A new poll of 50 battleground Congressional districts, conducted by Democracy Corps, finds Democrats likely to make solid gains in the 2012 election cycle

As part of a new investigative story, Truthout has published two documents written by the former psychologist for SERE, and later CIA contract interrogator for the Bush torture program, Bruce Jessen. Jessen’s notes describe an “exploitation” survival course that was “reverse-engineered” to provide a blueprint for the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration, which emphasized not just the ways to coercively interrogate an individual for intelligence purposes, but to “exploit” the detainee for a number of uses, including production of false confessions, recruitment of prisoners as U.S. spies, putting on show trials, and medical experimentation.

The Pentagon claims that an expansion of the no-fly zone will enable them to hand off control of the mission to coalition partners, and American sorties have shrunk in the past couple days. But that has not been enough for Congress, interestingly enough. I have maintained that Congress didn’t really want the responsibility to give authorization for the action in Libya, and that they were generally happy for the White House to take the burden. But they’re not acting like that.

The New York Times today has an interesting article about how Japanese nuclear plant regulators only a month before the quake extended the operating license for the destroyed Unit 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station, despite repeated safety warnings and utility lying. But the US system is subject to the same types of corruption.

Libya is just another recent reminder that almost no one in Washington actually cares about the deficit. The deficit is only used as an excuse to justify forcing regular Americans to sacrifice.

The embattled President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is creeping slowly toward the position of the protest movement. He has offered to step down next year, a shift from his initial offer of not seeking re-election in 2013. But the protesters don’t consider anything short of an immediate departure to be good enough. And Saleh, for the moment, isn’t interested in resigning, and has amped up the rhetoric over a potential coup.

Watch this shocking video of dozens of Virginia State riot police using far excessive force against peaceful protestors at Quantico Marine Base rallying for humane treatment of Bradley Manning. Starting around 7 minutes into the video, you can see and hear Ret. Col. Ann Wright screaming in pain as police are putting on handcuffs,. One officer in particular crushes Col. Wright with his riot shield. Daniel Ellsberg goes to the ground before he is picked up and arrested.

So, I just got back from a really awesome pro-war demonstration called “A Gathering of Eagles” where myself and thousands of liberals cheered on the President’s invasion of Libya, and I noticed something strange: there doesn’t seem to be much support on the right for this latest opportunity to bomb Arabs. For instance, Glenn “More [...]

Since it is unlikely Obama is going to achieve any new major accomplishments with a Republican House, or pass any improvements to health care that could make the law more popular, he is going to have the unenviable task of running for re-election with his biggest achievement unpopular and slowly leaking support.

A standard tactic of the last two Administrations has been to operate in secrecy and then accuse those who have been denied access and information of not having standing to sue over, in this case, wiretapping, because they don’t have evidence that they’ve been targeted. It’s a cynical technique, but a successful one, until now.