While the U.S. mainstream media is awash in news that the Bush-era policy of torturing detainees “worked” in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, neocon-influenced media outlets have virtually blacked out coverage of the case of child prisoner at Guantanamo Mohammad Jawad. Perhaps that because Jawad — who was released without charges last week and days later announced he would be suing the U.S. government — is a textbook example of how the Bush policy of torture not only didn't work, but how it corrupted the entire U.S. system of justice.

When two-term congressman Zack Space decided he didn't want to hold any public town hall-style meeting in his Ohio district this summer, local high-school football coach Dave Daubenmire took his right to air grievances straight to Rep. Space's doorstep. Daubenmire has been camping out in front of Space's district office since August 27, and says he will continue to do so until Space agrees to a “a fair and open forum” where citizens can air their complaints against the "Blue Dog" Democrat.

Massachusetts' senior Senator Ted Kennedy has reversed an earlier stance with his recent appeal to change Massachusetts' rules of Senate succession once again.

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky is reaping an online fundraising bonanza today, as a “money bomb” for his campaign efforts exploded from supporters of his father's 2008 presidential campaign.

The CIA outsourced its assassination program to controversial security company Blackwater Worldwide, according to the New York Times for August 20. The assassination program never got to the point of actually carrying out assassination missions, but the New York Times and other news sources reported that Blackwater had received a multimillion-dollar contract to draw up the program and provide training.

President Obama is expected to revise his fiscal 2009 deficit estimate to $1.58 trillion, which is down from the $1.84 trillion estimate earlier in the year. Nearly all of the difference is based upon the Obama administration not using the $250 billion “placeholder” he had built into his budget for a second round of bank bailouts under the TARP program.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is writing a memoir, and has claimed in that memoir that President George W. Bush “had gone soft” on a variety of issues during his second term, according to the August 12 Washington Post.

Congressmen are on what they call their summer recess or "district work period" right now, and angry constituents are competing with “AstroTurf” leftists that are being planted at these town meetings to generate the appearance of support for more government control of healthcare.

Rand Paul officially opened his campaign for Kentucky’s open U.S. Senate seat August 5. Paul is a medical doctor and the son of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and he is clearly following in his father’s ideological footsteps.

On August 3, everyone in the White House press corps was pretending President Obama hadn’t already broken his campaign promise not to back tax increases upon the middle class. The whole White House press corps was agog with speculation over comments by Obama’s top two financial appointees on Sunday-morning talk shows that broad tax increases are on the horizon for the middle class.