“Torture” on The Daily Caller

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain expressed disappointment Monday with comments made by several Republican presidential candidates over the weekend during a debate hosted by CBS News and the National Journal. (more)

I often hear those on the right say that the left has stolen the language and that we must take it back. Yet I really don’t see or hear this occurring. In fact, I don’t really think the right is serious about taking back the language. If it were, would conservatives continue using terms like “African-American” and “xenophobia”? (more)

Human rights groups have vowed to track George W Bush round the world after their success in forcing him to cancel a trip to Switzerland amid concerns over protests and a threatened arrest warrant. (more)

Full story: Who’s Threatening Your Civil Rights Now? – Ricochet.com (more)

No one will face criminal charges for the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, the Justice Department said Tuesday. (more)

A 22-year-old Lincoln man accused of waterboarding his girlfriend has been charged with false imprisonment, domestic assault and making terroristic threats. (more)

In the largest document leak in US history, WikiLeaks has released more than 400,000 secret US documents about the Iraq war. As with the second-largest leak in US history – the 92,000 Afghan war documents released in July – much of the substance of the leaks has been reported already, but details are new. (more)

Five foreign men who say they were kidnapped and tortured by the CIA cannot sue the Boeing Co. subsidiary that helped spirit them away for interrogations because of the risk of secret intelligence matters being exposed at trial, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. (more)

In House Judiciary Committee testimony released yesterday, former Bush DOJ lawyer Jay Bybee said he hadn’t authorized all of the enhanced interrogation techniques the CIA used — a point that is at the heart of the criminal investigation into the CIA’s use of torture. (more)

(Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron will announce soon he is setting up an inquiry into allegations British security services were complicit in torture of terrorism suspects overseas, the BBC reported on Tuesday. (more)

A prominent human rights group accused the CIA of conducting illegal human experiments and unethical medical research during interrogations of high-profile terrorism suspects under the George W. Bush administration. (more)

Torture victims won a victory Tuesday when the Supreme Court ruled that federal law does not automatically protect ex-officials of foreign governments from lawsuits over the abuse. (more)

BEIJING (AP) — China has issued new rules saying evidence obtained through torture and threats cannot be used in criminal prosecutions and said such evidence would be thrown out in death penalty cases that are under appeal. (more)

Tonight marks the end of a television era: 24 airs its eighth season finale. The impact of the show on the country has been profound; in the way subjects on the show have been brought into the public spectrum and how Jack Bauer, the protagonist, has become an icon – the man that will do anything to stop evil. While many mourn the loss of Law and Order or Lost, 24 has had a greater impact on America in our post-9/11 era. (more)

Government denials of such abuse are the result of a “head in the sand” attitude, partly borne out of a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans, the judges were told. (more)

The European Union likes to cast itself as a champion of human rights, both at home and beyond its borders. So why is the E.U. allowing European firms to export thumbscrews, stun guns and other devices that could be used for torture to countries with spotty human rights records? (more)

The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his critics call the “torture memos” is reviled by many in this liberal East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists, wholly unpleasant. (more)

If any one show has represented the post-9/11 era on television, it is “24,” the Fox drama that has offered counterterrorism as entertainment for nine years. (more)

Decades ago, the infamous Milgram experiment — in which participants administered what they thought were lethal levels of electricity to test subjects at the command of an authority figure — demonstrated the willingness of individuals to disregard their personal conscience when commanded by someone in power. In the age of reality television, it seems not much has changed. (more)

The bar’s “priesthood” has been offended—and now they are on the attack. A group of 19 lawyers, including conservatives like former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and Bush administration lawyers Bradford Berenson and Larry Thompson, are denouncing Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” for asking questions about Department of Justice lawyers who once defended suspected terrorists. “We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counter-terrorism adjudications,” they wrote in a statement released earlier this week. (more)