On the occasion of the release of a Human Rights Watch report on the subject of “extraordinary rendition” of prisoners to Jordan, for detention, interrogation, and torture, in the course of the “war on terror,” I thank Team TMV for letting me bring you this installment in my ongoing series of interviews with knowledgeable players in “the war on terror,” and particularly American detention policy. I am particularly privileged to bring you this interview with Joanne...

[Note to TMV readers: the following post is plagiarized from my own blog, "the talking dog".] While Senator Clinton fires wild shots that hit nothing (though the recoil seems to keep knocking her ever further off her game) about Senator Obama’s supposed “plagiarism” by using lines from Mass. Governor Deval Patrick it appears that the nation’s new “war on plagiarism” has claimed its first victim, ironically, unrelated to the Obama team at all, but none other than...

[I continue my series of interviews with some of the most interesting thinkers of our time with John Byrne Cooke. Mr. Cooke wrote the book on the subject of the history of reporting of America's wars from the Revolution to the so-called war on terror and how the press has interacted with government efforts aimed at suppressing or censoring it over the course of our history. The full interview follows below, after the jump, and is also cross-posted at the talking dog. As always, thanks to Joe and...

Yes! What a night for AARP! Two of its members, seventy-one year old John McCain, who as late as a few weeks ago, was written off as (politically) dead, and sixty-year old Hillary Clinton, who just yesterday was believed to be crushed to death under Omnibus Obama… have both emerged to win their respective parties’ primary in New Hampshire. On the Democratic side of the roster, Hillary edges out Obama around 39% to 37%, though CNN projects each will get 8 delegates, with Edwards out...

The results are in from the Iowa caucuses. On the Democratic side, it’s Obama (38%), Edwards (30%) and H. Clinton (29%), with Richardson and Biden in low single digits, and Dodd under 1% and withdrawing from the race. This was predicted as a close 3-way, and it was. It seems that, at least in lily-white Iowa, America’s First Black PresidentTM proved a liability for America’s First Woman PresidentTM, and may well help elect America’s actual first Black President (not to...

The 2004 election was a kind of prototype: candidates started realizing the relatively-young Internet’s potential for raising campaign funds — and to get votes. In Campaign 2008 candidates in both parties are nurturing weblogs (with conference calls to friendly sites), blog outreach activists (by hiring bloggers to pitch ideas and positions to other bloggers) and to raise funds (Rep. Ron Paul set a record). But will any of this truly make a REAL difference in the final vote count? Can...