Do We Value Prison More Than College? – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast

Terror Hearing Puts Lawmakers in Harsh Light – NYTimes.com. But at Thursday’s hearing, there was no single institution summoned to the hot seat. The few outside witnesses who appeared were eager to combat radical extremism, not defend it. Mostly, it was the committee itself that seemed to be on trial.

This we were told by the war criminals in the Bush administration were “the worst of the worst.” Some were. Most were nothing of the kind. As with the debt, the war, and the economy, we are still trying to emerge from the Bush-Cheney wreckage. The damage they did to their own country and the world will live on for the rest of our lives. [From The Stain Of Gitmo] torture

Peter King’s subversive fantasy | Wajahat Ali | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. Congressman Peter King, who has rationalised his past defence of IRA terrorism without a hint of self-awareness or irony, is now the self-appointed protector of America from future terrorist attacks by holding a congressional hearing on the “Extent of Radicalisation in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” King presiding over this hearing would be like asking Mel Gibson to chair an impartial session on Jewish American loyalties. King has in the past claimed there are “too many mosques” in America and that 85% of American…