Who’s to blame for the fact that the CIA set up secret sites and used rectal feeding as a way of getting information from the alleged bad guys? As we now know, not all the alleged bad guys were actually bad guys. And it seems that torture, despite what we’ve been told, didn’t actually work. But whose fault is that we went down that path in the first place? Well, it depends who you ask.
Adam Serwer writes for BuzzFeed Ideas that the Senate torture report puts far too much blame on the CIA and far too little on our political leaders.
Jedediah Purdy writes in the Daily Beast that at least some of the blame has to go to the pro-torture media cheerleaders.
Adam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker on the obvious answer — that it was our fault.
If you’re still curious about whom to blame, don’t ask a presidential candidate. For the most part, they’re not saying anything. Via the New York Times.
It looks like there will be no government shutdown. But the cost for that — in the $1 trillion spending bill — is far greater than you might have guessed. Via the Brennan Center.
Elizabeth Warren calls the new spending bill “the worst of government for the rich and powerful.” Via the Washington Post.
Thomas Edsall asks a question Democrats don’t want to hear: Have Democrats failed the white working class? In asking the question, he pretty much provides the answer. Via the New York Times.
Columbia Journalism Review on Phil Anschutz and the chance for a new Rocky Mountain News.
[Photo by Justin Norman.]
