New Torture Memo Shields Interrogators
Spencer Ackerman reports for The Washington Independent: "One of the most important building blocks in the Bush administration's apparatus of torture became public today. An Aug. 1, 2002 memorandum from the Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency instructed the agency's interrogators on specific interrogation techniques for use on Al Qaeda detainees in its custody. Most of the 17-page memo is blacked out and unreadable. But at least one of those techniques is waterboarding, the process of pouring water into the mouth and nostrils of a detainee under restraint until drowning occurs."
For the complete story, click here.

The Company We Keep
Michael Winship, writes for Truthout: "You will know us by the company we keep. The burners of witches and the medieval masters of thumbscrews and Iron Maidens, the interrogators of the Spanish Inquisition, the North Vietnamese soldiers who beat John McCain and his fellow American prisoners of war into false confessions. We have joined their ranks."
To read the complete commentary, click here.

Impeachment Hearings are the Appropriate and Necessary Next Step
John Nichols writes in The Nation about Friday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, "As it happened, impeachment was mentioned dozens of times during the hearing, often in significant detail and frequently as a necessary response to lawless actions of the president and vice president."
To read Nichols complete blog entry, click here.

Three States Accused of Illegally Purging Voter Lists
Steven Rosenfeld, writes for AlterNet: "Election officials in a handful of states appear to be ignoring the federal law dictating the way registered voters may be purged from voter rolls, civil rights attorneys say."
For the whole story, click here.

The Shock Jock Racket
Rory O'Connor writes about Shock Jock Michael Savage: "Angry citizen reaction to the latest cynical, cyclical outpouring of hateful speech over the public radio airwaves – top-rated talk show host Michael Savage’s despicable attack on autistic children as “brats, morons and idiots” – has once again injected America’s talk radio problem back into the mainstream news cycle."
To the complete commentary, click here.

The Media and McCain
Jamison Foser writes in the weekly Media Matters newsletter: "Even while carrying McCain's water, media worry they aren't doing enough for him. John McCain complaining about media coverage is a little like an oil company complaining about profit margins: hard to believe, and even harder to feel much sympathy. This is, after all, a politician who has referred to the press as his "base," and a politician about whom MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has said 'every last one of them [reporters] would move to Massachusetts and marry John McCain if they could.' As Eric Alterman and George Zornick recently explained in The Nation, 'no candidate since John F. Kennedy, and perhaps none since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, has enjoyed such cozy relations with the press.'"
For Foser's complete commentary, click here.

Broadcasters Dole Out Political Access
Bill Mann of the San Jose Mercury News writes in his opinion column that broadcasters -- which are handed their licenses to control the public airwaves for free -- hold our electoral process captive, doling out airtime while sucking up most of the political money spent in each election cycle. But you won't see stories about it on their newscasts.
For the complete column, click here.