Ever the booster, former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Obama administration should release all the CIA interrogation memos and documents—to demonstrate the “success” of the harsh methods. In a two-part interview airing Monday and Tuesday on Hannity, Cheney questions why Obama would release the legal decisions that allowed the interrogation methods but not documents showing their outcome: “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort.” Cheney says he wants the CIA to declassify the information so the American people can see how much intelligence was produced by techniques like waterboarding. “I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was,” he said.

New developments in the case that’s riveted America: Police have arrested the man they say killed a woman and robbed two more after responding to their personal ads on Craigslist. Philip Markoff, a 22-year-old medical student at Boston University, is suspected of being the “clean-cut” blond man who allegedly killed beautiful Julissa Brisman, 26, at the Copley Marriott in Boston last week after his robbery attempt went awry. Brisman advertised massage services over Craigslist; another one of the Markoff’s alleged victims, a Las Vegas prostitute who advertised lap dances on the site, was rescued when her husband walked in during the attempted robbery. Plastic cord was used to tie up the victims in both crimes, as well as the April 10 robbery at gunpoint of a prostitute at the Westin Copley.

The Dow Jones index skidded 289.60 points today, closing at 7,841.73, on fears that the financial sector still hasn't recovered. Shares of Bank of America, which reported first-quarter profits this morning of $4.24 billion (up from $1.21 billion last year), dropped 24 percent. Skepticism remains as the banking crisis appears to be continuing despite positive indicators from firms. "We may be through the worst of the crisis, but the crisis continues nonetheless," said one strategist. The S&P dipped 4.3 percent, with the Nasdaq off 3.9 percent.

A disturbing new report from The Washington Post: Top officials at Chrysler rejected a $750 million government loan because the flailing automaker’s executives didn’t want to have to deal with new federal limits on pay. Sources tell the paper the government offered the loan earlier this month to help prop up Chrysler, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, and other automakers; instead Chrysler Financial “opted to use more expensive financing from private banks.” The company denies its executives refused to accept new pay limits, and Chrysler Financial announced recently it no longer needs more federal loans.

Buck up, guys: The president made a stop at CIA headquarters today to boost morale, his first trip to Langley since the bombshell release of memos depicting horrific interrogation techniques employed by agency operatives. Obama defended the release of the memos, maintaining that much of the information they contained was already public. He said he had and would continue to fight to "protect the integrity of classified information," including the identity of CIA officers. Ending torture will make America safer, he said, because what makes America special is "the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it's expedient to do so." Acknowledging potential mistakes, he added, is "how we learn."

Tough crowd. Speaking at a U.N. conference on racism, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad found that an unsympathetic audience would not tolerate his radical views against Israel. The moment he began addressing the issue, diplomats began exiting the forum, passing directly in front of his podium. Applause erupted from the audience at the powerful statement, as officials began to leave in droves. Prior to the walk out, two protesters, both wearing rainbow colored wigs, also interrupted Ahmadinejad's speech. Both Israel and the U.S. were absent from the conference in protest of the platform given to anti-Zionist views.

Yay to the Pulitzers, for giving newspapers something to celebrate: The New York Times won five awards, including Breaking News Reporting, Investigative Reporting, Criticism (art critic Holland Cotter), International Reporting, and Feature Photography. Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post for commentary. Meanwhile, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer for Fiction, and The Hemingses of Monticello won for History.

Even pirates have mothers who love them: Adar Abdurahman Hassan, the mother of alleged teen pirate Abde Wale Abdul Kadhir Muse, tells the BBC her son is innocent. Muse is facing trial in New York and stands accused of being a member of the Somali pirate gang that boarded the Maersk Alabama cargo ship on April 8 and took Captain Richard Phillips hostage in a lifeboat. Hassan is appealing to Obama for mercy for her 16-year-old son, telling the BBC, "I am requesting the American government, I am requesting President Obama to release my child. He has got nothing to do with the pirates' crime. He is a minor; he is underage and he has been used for this crime. I also request from the U.S., if they choose to put him on trial, I want them to invite me there."

Can't the Central Intelligence Agency offer some sort of study abroad program? Just 13 percent of the CIA's employees speak a foreign language, USA Today reports. The pitiful number leaves the agency vulnerable to further criticism for failing to hire more bilingual staff after September 11, 2001. Advertisements on Facebook and YouTube have tried to reel in foreign language speakers but apparently have not attracted a substantial number of takers. Recently, the CIA also has done recruiting drives in immigrant communities with large Arab populations such as Detroit, offering big signing bonuses for those who speak "mission critical languages." At least one place is still hiring in this economy.

Next time you find yourself swooning over Sasha and Malia, or smiling at Bo the first dog, understand that it is all part of a coordinated tug on the heartstrings of America. Since taking office, the Obama administration has subtly managed their image by releasing candid photos and giving gossip outlets such as Us Weekly and Access Hollywood exclusive stories. The photos serve as a means to neutralize the paparazzi, as well as a method of controlling how the family is presented. Since taking office, Obama's PR team, (until recently led by a communications guru from the LA Dodgers) has molded Obama's image from a distant intellectual with questionable religious affiliation to a warm, caring family man who just so happens to live at The White House.

Amid claims of human right abuses and brutal violence, the long conflict against the Tamil Tiger insurgency in Sri Lanka appears to reaching an end. In one horrific scene, as many as 100,000 civilians fled for safety after the military broke through an earthen barrier built by the rebels. The flood of civilians is being swept up and placed in internment camps, where each person will be interrogated to determine whether he or she is associated with the Tamil Tigers. The Sri Lankan president has issued a warning to the leader of the Tigers, telling him to surrender within 24 hours or face the consequences, and a major offensive is expected tomorrow.

Stephen Hawking, the British mathematician and physicist sometimes called the “world’s smartest man,” was hospitalized today and is, according to a representative from Cambridge University, “very ill.” Hawking, 67, suffers from Lou Gehrig’s disease. According to the representative, Hawking is “now comfortable but will be kept in hospital overnight.”

An extraordinary piece of war reporting today in The New York Times offers a first-hand account of a platoon of American soldiers pinned down in a ravine by Taliban gunfire. Before opening fire, the hidden insurgents detonate a bomb under a footbridge as one private is crossing, killing him and sending his body into a tree. The young soldiers are patrolling their usual route when they stumble into the ambush. The sounds of the chaotic shootout are captured by Times reporters fleeing from the bullets along with the platoon. Eventually, with their overwhelming firepower and the aid of reinforcements, the soldiers escape, but not before losing their fourth brother in arms in nine months in the violent valley.

Regardless of whether President Obama's auto czar Steven Rattner ends up indicted in the unfolding New York state's pension-kickback scandal, the debacle is, according to The Wall Street Journal "useful in drawing attention to the real story here, which is the growing evidence of corruption by officials who use their power over public pension funds to shake down private companies." Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has indicted several political players who moonlighted as "placement agents"--connected figures who essentially conveyed a message of "pay to play" to investment firms. In Rattner's case, he acquired DVD rights to an unheard of low-budget movie called Chooch, which was produced by the brother of the former deputy comptroller. Several weeks later, Rattner’s company Quadrangle received a $100 million investment from the state pension fund. It is unclear whether Rattner is guilty of any wrongdoing, but either way, the Journal's editorial board hopes that since he "holds sway over the U.S. auto-industry...his judgment about cars will be better than his taste in cinema."

Obama is breaking some big news to his Cabinet: They’re responsible for collectively reducing spending by $100 million over the next 90 days. According to his weekly address, Obama will scour the federal budget “line by line” to find places where the government can save, and so far, it seems everyone's willing to step up to the plate: Defense Secretary Robert Gates will reform contracting procedures to eliminate “hundreds of billions” in wasteful spending, Agriculture is going to combine employees into one facility that would reduce spending by $62 million, and Homeland Security is going to order office supplies in bulk, saving a shocking $52 million. Lawrence Summers said this weekend that the administration is going to practice what it preaches. "We're going to need a less leveraged economy. Individuals are going to have to save more." He added that the government is going to be "a contributor of savings to the economy, rather than a drain."

Hunter S. Thompson famously had the revelation that his own antics were more interesting than the actual news event he was covering. Has Fox News had a similar epiphany? By dispatching anchors to rile up teabaggers in the midst of anti-tax rallies around the country, Fox News regressed to the party press of America's infancy, when newspapers' were defined by political affiliation. Instead of covering the news, they invented it. New York Times media columnist David Carr criticizes the network, along with CNN and MSNBC, for throwing gasoline on the populist fire by encouraging "people who don't come out to rallies but are sitting in a basement steeped in their own misanthropy." Giving generous coverage to incoherent protests with racist overtones doesn't help anybody.

Since Tim Russert's sudden death last year, there has been a power vacuum at the top of the Sunday political talk show scene. David Gregory, Russert's successor on Meet the Press, is doing a serviceable job, but is facing criticism for being too stiff and low-key. Now, others hosts such as George Stephanopoulos of The Week and Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation—who used to be relegated to second and third place—are climbing the ratings ladder. Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post's media columnist, praises Stephanopoulos for putting his guests on the spot by asking tough questions and assembling interesting panels that feature a good mix of personalities. Scieffer also is getting a boost in ratings—although he still lost to Meet the Press despite having the first Sunday interview with the president. "I think if I could get that dog (Bo), we could probably draw a bigger audience" Schieffer joked.

Prince Charles will tap into one of the world's most basic plots--man v. nature--when he pens his book Harmony, which Harper Collins has just acquired. According to the publisher's press release, the book will argue that humankind's "relentless pursuit of economic growth and technological progress" has made us "dangerously disconnected from Nature." The book will take a "philosophical" path to reconnect humanity with "ancient wisdom," and will incorporate the prince's personal experience raising the global warming alarm before it was chic. Publication is scheduled for 2010, and a corresponding children's picture book is slated for 2011.

Random House will release Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, in September, in what may be a Hail Mary that bolsters the flagging publishing industry. According to Publisher's Weekly, the much anticipated sequel to worldwide bestseller The Da Vinci Code will follow protagonist Robert Langdon over a twelve-hour period. Brown spent five years on the book, and said that combining his research with the novel's compressed timeframe was "an exhilarating challenge." A Knopf Doubleday executive called the new sequel "well worth the wait." Random House plans to print 5 million copies of The Lost Symbol during its first printing. There are more than 81 million copies of 2003's The Da Vinci Code in circulation worldwide, and a film of the prequel, Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard, will be released May 15.

An increasing number of students and hard-working employees are taking pills prescribed for A.D.H.D.—such as Adderall and Ritalin—to enhance their performance. Margaret Talbot’s report on "neuroenhancing” in this week’s New Yorker explores everything from the lies people tell their doctors to the growing black markets on college campuses. While cognitive enhancers are associated with our winner-take-all, Blackberry-obsessed culture, they're most common in a certain demographic: white males at New England schools who belong to a fraternity and have a G.P.A of 3.0 or lower. It’s unclear how neuroenhancing is going to take a toll in the long term, but for now, there’s an “increasing number of Americans who are performing daily experiments on their own brains.”

Back in session after a two-week break, Congress has to decide this week whether it should prioritize health care or climate change. According to The Wall Street Journal, “A growing number of Democratic lawmakers prefer health care, saying that has a far greater chance of producing consensus than climate change, inside the party and across party lines. And they argue that it would be a more tangible accomplishment to present to financially stressed voters heading into the 2010 midterm elections.” Friday’s ruling by the EPA, however, that greenhouse gases endanger public health has boosted the issue’s urgency. “Both issues are complex and politically difficult, and Capitol Hill has rarely completed landmark legislation on two fronts in one year. With four months gone in 2009 and the 2010 election looming, the window for substantive legislative action will narrow sharply.”

In the wake of the AIG bonus debacle—and in the face of Obama’s tax increases for the rich--there’s a collective wail echoing through the marble halls on Wall Street. In New York magazine, Gabriel Sherman reports on how financiers are adjusting to this fast-mutating culture of compensation—and the answer is simple: not well. “In a witch hunt,” he writes, “the witches have feelings, too.” One financier complained that the government is “taking Wall Street and throwing it in the East River.” While it was easy for Wall Streeters to overlook Obama’s populist message during the campaign, nothing compares to the pain they’re feeling now. “Bankers have expressions for disastrous losses: clusterfuck, Chernobyl, blowing up... But no one was prepared to lose money this way,” Sherman writes. “This felt like getting mugged.”

A gunman described as “mentally challenged” surrendered this morning after holding hostage 182 passengers and crew on a commercial jet in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Authorities reportedly boarded the plane and disarmed him. The gunman had forced his way onto the plane at Sangster International Airport and demanded that he be flown to Cuba. The 20-year-old Jamaican national was armed with a handgun and no one was wounded. 

The Obama administration has worried that Congress will block any future bailouts. One way to solve that problem? Cut Congress out of the equation. Here’s The New York Times: “Treasury Department officials now say they can stretch what is left of the $700 billion financial bailout fund further than they had expected a few months ago, simply by converting the government’s existing loans to the nation’s 19 biggest banks into common stock. Converting those loans to common shares would turn the federal aid into available capital for a bank — and give the government a large ownership stake in return.” The government stress tests are expected to show that some banks, including Bank of America, need billions more. “The change to common stock would not require the government to contribute any additional cash, but it could increase the capital of big banks by more than $100 billion.” Critics allege the plan would be backdoor nationalization, since the government would become the largest shareholder in several banks.

The father of nine-year-old Rubina Ali, one of the impoverished young Mumbai slum dwellers who starred in Slumdog Millionaire, tried to sell his daughter for $300,000. Men posing as representatives for an Arab sheikh (who were in fact reporters from British tabloid News of the World) drew the girl's father, Rafiq Qureshi, into the negotiations. He complained that his family "got nothing out of this film" while his brother noted, "The child is special now. This is not an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!" News of the World reports that Qureshi's plan to sell his child to the highest bidder was well known among family and friends. His plan to pass her off through an illegal adoption was subject to "a tip-off from a concerned close family friend and former neighbor," writes News of the World, which reports that the sale of impoverished children is not uncommon in Mumbai's slums. The attempt to sell Rubina comes at the tail end of a series of disturbing exploitations of the Slumdog stars, including her male co-star's father reportedly beating him to force him to stay awake to give interviews for money.

Writer J.G. Ballard has his own adjective, Ballardian, which means "resembling or suggestive" of the modern dystopias that appeared in his books. The Times of London reports that the famed author has died at age 78 after a long battle with cancer. His best known book, Empire of the Sun, was a fictionalized account of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp in China during World War II. Steven Spielberg made a film out of it in 1987. David Cronenberg also adapted his novel Crash. A writer ahead of his time, Ballard's other novels predicted the melting of the ice caps, terrorism against tourists, and the alienation of a technology-obsessed society.

Hold the tea bags: “Obama has no intention of changing the nature of American capitalism,” Frank Foer and Noam Scheiber write in The New Republic. Obama believes in “behavioral economics” (which policymakers call “libertarian paternalism”). “Obama has set out to synthesize the New Democratic faith in the utility of markets with the Old Democratic emphasis on reducing inequality. In Obama's state, government never supplants the market or stifles its inner workings--the old forms of statism that didn't wash economically, and certainly not politically. But government does aggressively prod markets--by planting incentives, by stirring new competition--to achieve the results he prefers.” Foer and Scheiber conclude: “Obama has groped toward a form of liberal activism that is eminently saleable in this country--both with the average voter, easily spooked by charges of creeping statism, and the constellation of political interests in Washington.”

Miss North Carolina USA Kristen Dalton was crowned Miss USA last night. "It feels really natural," Dalton said. "I've worked so be here and this has been my lifelong dream and it's finally here. And whoever knew you could win in a turquoise gown?" First runner-up Miss California, may have blown her chances when she bungled an answer about gay marriage. "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage," Miss California said. "And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised." According to the Associated Press, “The answer sparked a shouting match in the lobby after the show.” Said one man in attendance, “That is not the value of 95 percent of the people in this audience. Look around this audience and tell me how many gay men there are."

It's 4-20, so you know that this news will put potheads in an even better mood. Across the nation, advocates for the legalization of marijuana are riding high on a new wave of momentum, as liberals and conservatives are appearing less and less averse to the idea. "Any time you've got Glenn Beck and Barney Frank agreeing on something, it's either a sign that change is impending or that the end times are here," one advocate told the New York Times. Groups such as NORML and The Drug Policy Alliance are being taken seriously like never before and seeing an increase in donations. But don't bust out your bong in celebration quite yet, Obama just talked tough on drugs last week while in Mexico.

Is a new gender gap widening? According to the Financial Times, records show the biggest gap between male and female unemployment since collection began in 1948, as men bear the brunt of the economic downturn. Men have lost 80 percent of the overall 5.1 million jobs that have disappeared since the recession began. Male unemployment is 8.8 percent, while female unemployment is 7 percent. Since women make, on average, 20 percent less than men, it’s putting extra strain on households. “It also means that women could soon overtake men as the majority of the US labor force.”

If there’s one rule in Hollywood, it’s that any accident is always the paparazzi’s fault. But this time, it may not be. Madonna fell off a horse at the home of celebrity photographer Steven Klein on Saturday, and is blaming a local photographer for jumping out of the bushes and startling her horse. But the photographer denies it: “'As far as I'm concerned, the only photographer present when the accident happened was Steven Klein. If a photographer startled a horse, I'm thinking we would have seen the pictures by now.” Madonna--who was treated and released at a Long Island hospital-–is recovering at Gwyneth Paltrow’s house in upstate New York.

What’s actually to blame for the deep debt plaguing Detroit? Peter S. Boyer writes in this week’s New Yorker that it was the long-held arrangements with unions and workers, which began in 1937, when the U.A.W. became the sole bargaining agent for the nation’s autoworkers. While foreign car manufacturers might not have matched General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford in wages in the early 1980s, they played it smarter—specifically, Nissan built its first plant in a place with fewer union workers, whom they also paid less. “The fact that the Big Three couldn’t run a factory the way Nissan did in Smyrna [Tennessee] partly explains why, in the current crash of auto sales, Detroit finds itself in starkly more dire condition than the transplants,” writes Boyer. The pensions and benefits were what caused “the labor costs of a G.M. vehicle [to be] roughly fifteen hundred dollars more than what it cost to produce a car in the transplant factories.” As G.M. hinges its hopes on the all-electric Chevy Volt, Boyer writes, “If the Volt redeems even a portion of its promise, it will be a remarkable, and most unlikely, achievement.”

Was California Congresswoman Jane Harman part of what one national security officer called "the deepest kind of corruption" that was "years in the making?" CQ Politics reports that two years ago a wiretap caught the California Democrat telling a suspected Israeli agent that she'd lobby the Justice Department to reduce the espionage charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. In exchange, the suspected agent agreed to lobby then-House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections (a position that Harman did not end up getting). What's more, the FBI ended up dropping charges against Harman related to the wiretap for "lack of evidence" after then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales intervened because he "needed Jane” to support the warrantless wiretapping program that The New York Times was about to expose. The whole event may explain why Obama passed her over for top jobs at the CIA and Homeland Security Department. Harman issued an angry denial through a spokesperson.

Bank of America has reported first quarter profits of $4.24 billion--up from $1.21 billion last year. The bank spent $30 million on takeovers in the last year, but the profits beat even the most optimistic predictions. And though the Treasury now holds $45 million of preferred stock in company, CEO Ken Lewis insists that the bank can fully recover without more federal aid. Said one analyst: “Three weeks ago, everyone had a noose around Ken Lewis' neck, but it’s amazing what a 50 percent increase in a stock price can do.”

It's the international diplomacy's world version of "What if I had a party and nobody came?" After the United States announced it would boycott the United Nations' conference on racism next week, Australia and the Netherlands joined the list of symbolic absentias. Canada, Israel, Italy, and Sweden have also refused to attend based on a meeting agenda that, as the U.S. State Department says, "prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians." Australia's foreign minister says some of the meeting's foundation is outright "anti-Semitic," and the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—a Holocaust denier—will be present isn't helping the case. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights is "shocked and deeply disappointed" at the boycott, arguing that those countries taking part are letting "one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance to a pernicious and life-damaging degree on a daily basis all across the world." Stateside, the Congressional Black Congress says it is "deeply dismayed" that America's first black president won't be at the meeting. Among those willing to attend the conference is U.S. ally Great Britain.