•The Graham-Lieberman amendment to the supplemental war-spending bill didn’t make it into the final bill. The amendment would have given the president the power to cover up the torture photos that a court has demanded the government produce.
As Glenn Greenwald points out, the rationale for covering up the photos—they will inflame hostility against us—amounts to saying that the more horrible our actions, the more we’re entitled to keep them secret.
•The Supreme Court has decided not to tackle the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but Congress is working on a bill to change the rules.
•The Supreme Court has ruled that a judge should have recused himself from a case in which the defendant had previously spent $3 million on a campaign against the incumbent whose seat the judge then took.
•A really terrific article in Christian Science Monitor about a female Pakistani playwright using theater to challenge the country’s religious right.