Scott Shane in the NYT picks up Marcy’s story regarding KSM being waterboarded 183 times in one month

It’s time to get down to serious business and push for confirmation of Dawn Johnsen at OLC. My guess is that the GOP doesn’t have the votes to sustain a filibuster, meaning I don’t think they have the 60 votes to hold against cloture. Mainly because Bigmouth John Cornyn has been tight-lipped the last week or so. When his swagger deflates, that’s usually a sign of some ass-save-ery on his part. Perhaps a push from folks like Walter Dellinger on Cornyn’s and other GOP Senators’ past mouthiness unequivocally against filibusters has something to do with it?

• Bush’s great victory is the gift that keeps giving.
• 266 and 183.
• Alberto Holder?
• A wiretapping scandal?
• The Obama Doctrine, in a nutshell.
• Uh, John Ensign? Dude, get a grip.
• Columbine, 10 years later.

Let not the circle be broken

Austin’s Nakia And His Southern Cousins performing Water To Wine.

Ombudsman Andrew Alexander lets down serious Washington Post readers with an entire column devoted to the huge flap generated by the decision to drop “Judge Parker” from the print version of the funny papers. Yeah, I know, “Judge Parker.” This is the important issue your Ombudsman chose to tackle this week. Deep in Debbie Howell territory.

Not only did the CIA IG Report reveal that KSM had been waterboarded 183 times. But it did so as part of a larger discussion challenging the efficacy of such methods.

STEPHANOPOLOUS: But what bout those who devised the policies?

RAHM: He believes that they were — should not be prosecuted either. And it’s not the place that we go — as he said in that letter. I really recommend that people look at that whole statement. Not the letter, the statement. In that second paragraph: This is not a time for retribution. It’s a time for reflection. It’s not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back, and in a sense of anger and retribution. We have a lot to do to protect America. What people need to know, this practice and technique, we don’t use it any more. He banned it.

I’m very proud to help introduce the work of Kim Phillips-Fein to a wider audience. Way back in the mid-nineties in New York City, a bunch of us aspiring professional public intellectuals used to get together for drinks every couple of weeks. Kim was the brightest of the bunch. She demonstrated her exemplary intellectual citizenship in a searching and stylish series of articles and reviews in magazines like The Nation, The American Prospect, and In These Times.

1. “This was a Black Swan.”

This crisis was not a rare, unpredictable or random event. However, the people pushing this idea are not named Taleb. Taleb argues the reverse in his book: that rather than this being an improbable and unforseeable event, such as the discovery of anti-biotics, it was the result of systematic decisions:

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability.