Spc. Gilad Wolbe provides security for fellow Soldiers nearby during a humanitarian mission in Baghdad on Feb. 26. (US Army photo by Spc. Olanrewaju Akinwunmi.)

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Apple quit the US Chamber of Commerce today, and sent Chamber president Tom Donohue an exhortation to think different:

We would prefer that the Chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis. However, because the Chamber's position differs so sharply with Apple's, we have decided to resign our membership effectively immediately.

At this point, it might be time to announce a new subgenre of corporate communications literature: the trade group smackdown. Donohue has gotten so many similar letters from other large companies that it's starting to feel routine. Not that Apple isn't a major feather in the cap of climate campaigners. Now, I'm half expecting to see an ad casting Donohue as PC Guy. 

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Treasury Inspector General Neil Barofsky has released another biting report on his department's mismanagement of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This latest assessment will probably make former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's retirement a bit less comfortable and Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis' likely court appearances a whole lot more interesting.

Barofsky, whom Mother Jones profiled last week, accuses Paulson of misleading Americans about the precarious state of the financial industry in the immediate aftermath of the bailout. One example he cites is the secretary's assurances on October 14 that the banks were "healthy" and that they'd accepted the TARP funds for "the good of the U.S. economy." The Fed concurs with Barofsky's assessment, but his bosses at the Treasury have attempted to defend Paulson's statements by suggesting that they "must be considered in light of the unprecedented circumstances in which they were made."

Barofsky's report also seems to lend credence to Lewis's claims that the Treasury Department forced Bank of America's troubled merger with Merrill Lynch. As the New York Times notes, Bank of America received only $15 billion of the $25 billion it was eligible for under TARP, with Merrill receiving the other $10 billion. Although the two companies had agreed in principle to the merger when the funds were disbursed in October, their deal had not yet been approved by regulators or shareholders. Bank of America's restricted TARP funding may have been a way to force Lewis into an awkward arrangement with the troubled investment bank and a sign that Treasury already considered the shotgun marriage a done deal.

Although the inspector general's report was primarily intended to address TARP, Barofsky has also raised some troubling questions about both the credibility of Treasury and its role in the ill-fated BofA-Merrill merger. Some of these questions may soon be addressed if Ken Lewis appears in court to address unrelated concerns about bonuses payed to Merrill traders. Stay tuned.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights relays the news that audio and video tapes of the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani still exist. For now, a court is just requiring the government to release tapes depicting the period immediately before Qahtani underwent the most extreme interrogation under Donald Rumsfeld's "First Special Interrogation Plan":

The videotapes the government is required to produce will reveal the time period at the end of three months of intensive solitary confinement and isolation that immediately preceded the implementation of the "First Special Interrogation Plan," a regime of systematic torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against Mr. al Qahtani.  In a letter to his superiors reporting possible abuse of men in U.S. custody, T.J. Harrington, Deputy Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, FBI described Mr. al Qahtani during this time as "evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reportedly hearing voices, crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end)."

Now seems like an appropriate time to remember that even Jay Bybee, the author of the worst of the torture memos, thought that techniques that caused "prolonged mental harm" qualified as torture.

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