Friday Morning: They did win the election Edition

100 days and confused April 23: In the face of America's apparent optimism about the Obama presidency, the Republican Party flounders in search of things to criticize. Rachel Maddow is joined by Gov. Ed Rendell, D-PA.

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Josh Marshall: Quite a Thing to Say

The words may not be that surprising. But the speaker is. This is McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt on the Obama campaign ...

If you read history about Bobby Kennedy's unfinished race in '68, this was, in my view, the unfinished Bobby Kennedy campaign - the idealism, the passion, the inspiration he gave to people, it was organic and it was real and it wasn't manufactured at a tactical level in the campaign. It was a function of the president's unique skill set and presence, and it was really taken advantage of by a campaign that for the first time using the social networking technology....

Think Progress: Rep. Ryan: Democrats have a ‘right’ to use budget reconciliaton.

Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration have floated using "budget reconciliation" to pass health care reform -- where only 51 votes would be required for approval of a bill -- to bypass the increasing number of Republican filibuster threats. In response, Senate Republicans have said they would "grind the Senate to a virtual halt"; Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) explained that reconciliation would be "the nuclear war." Today, GOP up-and-comer Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), however, said it is Democrats' "right" to use budget reconciliation:

“It's their right. They did win the election,” said Ryan, R-Wis. “That’s what I tell all my constituents who are worried about this. They won the election. They did run on these ideas. They did run on nationalizing health care. So, you're right about that. They have the votes with reconciliation. They nailed down the process so that they can make sure they have the votes and that they can get this thing through really fast. It is their right. It is what they can do.”

Notably, much of President Bush's agenda was passed in Republican-controlled Congresses using budget reconciliation. At the Wonk Room, Igor Volsky writes that reconciliation is the key to achieving health care reform.

Krugman: Reclaiming America’s Soul

“Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we’re just too busy.

And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration’s abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? ...

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Still, you might argue — and many do — that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.

But the answer to that is, what political consensus? There are still, alas, a significant number of people in our political life who stand on the side of the torturers. But these are the same people who have been relentless in their efforts to block President Obama’s attempt to deal with our economic crisis and will be equally relentless in their opposition when he endeavors to deal with health care and climate change. The president cannot lose their good will, because they never offered any.

......

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

Yglesias: Cheney Says Techniques Taught In Torture-Resistance Classes Can’t Be Torture

Matt Corley has Liz Cheney explaining that waterboarding’s not torture because we subject soldiers to waterboarding when they undergo SERE training.

Matt observes that what goes on when we torture a captive is actually pretty different from a training exercise. That said, the larger issue here is that SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. And by “resistance” they mean resistance to torture. What we do when we train soldiers isn’t torture, because it’s training. But it’s training in torture resistance. When we look through the torture-resistance manual to find ways to do interrogations, we’re looking through the torture-resistance manual to find ways of torturing people.

It’s important to recall that the SERE people asked to provide information to interrogators about how to do torture specifically warned the would-be torturers that their techniques would be illegal to apply and unlikely to produce reliable information.

This whole argument is an insult to people’s intelligence. It’s like saying that shooting someone in the head isn’t really murder because police officers do target practice.