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Interesting comment from Obama right now about why he opposes waterboarding:

Not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways.

Obama has obviously seen all the internal reports by now, and he’s carefully not saying that waterboarding didn’t work.  This suggests that it may indeed have produced useful information.

Now there’s a followup question directly asking whether waterboarding produced anything useful.  He’s dodging a little bit (reports are classified, can’t discuss it, etc. etc.), but making it sound as if it probably did.  On the other hand, after a bit of throat clearing toward the end of his answer, he says he’s seen nothing that “would make me second-guess the decision that I’ve made” to ban waterboarding.  Which might suggest either that waterboarding produced only moderate amounts of useful information, or that he’s convinced we could have gotten the same information with other methods.

Not sure what to make of all that, or even if I’m interpreting it correctly.  Just passing it along.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

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In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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