Morning Wrap

Democratic Roadblocks: President-elect Barack Obama's economic recovery plan ran into complaints from Senate Democrats yesterday who said it does not go far enough to create jobs and rebuild the nation’s energy infrastructure, The New York Times reports. The complaints suggest that the plan will not be passed as quickly as Obama had hoped.

Checkmated: When he was arrested on suspicion of orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme, Bernard Madoff had about 100 checks totaling some $170 million ready to send to family, friends and employees sitting in his desk, The New York Law Journal reports via Law.com. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Litt told Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis that the checks were further proof the disgraced financier was likely to dissipate assets if he is allowed to remain free on bail.

Stepping Around the Senate: John Brennan will be President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for his top adviser on counterterrorism, The Washington Post reports. Obama's decision comes only six weeks after Brennan was forced to pull out of contention for the directorship of the CIA because of fears that his statements supporting some controversial interrogation techniques would have complicated his confirmation.

Clemency Controversy: Eric Holder Jr. pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, the Los Angeles Times reports. President Clinton's decision to commute prison terms, which was widely unpopular in the law enforcement community, caused Holder to be called before Congress to explain his role but declined to answer numerous questions from angry lawmakers demanding to know why the Justice Department had not sided with the FBI, federal prosecutors and other law enforcement officials.

Comments

[Ken]

"Controversial interrogation techniques" obscures the truth: torture. John Brennan's comments are antithetical to this nation as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions.

I would like to point to Glenn Greenwald's comment of 11/19/08:

"John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity."

Mr. Greenwald finds this News Hour interview with Mr. Brennan, on extraordinary rendition- kidnapping for the purpose of circumventing U.S. laws against torture:

"JOHN BRENNAN: Yes. The rendition is the practice or the process of rendering somebody from one place to another place. It is moving them and the U.S. Government will frequently facilitate that movement from one country to another. . . .

Also I think it's rather arrogant to think we're the only country that respects human rights. I think that we have a lot of assurances from these countries that we hand over terrorists to that they will, in fact, respect human rights.

And there are different ways to gain those assurances. But also let's say an individual goes to Egypt because they're an Egyptian citizen and the Egyptians then have a longer history in terms of dealing with them, and they have family members and others that they can bring in, in fact, to be part of the whole interrogation process."

It is not a matter of "controversial" but a matter of fact that Mr. Brennan stands against our nation's laws on torture, on illegal domestic wiretapping, and on kidnapping of foreign nationals for the purpose of utilizing torture to extract information.