You can't keep a good man down. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly shopping for a book deal -- and wants an advance of over $2 million to tell his story. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Why is Dick Cheney's daughter the only person he can find to go on TV to defend him?

This out from MSNBC ...

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on tonight's "Countdown" pledged to donate $10,000 to charity after disc jockey Erich "Mancow" Muller was waterboarded today on live radio, in an attempt to prove the technique was "not torture." After six seconds Muller said it was "absolutely torture" and that were he to be interrogated by the use of waterboarding he would "confess to anything." Olbermann promised to donate $10,000 to the charity Veterans of Valor, founded by Sgt. Klay South, who administered the waterboarding to Muller today, and withdrew his offer to Sean Hannity to make a donation to the charity of his choice if he followed through on his offer to undergo waterboarding.

If you haven't seen the Mancow waterboarding, you can see the full video here. It's powerful on a number of different levels.

The upshot is that the guy goes into it in cocky Hannity mode and then after maybe 5 or 6 seconds he struggles up and he's converted, claiming it's "absolutely torture", that he never realized it was that bad, etc.

Now, here's the thing. I'm genuinely surprised that he was was surprised that it was that bad. I'm not saying that for effect. Muller really seemed to think it was like getting dunked by your friend in a pool or something. Just factually, everyone who knows anything about this says that it's horrific and you pretty much instantly feel like you're drowning and at the edge of death. And it's a physiological response. So even if you've gone through it ten times and know rationally that you don't die, it doesn't matter. You're instantly put back into the mental space of drowning and being at the edge of death.

I must confess that when I see Hannity or the rest of these guys saying it's no big deal and it's not torture, I kind of figured they're playing semantic games and essentially saying 'I don't care what we do to evil Muslim terrorist bad guys.' Hang them from them toes, waterboard them, whatever, who cares? I don't agree with that. It's hideous. But I understand it. But here it turns out they're just completely ignorant, just haven't been paying attention. Just in the purest factual sense have no idea what they're talking about.

I know, I know ... why am I surprised?

(ed.note: When does Hannity get waterboarded? That may be waterboarding I can believe in.)

From TPM Reader B ...

First WTC the guy went back for the security deposit for the truck they blew up...McVeigh did everything short of driving into a police car fleeing the scene...Atta and the boys could only have achieved what they did with the most mind numbingly incompetent executive branch ever. The master plan?

I'll give you the Tylenol tamperer had some talent but that was a lone nut...In anything with multiple people there has been an extraordinary lack of competence...This was the screw up that helped let 9/11 happen - they were looking for the exotic hollywood terrorists taking over missile silos with Hollywood action figures

I MIGHT be able to give you the attempted take over in South Africa nuke facility was an "A-team" but those guys seemed clearly gov't backed...So can't really count em...

Not that I'm arguing the point these guys were not pathetic in the NY case - I'm just saying in history we've rarely had a terrorist in the field that wasn't.

It's always a balance when reporting out these kinds of cases. It's certainly true that you don't need to be a genius to kill a lot of people. I'm not sure I agree with all of B's examples. Whatever you can say about 9/11, it was ingenious in its conception and pretty well pulled off. But successful terrorist operations frequently have 'grunts' if not the planners who are garden variety morons. So, it's definitely true you don't have to be a genius to kill a lot of people.

That said, I don't think 'lack of competence' quite captures the Newburgh crew.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

As you can see in our news feature, we've got a run-down of the four guys who made up the Newburgh Four, the ones arrested Tuesday night for attempting to blow up a synagogue in Riverdale, New York.

I have a fascination with the ne'er-do-wells and grifters and mental patients and would-be tough guys who get picked up in these D-Team terrorist stings like this and the Liberty Eight case from a couple years ago. In any case, it's a fascinating read, so I strongly recommend it to you. But there's one thing that jumped out at me. The sting was put together by a Pakistani immigrant who got arrested back in 2002 for helping immigrants cheat on their drivers' tests. (Yes, there are several novels in this one.) And he's been working as government informant since then to stay out of the slammer. But here's the thing. This isn't this guy's first score.

A few years back he posed as a terrorist arms dealer and busted two guys from Albany, Mohammed Hossain and Yassin Aref. I don't think it necessarily means anything one way or another. But you'd think that once you'd pulled off your first major counter-terrorism sting, your usefulness as a CI would be sort of compromised and the feds would put you out to pasture. But apparently not.

Given the sophistication of these dudes, his target audience doesn't seem to be a really sharp bunch.

Former West Wing executive producer Lawrence O'Donnell and Liz Cheney squared off on Good Morning America this morning.

Late Update: One point: I don't have any objection to the cable nets carrying Cheney's speech yesterday live. He's still newsworthy, and the juxtaposition of his speech and Obama's was dramatic if not quite momentous. But the idea that there's now a debate in this country in which Obama and Cheney represent the two sides, as Chris Cuomo claims in the GMA segment, is simply wrong.

Those who subscribe to the Cheney view were marginalized even within the Bush Administration five years ago. They lost that debate. Obama, on the other hand, has taken, as should now be obvious, a much less forceful stance on these issues than many of his supporters had hoped. You might call it a more centrist position (though I'm resistant to that characterization for several reasons). But in any event, it's not necessarily representative of the progressive point of view. Cheney is an outlier. He doesn't represent "one side" of this debate. But if you frame it as a debate between Cheney's extreme position and Obama's very moderate position, you've suddenly dictated an outcome to this so-called debate that is considerably to the right of where the political center is right now on this issue.

TPM Reader BB, a "proud citizen of the Netherlands," says it's time the U.S. man up and stop NIMBYing the Gitmo detainees:

If you live outside of the US, or the US centric bubble. then the incredible stupidity of the this viewpoint is obvious.

Where does the World Court reside? It resides in the Hague in the Netherlands. the Netherlands has a population of 16 million (that are not allowed to bear arms or such).

The world courts deals with the worst of the worst, anything in Gitmo pails to what these folks have done.

Let's take those war criminals (of which dozens have been tried and sentenced) from the Balkan conflict as an example. Here is a group that still has lots of support (Serbs primarily) all across Europe. They are in cells in the Hague which is driving distance from their homeland. Not like some poor Afghan farmer totally divorced from his people, these people have strong support living with a few hours drive!! Almost nothing could stop them from attacking and trying to release there leaders (and heros), or at least taking revenge on the country they are incarcerated in. The REAL danger to this court pails to anything the perceived Gitmo people could possibly do.

Just look at the history of the Balkan conflict, its horrible geenocide and the people who did the killing, and then grab a map to see where the two countries lie, you will get the picture. Then do the same for the Afghan conflict ... Kinda makes you giggle.

But, do you hear the good people of the Netherlands on the streets demanding these criminals leave or cowering under their beds at night? No, it just might be that not all folks in the globe are NIMBY and some have the balls to realize that freedom comes at a price, and you never know when you will have to pay up in full.

Could it be that a small country in "old" Europe has more balls than the gun toting folk wingnuts of the US have?

The most pointed attack on President Obama in Dick Cheney's speech yesterday was his claim that after all is said and done Obama is still reserving to himself the right to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the future. We documented that this talking point is a riff off comments made by CIA Director Leon Panetta -- and that it's arguably stretching what Panetta actually said. But it should be noted that Chris Matthews gave David Axelrod a chance to rebut Cheney's claim, and Axelrod only danced around the question. Watch the video. We asked the White House yesterday to comment on Cheney's claim and got no response.

Zack Roth puts together the rap sheets on the Newburgh Four. Highlight: The guy in the group who claimed to have lived in Afghanistan when he was young was lying to boost his "terror cred."

GOP sends Newt on to Meet the Press to debate Dick Durbin.

GM headed toward a bankruptcy filing next week, closely supervised by the Obama Administration. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Porn star Stormy Daniels creates the Stormy Daniels Exploratory Committee as a first step to challenging Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) in next year's election.

Every day, as you know, we bring you The Day in a Hundred Seconds. Today, though, weaving together the day's two speeches, it's particularly inspired and brings together what the day was about. Take a look.

So have 14% of the released Gitmo detainees "returned to the battlefield" as Vice President Cheney and his daughter keep saying? Maybe not.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

To help get around GOP obstruction tactics, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has hired a speed reader for his committee staff. The new hire put on a demonstration for committee members today.

In more substantive House news, Democrats blocked the GOP's cynical ploy to launch a House investigation of Nancy Pelosi for charging that the CIA lied to her.

And so it goes.

Our compressed video highlights of Cheney's "Unpleasant Things" speech.

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Alerts for our top stories, previews of new projects and discussions with fellow TPMers and TPM staff.

The NRA on surviving the Obama era: "Prepare for the Storm."

It turns out the ringleader of the New York Four, the guys who got busted last night for attempting to bomb a synagogue in Riverdale, got stoned to prepare for the big event.

Short attention span? Pressed for time? We have the Obama speech whittled down to its essential highlights.

Check out photos of the Obama and Cheney speeches.

Setting aside the truly ludicrous idea that imprisoned terrorists are going to break out of prison like something out of an old Jimmy Cagney movie, I have heard from a number of readers who say we should be worried that these terrorist prisoners will spread their ideas within the prison system. If you imagine that these al Qaida dudes are going to be hanging around the prison yard, pumping iron and forming their own Islamist gang to go toe to toe with the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerrilla Family that might make some sense. But I don't think these folks are really familiar with how the federal supermax facilities work these days -- particularly the premier one in Florence, Colorado, where all the high profile baddies are. All these guys are in solitary lockdown at least 23 hours a day, when they're allowed into a special exercise cage. Then there's the 78 cell "control unit" for prisoners who are not allowed any contact with anyone. This article from the Post from a few years ago has more details.

Lawrence O'Donnell calls Cheney's speech the sleaziest presentation by a Veep since Spiro back in the day.

One of the weirdest moments in Vice President Cheney's speech was when he claimed that "President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate." We talked to various sources and no one even seemed to know what he was talking about since Obama and his CIA have explicitly ruled out the use of Cheney-era torture techniques.

As near as we can tell, Cheney bases this on an extremely flimsy statement made not by President Obama but by Sen. Kid Bond (R-MO).

It's always sort of an inherent difficult proposition to try to find the evidence that Cheney bases one of his claims on. But Zack Roth is doing his best over at TPMmuckraker in this post and this one.

Jacob Heilbrunn takes a look at the the Obama/Cheney mano a mano and ponders why Cheney is still getting a hearing for the same old discredited nonsense and bamboozlement. Did you notice, as Jacob points out, that Cheney tried yet again to float the Iraq/al Qaida canard?

If you missed the live version, here's Obama's National Archives speech in its entirety.

Some other guy, name of Cheney, gave a speech this morning, too.

It seems to be a new Cheneyite talking point that x% of those already released from Guantanamo have "returned to the battlefield." From the evidence I've seen the claim itself is questionable. But if it's true, how is this a point in favor of Cheney and the Bush administration?

Now Liz Cheney is explaining how she and her father and the rest in the administration thought that some rehabilitation program would be more effective. Are they for real about that?

Late Update: On the potential flimsiness of the underlying claims, see this.

We've got reaction to and analysis of the Obama speech at TPMDC and the Cheney speech at TPMmuckraker.

I particularly want to flag Zack's post noting that Cheney pulled out another reliable standby from the Bush years: a democratic society even debating the proper balance between national security and individual liberty is a boon to terrorists.

11:20 AM ... Cheney starts things off classy with some snide comments about Obama's speech length.

11:24 AM ... Transcript of Cheney's speech. So far basically 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 sort of echoes of Rudyism.

11:27 AM ... Still trying. Cheney hinting at the Iraq/al Qaida tie ... "We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

11:28 AM ... Cheney now seems to be arguing he was psychologically traumatized by the experience of watching the 9/11 attacks like the rest of us did.

11:30 AM ... Shorter Cheney: If you don't agree with my torture policies, you don't take 9/11 seriously.

11:31 AM ... Now discussing how New York Times put American lives in danger.

11:33 AM ... In many ways, it's obvious. But listening to Cheney, you get such a rich sense of the difference between these two men. Cheney, grizzly, paranoid and feeling and more than anything harshly partisan.

11:39 AM ... Calling torture 'torture' is libel.

11:42 AM ... I think the truest read on Cheney is his cutting and snide anger contrasted with his history of personal cowardice, ducking service in the Vietnam war he himself vociferously supported. Fear and anger are his defining emotions.

11:45 AM ... Wondering how long it took Bill Kristol to write this speech.

11:46 AM ... Looking forward to the usual special pleading and kid glove treatment Cheney gets from the Washington press corps.

11:01 AM ... Key passage ...

As our efforts to close Guantanamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. These issues are fodder for 30-second commercials and direct mail pieces that are designed to frighten. I get it. But if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes. And if we refuse to deal with these issues today, then I guarantee you that they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future. I have confidence that the American people are more interested in doing what is right to protect this country than in political posturing. I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution - so did each and every member of Congress. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe.

11:04 AM ... Not about Obama, but Republicans are now calling for a one-person Truth Commission, only about Pelosi.

11:09 AM ... From the prepared text ...

I will never hide the truth because it is uncomfortable. I will deal with Congress and the courts as co-equal branches of government. I will tell the American people what I know and don't know, and when I release something publicly or keep something secret, I will tell you why.

10:37 AM ... Obama's making a very powerful case for the familiar and powerful argument that setting aside our values to protect ourselves actually makes us less safe. Pulls in McCain, to make the point that both parties nominated candidates who opposed torture last year. Actually, takes a shot at journalists too for not doing their job in recent years.

10:40 AM ... Again, referencing McCain.

10:41 AM ... Here's the transcript of the speech, as prepared for delivery.

10:43 AM ... Obama: The existence of Guantanamo probably created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.

10::49 AM ... Making the pretty straightforward case that no terrorist is going to escape from one of our supermax facilities. Enlists Lindsey Graham to make the point. Sort of sad that the point needs to be made because the underlying claim is so inane.

10:54 AM ... Obama, from the prepared text, addressing claims he changed his position on military commissions ...

The second category of cases involves detainees who violate the laws of war and are best tried through Military Commissions. Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War. They are an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war. They allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence-gathering; for the safety and security of participants; and for the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot be effectively presented in federal Courts.

Now, some have suggested that this represents a reversal on my part. They are wrong. In 2006, I did strongly oppose legislation proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by the Congress because it failed to establish a legitimate legal framework, with the kind of meaningful due process and rights for the accused that could stand up on appeal. I did, however, support the use of military commissions to try detainees, provided there were several reforms. And those are the reforms that we are making.

Instead of using the flawed Commissions of the last seven years, my Administration is bringing our Commissions in line with the rule of law.

10:55 AM ... Just as a sidelight, there seems to be a thought out there that it's much better to find other countries to detain some of the Gitmo detainees. This is deeply silly. If these are people you really, really don't want escaping you won't send them to any other countries. You'll incarcerate them in US prisons. The record in other countries, particularly in the Middle East, is not good at all.

So those CIA documents that supposedly show that Nancy Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding also identify Porter Goss as a member of Congress at the time he was actually Director of the CIA.

Latest from Blago: Please compare me to FDR, TR and Truman.

Right-wingers seem to have lost interest in third-rate terror plots under the new regime.

Just to plan your morning, President Obama's speech will begin at 10:10 AM (watch live video here) and former Vice President Cheney's will begin at 10:45 AM (watch live video here). We'll be here live-blogging. Here's our preview.

Cheney still ain't popular but he's doing better than he was, a new CNN poll shows. Winning back Republicans? That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Vice President Cheney's crew is putting out advances this morning on today's speech at AEI, offering 'praise' for Obama when he deserves an answer when he leads the country in the wrong direction. Clearly there's going to be a lot of mano a mano razzmatazz that the media tries to gin up around this. But for those who want to remain among the lucid, let's not forget who the former vice president is.

This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it's Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.

This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure -- and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain't Shakespearean.

So as we see the big reporters trying to put him on some sort of equal footing with President Obama today, let's remember that the great majority of Americans see Dick Cheney, accurately, as a clown. And mockery isn't just the most effective but also the most morally apt response to the man.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

TPM Reader RW has some questions on that terror plot in New York ...

Reading about the plot to blow up NYC synagogues I'm struck by the similarity of the case to several others where misguided individuals decide to commit terrorist acts based on their interactions with FBI informants. Here, the informant provided the group with dummy 'bombs' which they dutifly planted, no doubt recorded on multiple FBI cameras. The whole terrorist 'act' is carried out simply for the benefit of prosecutors who would love to play an edited version in front of a jury.

The NYT's story quoted Bureau sources describing the plot as 'aspirational,' a word we've heard before with these cases. It is a trend I find troubling.

Setting aside the potential entrapment angle, is this what law enforcement is doing to protect us? Don't we have deep cover guys taking down plots from the terrorist's A-team? Is there a terrorist A-team? These are super-villians, no?

I'll reserve judgment on this one until we hear more. On the face of it this seems different than the notorious and frankly comical Liberty Six story. These were the goofballs who hung out in an abandoned warehouse down in Liberty City and, as Justin Rood then memorably put it, looked to their cult leader "for religious leadership, karate instruction and contracting work." As I, I think, somewhat memorably noted at the time, they were in such an early stage in their jihad that they hadn't even gotten around to converting to Islam.

At the time, the Liberty Six case was termed 'aspirational'. And frankly that was generous. They basically found these numskulls and perhaps because they offered to give them some clothes and shoes or whatever got them into a conversation about blowing up the Sears Tower. (By the way, these guys were recently convicted and sentenced to hard time.)

But this case in New York, at least based on initial reports, sounds very different. They had the suspects under surveillance. And FBI informants or agents sold them inoperative bombs. But the initial reports suggest that the suspects were arrested while actually planting bombs at a Synagogue. That sounds much more operational than aspirational to me.

Presumably, the defense will try to make an argument for entrapment. And it'll depend how disciplined the FBI was in running the case whether they have any luck with that. As to whether or not this is a good use of law enforcement time, it certainly seems like a pretty good idea to have these guys off the streets. And presumably it has some deterrent effect on other terrorist ragamuffins who might get pulled into one of these relatively half-baked but potentially plenty deadly plots.

As for whether law enforcement should be focusing on the A Team, as RW puts it, I'd like to think they can do both at the same time. Of course, if a significant amount of time is being spent ginning up impressionable but otherwise harmless people into buying fake bombs so they can be bagged in high-profile sting operations, that'd be a pretty questionable use of time. But I think we need to see more facts before we jump to that conclusion.

Late Update: Here's the criminal complaint in the case. It gives a very rough sense of the evidence the government has. These folks were, it seems, not big fans of Jews.

We mentioned last week the case of Charlie Millard, the Bush appointee who briefly ran the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation -- the government chartered company that insures many private pension plans. During his brief stint he put in place policies to move most of the Corporation's assets out of relatively safe bonds into stock, real estate and hedge funds. Four senators have already asked for a criminal probe into Millard's tenure. And today he took the fifth when called to testify.

Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) talks up the free colonoscopies at Gitmo as evidence of how good the detainees have it there.

If you haven't heard, four African-American Muslims were arrested this evening in New York City and charged with a plot to bomb a series of sites in city, including several synagogues. It appears that this is one of those cases where the group was under surveillance for a very long time and helped along in what turned out to be a bogus plot orchestrated by federal authorities.

To be clear, my phrasing isn't meant to suggest they were entrapped, only that the authorities had them under close tabs and the various munitions they were buying were duds supplied by informants and undercover agents.

A reader told us this evening that he'd been contacted by his congregation's rabbi and that their synagogue was apparently the first target of the group. According to this reader, the suspects had actually 'planted' four dummy bombs in front of the synagogue before being arrested. But I have not been able to confirm that last point.

Late Update: Here's the update from the Times City Room.

Latter Update: Confirmed. Just out from the Daily News ...

The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought was packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.

It's always seemed to me that prosecutors could have a field day looking at what executives at the big investment banks (and commercial banks) were doing as things started to fall apart in 2007 and 2008 -- cashing out their own holdings and finding chumps to buy stuff that was plummeting in value, even if many folks didn't realize it yet.

Seems like maybe Lehman is first up. From the Journal ...

The Justice Department has questioned several former executives at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as part of its criminal investigation into whether they sold supposedly safe, liquid securities to clients while knowing that the market for the securities was drying up.

Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn and lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks interviewed several former executives who ran Lehman's auction-rate-securities business, these people said.

...

The inquiry centers on whether Lehman employees defrauded customers as the market for these securities broke down in 2007. Authorities want to know if Lehman executives got these auction-rate securities off the firm's books and into client accounts at a time in which the securities were becoming hard to sell, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.

Authorities also want to know if executives knew the market was in trouble and sold their own personal holdings of auction-rate securities, which could constitute insider trading, according to the people.

Robert Reich: We've finally got industrial policy, but the worst kind.

From TPM Reader JB ...

In regards to the "controversy" of where to incarcerate Gitmo detainees, I can't help but think that we and our representation are missing out on the bigger picture. Congress and pundits are up in arms about the relocation of Gitmo detainees using the "not in my backyard" argument. Of course the public safety concerns of this argument are ridiculous. SuperMax in Colorado is as secure as any prison in the country. Do people really think that detainees are going to plot the greatest prison escape in American history and then rampage through sparsely populated Colorado with their prison-made shivs? Unlikely. But, I think there is a bigger point to all of this. I think as a country, we've been desensitized by the keyword "9-11". The Bush administration used this keyword for justification to every argument they made. Because of that, I think that the actual event of 9-11 has lost some significance. I can't believe that our representatives are fighting to keep detainees out of their state instead of fighting to have detainees relocated TO their state. If all goes to plan, we will release unjustly detained Gitmo detainees (a separate can of worms) and try detainees with legitimate US legal cases against them. In this case, we are seeking to domestically incarcerate Gitmo detainees with just legal cases against them. These charges accuse them of direct involvement in the planning or execution of 9-11 or deadly acts against our soldiers abroad. I fail to see how a representative would refuse this responsibility for their state. In the weeks and months after 9-11, would any representative have refused to incarcerate someone linked to the perpetration of 9-11? I, as a Coloradan would be proud for my state to undertake such a responsibility. Additionally, beyond the patriotic obligation, our representatives should be clamoring for the political capital gained from volunteering their state to house Gitmo detainees. On one hand, a representative could claim that they are promoting their state's commitment to the defense of the nation. On the other hand, a representative could claim that they are compromising to bring an end to Gitmo detention and mainstream the process for trying alleged terrorists. Appearing strong on defense while revitalizing the American commitment to the rule of law seems like a win-win situation for so many representatives facing re-election in a newly skewed political landscape.

The beginning of the letter just sent out from the DNC from President Obama ...

The chance to finally reform our nation's health care system is here. While Congress moves rapidly to produce a detailed plan, I have made it clear that real reform must uphold three core principles -- it must reduce costs, guarantee choice, and ensure quality care for every American.

As we know, challenging the status quo will not be easy. Its defenders will claim our goals are too big, that we should once again settle for half measures and empty talk. Left unanswered, these voices of doubt might yet again derail the comprehensive reform we so badly need. That's where you come in.

When our opponents spread fear and confusion about the changes we seek, your support for these core principles will show clarity and resolve. When the lobbyists for the status quo tell Congress to hold back, your personal story will give them the courage to press forward.

It feeds the recipient to this page at barackobama.com.

Here's how pathetically addicted I am to my Kindle. I got a review copy of Adrian Goldsworthy's new book How Rome Fell for free a month or so ago. But I still waited until it came out on Kindle; and then shelled out cash to buy it.

(Here's hoping that Kindle will spawn the invention of the Kindle review copy!)

Republican Rep. Steve Scalise (LA) raises specter of "Global Warming Gestapo".

A few others are chiming in on why we shouldn't let the banks write down their warrants (get another big taxpayer payday) and generally walk away from the mess. Here's Barry Ritholtz and here's David Min from CAP.

From TPM Reader MR ...

As Congressional Republicans make their childish complaints about the possibility of Guantanamo prisoners coming to the U.S. mainland, it's worth remembering why they were put there in the first place. It wasn't because they possess superpowers or that America doesn't know how to lock up dangerous people. It was solely so that they would be outside of the reach of the U.S. legal system.

GOP officially abandons plan to rename Democratic party as "socialist".

Sen. Levin (D-MI) open to building 'Gitmo North' in Michigan as source of new jobs in his depressed state.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Wow, Wolf Blitzer just told us how President Obama is on the ropes on his counter terror policies and has to steel himself for his big confrontation with DIck Cheney.

Here's the video.

Sen. Specter (D-PA) seems to be moving from a furtive moonwalk to a downright dash into the Democratic party. Now he's standing up for Speaker Pelosi and claiming the CIA has a problem telling the truth.

From TPM Reader SS ...

Aren't the folks saying "don't bring them to my state" implicitly saying "we don't trust the Federal Bureau of Prisons to keep us safe" But the BOP has a sterling track record with regards to guys like Ramzi Yousef, or John Gotti, or the Unabomber, or Manuel Noriega, and so forth.

Are they impugning our guys in uniform? (Correctional officers)

Shouldn't Obama or DOJ be standing up for them?

CNN and MSNBC will apparently broadcast former VP Cheney's torture speech live tomorrow.

The Democrats stripped funding out of the defense appropriations bill for the winding down and dismantlement of the Gitmo detention facility. And the background issue is the refusal to bring accused terrorists or possibly at some point convicted terrorists into the US for incarceration. And I'm hearing this senator or that one from this or that state, saying hey, don't bring any of these terrorists to Maine! or maybe, don't bring them to Arkansas or Kentucky or wherever.

But, c'mon, I'm assuming these guys aren't going to be deposited at the county jail in Baltimore or Baton Rouge. We've got an incredibly secure and incredibly hellish Super Max facility in Florence, Colorado. And it seems clear that that's where these guys would end up. (That's where Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, now resides, along with a bunch of other high-profile terrorists.) So can't we at least stop fools from Texas and Idaho from pretending these guys are coming to their state?

I feel like we need one of those long-voweled boxing announcers for this. AEI's Danielle Pletka has a post up on AEI's blog playing up the 'dueling speeches' meme for the speeches President Obama and former Vice President Cheney will be giving tomorrow.

As we noted a few days ago, tomorrow morning at AEI pulling together the themes and angles he's advanced in his recent series of media appearances into a global argument in favor of state-sponsored torture and indefinite confinement of detainees.

A short while ago the Senate voted overwhelming to block the funding Obama was seeking to close the detention facility at Gitmo.

At a presser afterwards, where Senate Republicans were touting how well detainees are treated there, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) reportedly argued that a detainee can even get a colonoscopy there. Hoping to find video of this important moment in Senate history. We'll keep you posted.

Republicans on the Hill have the audacity to warn that a government-run heath care plan would be like government's incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina.

At one level, scratch that, at many levels, it's great that a growing number of banks, even some big banks are ready to pay back their TARP money. That suggests the possibility that the price of the bailout may be much less than we originally thought and feared. So that's great. But why should we let the banks wriggle out of the terms of the loans?

Remember, the taxpayers took a huge, huge risks loaning hundreds of billions of dollars to banks, many of which were on the brink of failure -- frankly, many of them still may be, but that's another story. In exchange we got warrants -- rights to buy stock at certain price points -- that would give us a big upside if everything worked out well and the banks bounced back.

Now they want us to forget about the warrants or allow them to buy them back on the cheap, just pay the money back and be done with it. From my experience, that's not how banks deal with their customers or debtors, is it?

Obama is poised to sign a bill that would allow concealed weapons in national parks. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

It's sort of sad that it's come to this. But it seems RNC Chief Michael Steele may have pulled off a minor feat of leadership for his party.

As you know, the RNC was to meet tomorrow and vote on whether to rename the Democratic party the "Democrat Socialist Party" -- something Steele himself opposed and an apparent majority of RNC yahoos viewed as a key step on their party's path back to power.

Now, though, Steele seems to have engineered a switch in which the full rename (i.e., "Democrat Socialist Party") will give way to merely "condemn(ing) the Democrats' march to socialism" which, for reasons that, when I actually think about it, aren't exactly clear, makes the whole thing entirely different and defuses the controversy.

I generally think we're too quick to pull the trigger with charges of plagiarism. I haven't said anything about this because I really didn't think I had anything to add. Whatever the mechanics of how it happened, I never thought it was intentional. Dowd and the Times quickly corrected it, which I appreciated. And for me, that's pretty much the end of it.

Almost too painful to contemplate. Barney Frank goes head to head with Michelle Bachmann over Acorn.

I was out of the office and offline for most of the day at a graduation event. So I'm just coming on now. But for those of you following the Pelosi story, over at TPMmuckraker Zack Roth has a series of posts raising more and more questions about whether Nancy Pelosi was really told any of this stuff.

Sen. Harry Reid has announced that Ted Kennedy's brain cancer is in remission and that Kennedy will be back in the Senate after Memorial Day.

Greg Mitchell, an early and frequent author on the psychic toll of the war in Iraq on those who have fought it, laments how little attention the media have given the issue.

TPM Reader JR, on the senior Obama official's remark to the NYT that the hearsay rule is not "rooted in American values":

I suppose about 1,000 lawyers have already said this: Apparently the Obama administration doesn't believe that the Bill of Rights is rooted in American values. The confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment states that an accused has the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. That right includes the right to cross-examine them. You can't cross-examine hearsay testimony because the witness isn't there. That's why it's inadmissible. This isn't some technicality. It's the bedrock of the Anglo-American system of criminal justice. As the preeminent scholar of evidence, John Henry Wigmore, wrote 100 years ago, "cross-examination is the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth."

Getting Into the Legal Weeds Update: TPM Reader JU:

Your commentator re: hearsay and the Sixth Amendment is blowing it out of his backside. The hearsay admissibility rule has virtually nothing to do with the Sixth Amendment -- well, to be more precise, although the two are broadly based on the same concerns, they are completely independent of each other.

To make a long story short, hearsay is inadmissible because there generally is no way to probe the credibility of the speaker. If I hear someone say "so-and-so ran the red light," I am not allowed to testify as to that fact because the trier-of-fact cannot examine the speaker's motivations in saying it. Is he the best friend of one of the litigants who is attempting to plant "evidence" to help his buddy? We don't know. Does he harbor a secret grudge against the defendant? Again, we don't know. And without this information, there is no way to weigh his "evidence" against the other evidence in the case.

There are, however, many types of evidence that would otherwise be hearsay that are admissible because the circumstances and/or context point towards credibility. ...

The Sixth Amendment, however, is more concerned with the notion that "secret evidence" could be fabricated by the government in the absence of direct confrontation by the accused. It's more a matter of equity than of truthfulness.

Wishing I Hadn't Opened This Can of Worms Update: TPM Reader PM:

With all due respect to your reader JU, his understanding of the relationship between hearsay and the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment is badly outdated.

Decided in 2004, Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), held that federal and state rules of evidence designed to admit reliable hearsay did not provide adequate Sixth Amendment protections. Crawford now requires courts to ask not only whether the hearsay was reliable, but whether an objective person in the declarant's shoes would have expected his declaration to be used in a criminal investigation or prosecution. If the answer to the second question is yes, the Constitution requires cross-examination. That requirement is about to become clearer, and stronger, when the Supreme Court issues Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts later this summer.

From the sounds of it, the military tribunals would allow hearsay from other prisoners to be admissible against defendants. An objective person in the prisoners' position would undoubtedly know that his or her statements were to be used in a proceeding against the defendant. That is precisely the sort of evidence that the Sixth Amendment protects against.

A gimmick on the RNC's website -- the "ObamaCard" -- seems to be operating under the impression that Obama's term ends in January 2012.

It gets better (or worse). A former intelligence professional who has participated in congressional briefings tells TPMmuckraker that the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" or EITs -- which appears throughout those CIA documents about who in Congress was briefed starting in 2002 about which aspects of the Bush torture program -- didn't come in to use until later.*

It's a crucial point, our Zack Roth reports:

That's not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being "disingenuous," trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a "formal and mechanical program." In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn't until 2006 that -- amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration -- the EIT program was formalized, and the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were properly defined and given a name.

Panetta has offered to make available to Congress the underlying memos on which the documents he released were based. Obviously, we need to see those. But there's a whole lot more going on here. Nancy Pelosi is a collateral victim (although probably not an innocent one) of the CIA's effort to cover its aft, an effort that commenced years ago, well before Bush left office.

*Correction: Zack has done some more digging, and it appears the CIA commenced the use of the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" in 2004, not in 2006, as we originally reported. That's still after the earliest references in the memo to briefings on EITs in 2002, but it's important to be precise in these matters. We regret the error.

Becoming ever more clear why Leon Panetta wouldn't vouch for the accuracy of those CIA records purporting to show who in Congress was briefed about torture. Now Rep. David Obey has sent a letter to Panetta complaining that a staffer identified in the documents as being briefed was in fact denied access to the briefing.

Newt Gingrich sends cease and desist letter to pro-EFCA twitterer demanding that he stop using @newtgingrich in his twitters, which is just asking for a Twitter-based movement to use @newtgingrich in all twitters. Not that I'm advocating such a thing.

While Michael Steele has an op-ed today on the future of the Republican Party in which he says, "we're not looking back," and is giving a speech in which he said, "No more looking in the rearview mirror," House Minority Leader Eric Cantor's office confirms that Newt Gingrich is joining Cantor's effort to remake the GOP.

Eighteen months out from the next election, the majority leader's office brushes off a new poll out of Nevada showing Harry Reid's favorable-unfavorables at 38-50.

Since Michael Steele is declaring an end to the "era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past," I got to wondering which Republicans had been saying apologies and about what. But as Eric Kleefeld reminds me, Steele himself has been offering such heartfelt mea culpas as: "Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad."

And Michael Steele has felt enough pain. In a speech today, he will declare: "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over. It is done." That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Senior Obama Administration official tells the New York Times: "[T]he hearsay rule is not one of those things that is rooted in American values."

The context for the remark, which I'm not sure really matters, is the proposed reform of the military commissions system for detainees. It won't surprise you, after reading that remark, to learn that even after the proposed reform, much more hearsay will be admissible in commission proceedings than in federal court.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

From deep in The Politico beast, we find that Josh Gerstein's close reading acumen has not at all been impaired. Here's Gerstein looking closely this afternoon at that Leon Panetta statement from last Friday ...

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta didn't reject or deny House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegations that she was falsely briefed by the CIA about interrogations.

Look carefully at Panetta's statement from Friday, especially the verb tense used. "Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress." First, "let me be clear" always precedes an ambiguous statement. Without fail. Panetta isn't opining on past acts. He's referring to the current policy. He's also not saying it never happens or happened that someone lied to or misled Congress. He's saying the agency as a whole doesn't intend to.

Panetta was at his Monterey, Calif. think tank when this all happened in 2002 and 2003. He doesn't know if Pelosi was lied to. He also doesn't say he talked to the briefers and is convinced they're telling the truth. He just says the paper records say she was briefed about the techniques. We knew that already from agency statements. So he's adding his voice to the mix and sending a signal that he'll stand by his agency, but to say he sided with the briefers on the specifics is just wrong.

Again, I'm not saying Pelosi was lied to or even misled. It would seem rather brazen to do that. But Panetta's statement says less than people are claiming.

This is just right. This was certainly Panetta standing up for his Agency after Pelosi, the second person in line to the presidency, had taken a swipe. But to get the full significance of a document, even a simple memo, you need to look past the toplines to what the text actually says. And if you read Panetta closely he didn't take any position at all on the key question of whether Pelosi was right or not. It was a point lost on virtually everyone in town.

Slideshow: Behind the scenes at the Obama White House.

Actually, several.

Yglesias ...

You know, Newt Gingrich knows a lot about saying stupid things and being forced out of the job as Speaker. ... But one way or the other -- I mean, I wasn't in the room, you weren't in the room, Newt Gingrich wasn't in the room. None of us know exactly what happened there. But whatever it is Nancy Pelosi knew about, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, they knew more. And ultimately, when we have a thorough investigation of what happened, the bulk of the blame has to lie with the architects of the policy, not with a member of the opposition party.

Jacob Heilbrunn says the GOP needs its own 'Secret Speech' repudiating the Cheney Era.

Definitely read Jacob's very amusing and insightful piece.

One thing he mentions is this meeting and vote the RNC is holding on Wednesday to vote and decide whether to officially designate the Democratic party as "socialist." I'm glad they're focusing on the things that are going to bring their party back to power. I haven't seen a nugget that so perfectly typifies the current GOP's mix of ideological obscurantism and dingbat sloganeering as this. I mean, they're not even in the bubble. They're like in a bubble within the bubble. They can't even emerge into the bubble proper.

The new Gallup poll surveys the damage the Bush presidency has had on the Republican party. With the exception of frequent churchgoers and retired people, the GOP has lost support with every demographic group.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

If Gingrich says Pelosi must resign, how long can she survive?

Here's the transcript of the Obama-Netanyahu press availability at the White House.

Plus video highlights.

Let me get this straight. First on Fox and now -- according to a friend -- on MSNBC we're hearing on-going chatter about a potential 'coup' brewing against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And as near as I can tell it all stems from an article on Politico by John Feehery, Denny Hastert's former Press Secretary. Doesn't take much.

From the AP: "The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled."

Big story of the day on Fox News: the coming (read: hoped for) 'coup' against Nancy Pelosi. They're trying to compare now to the fall of Gingrich and Lott.

Wishful thinking based reporting brought to new heights, even for Fox.

We're listening to the brief press availability President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are holding between meetings in the White House. The audio for some reason why pretty poor, especially at the beginning. So not all of what was said was clear. We'll bring you more shortly.

Meanwhile, Jo-Ann Mort looks at whether Netanyahu might prove to be more flexible than his hawkish reputation suggests. My hopes for Netanyahu are very very low. But I'd love to be proved wrong. And there are some precedents.

Bob Reich says the Dems and the White House are caving in on health care reform.

As you can see, over the weekend we rolled out a new front page design here at TPM. First and foremost we'd like your feedback. Let us know what you think, how you like or don't like it and particularly whether you see any formatting problems. When you do a new design, you try it out on lots of different browsers. But there's nothing quite like a live test. So let us know if there's anything you see.

Next, a big thanks to TPM's Al Shaw, our Associate Publisher, who coded this redesign from the ground up over the last six weeks or so ago. We're really excited with the result.

Now, let me say a few things about the thinking behind the redesign. First, a lot of the changes won't be evident on the first look because a lot of this retooling was about creating more layout flexibility on the back-end. Rather than having one template with feature on the top and then two long columns beneath, the news editors can rearrange the layout depending on what the news of the day is -- a few big features for big news, a lot of smaller items, etc. So a lot of that you'll only see over the coming days and weeks.

Another change is that you'll see there's a news wire section on the right of the main news feature. We did this because we want you to be updated on all the big news when you come to TPM through the day, not just the main story that we're highlighting in the feature well. So we wanted more news headlines above the fold.

Then lower down on the page you'll see we've open a news Voices section where we're highlighting commentary pieces from TPMCafe and other venues around the web, in addition to the most recommended 'reader blogs'.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

Not too many people noticed. But yesterday on Meet the Press, the always on-message Michael Steele managed to stumble his way into endorsing a Bush/torture Truth Commission. He even said a lot of other Republicans are calling for one too.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), after flirting with secession last month is now saying he's a federal man forever. Actually, he's saying, not very persuasively, that he was never in favor of secession at all.

Well, actually the public is evenly-divided on whether Pelosi was misled or not. And that's from a Rasmussen poll. So, well ...

It was a Sunday showdown on Meet the Press as Democratic and Republican National Committee Chairmen Tim Kaine and Michael Steele crossed swords on Supreme Court nominees, Pelosi vs. the CIA, and exactly who the GOP is willing to admit into its party ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Bibi and Barack go face-to-face at the White House this morning. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Don't miss Bernie Avishai's post on rising levels of disaffection and alienation among Israeli Arabs. It's a striking decline over just one year.

President Obama will deliver the Notre Dame commencement speech today, and receive an honorary degree. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Sunday Roundup.

No doubt, the big story starting off the week. In GQ, Robert Draper does a first look back at Don Rumsfeld's tenure at the DOD, with a focus on internal briefing documents which wrapped the day's military events out of Iraq with smoteful biblical quotations about the righteous conquering the wicked and the infidel.

Here's the slideshow.

Bernard Avishai on the many reasons to see Bibi Netanyahu for exactly what he is.