WaPo's Colbert King (Yes, I know there is a certain "who?" quality to this post) demonstrates the Beltway still can't get over it. What a pathetic column.

Speaking for me only

The shameless Stuart Taylor, seeing that he positioned himself on the Extreme Right when he wrote two weeks ago in Newsweek that President Obama would need to do "What Cheney Did", now claims Obama is doing everything he asked. First, let's remember what Taylor wants you to forget - his demand that Obama 'be like Dick':

The flaw of the Bush-Cheney administration may have been less in what it did than in the way it did it—flaunting executive power, ignoring Congress, showing scorn for anyone who waved the banner of civil liberties. Arguably, there has been an overreaction to the alleged arrogance and heedlessness of Bush and Cheney—especially Cheney, who almost seemed to take a grim satisfaction in his Darth Vader-esque image.

[MORE . . .]

Fred Hiatt, Editorial page editor, The Washington Post

Pilloried on the left for his non-Manichean support of the war in Iraq, his moderate and pragmatic editorial column is likely to be the one most closely followed by the Obama administration.

The entire list is, as these lists always are, mostly silly. But Fred Hiatt on the list pretty much sinks the entire operation.

Speaking for me only

Digby on the Beltway torture lobby:

[H]ere's Town Crier Chuck Todd reassuring us all that these new executive orders won't allow the terrorists to kill us all in our beds:

Todd: There are still some loopholes. Those who are worried that somehow there isn't going to be a way to get intelligence out of them [. . .] Now the administration says this does not mean they will invite new methods of interrogation back into the fold, but like I said Andrea, you could go through here with a fine tooth comb and could find plenty of loopholes that would allow certain things to happen.

Now, it's hard to make sense out of that, and I don't know specifically what loopholes he's talking about, but it's clear that Chuck Todd is seeking to reassure everyone that some kind of torture will be allowed if it's really necessary. (Boy that's a relief, huh?)

You see the Beltway's outrage here will be if torture is halted. More . . .

Via Balloon Juice, in a WaPo chat today, Ruth Marcus wrote:

[Q]: But many of us do not want criminal prosecutions which would be almost impossible to achieve since most of the evidence (e-mails, et al) has been “lost.” We simply want the facts about torture, illegal spying, habeas, etc. made public so the next time a President seeks to break the law, he will think twice.

Ruth Marcus: That’s a different question. I’m more agnostic on investigation in a non criminal sense. What I’d like to know is, What needs investigating that has not already been investigated? What information that could reasonably be made public has not already emerged? But do you really think the prospect of investigation would have deterred Bush? Didn’t seem so.

More . . .

The Presidential Pledge

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher got their star friends to participate in this video, The Presidential Pledge, urging everyone to embrace public service, a key point of the Obama Administration.

Will it work? I don't know, but it's a nice effort.

President Barack Obama counts down his top ten songs on his iPod:

No. 10: will.i.am, 'Yes We Can'

No. 9: U2, 'City of Blinding Lights'
No. 8: Aretha Franklin, 'Think'
No. 7: Frank Sinatra, 'You'd Be So Easy to Love'
No. 6: Kanye West, 'Touch the Sky'
No. 5: Nina Simone, 'Sinnerman'
No. 4: Rolling Stones, 'Gimme Shelter'
No. 3: Bruce Springsteen, 'I'm On Fire'
No. 2: Marvin Gaye, 'What's Going On'
No. 1: The Fugees, 'Ready or Not'

Soon to be ex-Vice President (how good it feels to write that) Dick Cheney will attend Barack Obama's inauguration in a wheelchair. He injured his back moving boxes into his new home.

I've read a lot of tweets on tonight's parties. Sounds like a lot of long lines, cold weather and traffic. On the other hand, everyone is genuinely enjoying their spot in the front row of history.

Here's an oldie but a goodie: the first time Chevy Chase imitated Gerald Ford falling down to open Saturday Night Live.

This is an open thread.

Glenn Greenwald discussed this yesterday, but today's NYTimes story on the FISC appellate court's ruling on the Protect America Act demonstrates that even on the second day - even two of the better reporters on the best newspaper in the country are incapable of getting the story right. Indeed, perhaps in reaction to criticism leveled at one of them yesterday, the reporters seem to have gone out of their way to find quotables who support their erroneous reporting of the subject:

“It provides a very good result; it reaffirms the president’s right to conduct warrantless searches,” said David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who has served in Republican administrations.

Of course this is not what the decision did. The decision affirmed that the Congress was not barred by the Fourth Amendment from passing laws that authorize the President to engage in:

Via Yglesias and one of his commenters:

BARNICLE: [S]omeone ought to tell Governor Palin that there’s a distinction between blogging and what she refers to as journalism. Blogging . . . I would say 95%; maybe 99% of blogging is basically therapy for the blogger.

True enough. At least it is not this:

Andrew Sullivan is keeping mum about his meeting with the president-elect but he couldn't resist a little swipe at Paul Krugman.

Obama's post-partisanism, Sullivan writes is a "challenge...as real for a Krugman as for a Kristol." Please.

Bill Kristol is a shallow, error-prone propagandist behind just about everything awful in our politics, from the Iraq invasion to Sarah Palin. Krugman, conversely, is a Nobel Prize winning economist who has been pretty prescient on everything from the real estate crash to the comeback of Keynesian economics. [More...]

The Newsweek article I have been focusing on this week also makes some assertions regarding the import of last year's Boumediene Gitmo habeas decision. Newsweek asserts that:

The Supreme Court ruled last June, in a case involving some Gitmo prisoners, that U.S. courts should review the cases of detainees who deny being enemy combatants.Does that mean summoning military commanders away from the battlefield to testify? In a case in 1950, Justice Robert Jackson wrote that it would be "difficult to devise a more effective fettering" of a field commander than to allow the very enemy he is trying to defeat to cause him to be called home to defend his actions in court. Obama might do well to heed Justice Jackson's words as he referees the debates that pop up in his own administration.

Does Boumediene require that "enemy combatants" held overseas who deny their status be granted a habeas proceeding in the US? Not exactly. I'll explain on the flip.