Is Dick Cheney deranged?

I am not a psychiatrist but I am not being facetious when I pose this question. It is quite incredible to watch Dick Cheney defend the torture that he and George W. Bush authorized and encouraged and to see someone who is dead wrong and yet be dead certain that he is dead right. His defenses of the indefensible are so bizarre that I honestly think that he shows signs of being detached from reality because the things he says seem to go well beyond mere attempts at self-justification and well into delusional territory. There is a deranged quality to the way he calmly and matter-of-factly says the most appalling things.
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A bridge too far for Obama?

Jonathan Cook has a good analysis of the upcoming Israeli elections to be held on March 17, 2015 and the role that US-Israeli relations are playing in it. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be hoping to win by pandering even more than he does presently to the right wing, religious, settler, racist elements in the country. Meanwhile Cook says that European opinion is rapidly shifting towards the Palestinians.
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The US government vs. Barrett Brown

Many people may not have heard of Barrett Brown. He is a 33-year old journalist who has been hounded by the US government because he exposed its wrongdoings using documents that had been obtained by the hacktivist group Anonymous. He seemed to have informal links to Anonymous and was willing to publicly engage with reporters about what they were doing. As a result, he was sometimes referred to as their spokesperson though he and they denied it. In some ways, he was a precursor to Edward Snowden. Kevin M. Gallagher gives us the back story.
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Ohio governor panders to the religious

John Kasich, the current governor of Ohio, has been suspected of having presidential ambitions, just waiting for the right moment to join the vast throngs of Republican elected and non-elected people who think they have what it takes to do the job. He has been coy about expressing his ambitions openly but he just gave an indication that he is seriously considering it by taking an action that is blatant pandering to the religious nutters.
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Why US media makes torture victims invisible

The release of the torture report has brought out the torture architects, perpetrators, and apologists in full force and they are all over the media explaining why brutalizing people in disgusting ways was good and noble and why just the fact that this report was released somehow absolves America for committing these horrendous crimes and proves how great and noble we are.
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