We need to clarify our values in what is a battle of ideas

• WP - United Nations asks United States to clarify its position on torture

  "It has been nearly six years since President Obama, on his third day in office, signed an executive order banning torture or cruel treatment of U.S. detainees."

• CBS News - Abuse at Abu Ghraib

  "When 60 Minutes II reported the first details of the Army investigation into Abu Ghraib, we didn't reveal that it was written by Gen. Antonio Taguba. His report is a scathing indictmentof the prison's lack of manpower, training and adherence to international standards."

• Equality as an Affirmation of Our Common Humanity

  We are missing a defining opportunity in the history of the moral and political philosophy of the liberal tradition; first, by not defining our primary moral value as equality, understood as a respect for the dignity and worth of our common humanity; and second, by not defining our government as a constitutional democracy, which is the only way to convey both the substantive and the procedural concepts of equality that it incorporates.