Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Post story bolsters Cheney: The Washington Post leads today with an extraordinary story cutting against the conclusions of a series of recent government and media reports to cast as straight news... that waterboarding and sleep deprivation worked like a charm to turn Kalid Sheik Mohammed from an enemy into an "asset." The story... bears all the marks of some complicated internal discussions over at the Post... three major bylines and just a tagline from national security reporter Walter Pincus...

Washington Post reporters Peter Finn, Joby Warrick, and Julie Tate lend credence Dick Cheney's fallacious argument that because Khalid Sheik Mohammed began cooperating with U.S. authorities after he was tortured, torture made him cooperate.... The WaPo's sources claim to have observed Mohammed directly. Surely, only a handful of people would have been allowed access to the U.S.'s top terror detainee. Chances are, anyone who got that close has a vested interest in presenting the program in the most flattering light. For all we know, the WaPo interviewed Khalid Sheik Mohammed's torturers. If the reporters grappled with this potential conflict of interest, they don't let on.

Ann Althouse, defending and celebrating "harsh interrogation techniques": 'Critics of "harsh interrogation techniques" — they, of course, call it torture — bolster their moral arguments with the pragmatic argument that it doesn't even work. How unusual it is for the media to disillusion us about that and force the moralists to get by on moral ideals alone!' There are many things to say, but I have just a few simple questions.  (1) Is beating a detainee to death with a metal flashlight torture?  Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (2) Is beating detainees with butts of rifles torture?  Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (3) Is choking a detainee with your bare hands until he almost passes out torture?  Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"? (4) Is threatening to rape wives and murder children torture?  Or merely a "harsh interrogation technique"?

Tim Gregory: The core of the book is a social and administrative analysis of the workings of the estates of the wealthy and powerful Apion family, whose land holdings centered on Oxyrynchus in Middle Egypt but had expanded to include properties in Constantinople and Sicily. Sarris uses the surviving, frequently fragmentary papyrus documents to paint a picture of how these estates were divided between lands that were operated for the direct benefit of the family and those that were rented out to poor farmers who were essentially chained to the plots they farmed. The author provides considerable detail about how the estates were administered and by whom, arguing that individuals of a “middle” economic and social status were the primary administrators, who effectively demanded productivity and loyalty from those under their jurisdiction...