• Want to help send Karl Rove to jail? Well watch this and sign the petition.

• Take the Pew News IQ Test and post your score. Also notice that while 84% know Oprah campaigned for Obama, only 28% know that over 4000 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Good job, media!

• Yesterdays fundraising appeal for Sean Tevis was a great success. He reached his goal in just 37 hours...and it's still going.

• Pathetic excuse for a human being Michael Savage on autism: "A fraud, a racket. ... In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out."

• Remember all the fauxtrage from the McCain campaign after Gramm's "Americans are whiners" comments? Well, it look like McCain has gotten over it, because he's keeping Gramm around.

• Netroots Nation tries to label FOX as "opinion news."

• McCain's Media™ withholds favorable Obama polls.

• After word magically "leaks" out that Jesse Jackson said more than "nuts," O'Reilly threatens to waterboard his staff to get to the "truth."

• Even though McCain thinks Social Security is a "disgrace," that's not gonna stop him from cashin' in those checks.

• Michael Chertoff has a message for you: I'm trying my best, but you still may die.

Occasionally, we’ll hear that Joe Lieberman is generally in line with Democrats, but makes an exception on the war in Iraq and a neocon worldview of foreign policy. When it comes to values and domestic policy, the argument usually goes, Lieberman is generally reliable.

Let’s just erase that thought from our minds now, shall we?

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman reluctantly acknowledged Thursday that he does not believe waterboarding is torture, but believes the interrogation technique should be available only under the most extreme circumstances.

Lieberman was one of 45 senators who voted Wednesday in opposition to a bill that would limit the CIA to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the Army field manual. That manual prohibits waterboarding, a method where detainees typically are strapped to a bench and have water poured into their mouth and nose making them feel as if they will drown.

“We are at war,” Lieberman said. “I know enough from public statements made by Osama bin Laden and others as well as classified information I see to know the terrorists are actively planning, plotting to attack us again. I want our government to be able to gather information again within both the law and Geneva Convention.”

All of this is spectacularly and breathtakingly wrong.

The Rude Pundit: Please don't waterboard Santa, Rudy!

The Pentagon is burning billions to equip the soldier of the future. With DANGER ROOM's Holiday gift guide, you can spend thousands, to get pretty much the same gear, today! Besides, who wouldn't love a lil' pink Taser for Christmas?

Make Them Accountable: Media malfeasance alerts and other valuable information on the press

Nieman Watchdog: Dan Froomkin points out that GOP presidential candidates avoid talking about G-Dub, for obvious reasons. Journalists should press them to say what they think of Bush's legacy.

Lawyers, Guns and Money: The 'Vote Fraud' fraud

BAGnewsNotes: Romney: A shadow of the real deal

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Nameless Cynic, Napoleon's Egypt, NPR Check, Bay Area Houston, Halfway There

(h/t Scarce)

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Senator Kit Bond appeared on PBS's The NewsHour and further muddied the water with all the lies and rationalizations one must use to abet war crimes, bless his heart (I'm learning from Blue Gal), including the laughable-on-its-face claim that discussing waterboarding enables "the enemy" to adapt to it. This is an assertion that I feel strongly should be tested out on anyone amoral enough to suggest it. But it was this claim that earns him the Wanker title for today (and from such an embarrassment of riches of other awardees too!):

IFILL: I just would like to -- but do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming: freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that's beside the point. It's not being used.

I don't know if you're a religious man, Sen. Bond, but I surely do hope that if you are, this fine bit of wankery is used against you at the Pearly Gates. One word for you to hold in your heart: Nuremberg.