainees in the GWOT and bravely standing up for the constitutional principle that Bush can torture, like, whoever he wants. A convention with a sense of irony — or maybe just shame — would have soft-peddled that. I imagine that the 2020 nominating convention of the Neo-Baath Party will feature something similar

Some of Ahmed's fellow Abu Ghraib inmates are here tonight. Stand up! Stand up! We honor your service! Ya Iraq!
While they waterboarded Marwan at an undisclosed prison and asked him for names of the members of a terrorist group he didn't belong to, Marwan just recited the names of the Manchester United midfielders from 1970 on! (...and Bush had them all detained.)

MEGAN: Oh, God, yeah, I don't know if you could hear it on TV, but every time the crowd started chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" I cringed a little. The shouted it every time the surge came up. I was seated next to a German reporter and I cringed a little and hoped she'd been at the DNC because I didn't want that to be her impression of our jingoistic little nation.

SPENCER: It's like how Rick Davis said bluntly that "this election is not about issues." Well fucking obviously when your agenda has been decisively refuted by the cold hand of reality. All that's left is treacly videos about pledging allegiance to the flag and comparing "the angry left" to North Vietnamese torturers.

MEGAN: You should've seen the standing ovation that line got, by the way. Also, if you didn't see the Reagan tribute video, you really missed something. It was all about how much he loved his wife and shit. Also, he saved this country! I heard one reporter openly snort at that assertion. I love being in the press box sometimes. In Denver, everyone was super quiet (or maybe it was just the section I was in), but here people are sort of milling around and talking to one another and stuff. Possibly because they released the full texts of all the speeches relatively early.

SPENCER: Fucking liberal reporters. I wonder what would happen if the reanimated corpse of Ronald Reagan asked a room full of anti-gay Republicans for a blowjob. Which principle is the controlling one?

MEGAN: One blow job doesn't make you gay. Liking it makes you gay... Oh, wait, never mind.

SPENCER: OK I need to wrap this up fairly soon so I can go to Glover Park and beg the Afghan consulate for a same-day visa in order to make my flight tomorrow to Afghanistan.

MEGAN: I am so excited for you which is only slightly tinged with worry for my friend...

SPENCER: I'll be totally fine. Well, presuming my body armor arrives at my office later today. If not, then you can worry.

MEGAN: I will be keeping my fingers crossed for that then. I'm guessing it's not something I could pick up here at an Army-Navy story and overnight to you...

SPENCER: Yeah, if only. Also, do you know that I can't figure out how to make a satellite modem work? I've emailed some people and am a bit reassured, and I'll talk to the guy at Inmarsat customer service today, but Jesus I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I could make this alchemy happen. This shit is heavy as hell and I'll be at an elevation higher than Denver. And this time without alcohol.

MEGAN: Dude, I'll stockpile the bourbon for your triumphant return to Washington... and to Crappy Hour.

SPENCER: I now have something to live for.

• Not to in any way indicate that we have anything less than the utmost horror and offense for torture, but Lt. Col. Diane Beaver who once urged our armed forces to conduct more brutal interrogations at Gitmo, testified today before the Senate Armed Services Committee about her role in torturing various people. Even when the jokes aren't appropriate, we still have to make them. [Washington Independent]
• Really, it was the fault of this video, which you should not listen to at your office without earphones, that explores in great depth why the news media didn't cover the "John McCain called his wife a cunt" story. [Erica Saves the Day, Glamocracy]
• Also, studies show you're drinking more than you think you're drinking, so tip your bartender well! [LA Times]
• Oh, what you wanted real news? Fine. Check in with me after the jump.

• John McCain and George W Bush have more in common than just their Iraq, tax and environmental policies. They also both got ahead in life because they had powerful daddies. [NY Times, HuffPo]
• Obama says that Osama bin Laden is free because of the Republicans' focus on Iraq. This will likely be really unpopular among people that still believe that Saddam had WMDs and the Iraq War was necessary to stop him from nuking us.[HuffPo]
• Kansas anti-abortion protesters have decided that if they can't win hearts, minds or good legal cases, they'll just use a century-old law to harass an abortion provider. [NY Times]
• Their brothers- and sisters-in-ideological-fundie-arms are busy trying to get people not to enforce other laws though. Mostly the ones that require that California marry gay people. Assholes. [iReport]
• But there is some good stuff in the world and this country today, like the International Violence Against Women Act that Betty Makoni came here from Zimbabwe to lobby for. See? Not all lobbying is bad, people. [Washington Post]