Reading List: Thursday 5/21

Today's article round-up:

• If I were the White House Press Secretary, I'd be gearing up for this article from FOXNews.com getting more expanded play...if Obama actually said this stuff in interviews, this book could be a really unfortunate problem for POTUS.
• Karl Rove has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on the changes we've seen between Obama the Candidate and Obama the President.
• Jeffrey Toobin (CNN senior legal analyst and author of The Nine: The Secret World of the Supreme Court, which I am reading right now) has an interesting profile on Chief Justice John Roberts in The New Yorker.
• Former Sgt. Brian Hughes, a gay man who served in the Army Rangers for four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the need to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the military.
• In their much-anticipated "dueling speeches," President Obama and former Vice President Cheney today indirectly debated US torture and military policy. Each official defended his policy and claimed that the other's policy had made the United States less secure from threats of terrorism.
  
• Members of Congress from both houses and parties are continuing to sound the alarm about what the US is going to do if the prison at Guantanamo Bay is closed, despite President Obama's attempts at reassuring them. The question remaining: what SHOULD the US do? Scholars, reporters, and politicians continue to debate.
  
• The White House today unveiled several of its initiatives toward increasing government transparency, a project implemented by President Obama in his first executive order upon taking office.
• Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced in a ceremony that Jerusalem will remain Israel's united capital, taking a hard line on a very sensitive issue that is and will be important to both parties in any ensuing peace talks with the Palestinians.
• David S. Broder has an op-ed in today's Washington Post discussing how President Obama has discovered what it means to be commander-in-chief.
• Inevitably, House Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Speaker Pelosi's charges that the CIA mislead her during briefings on "enhanced interrogation techniques."
• Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania appears to be settling in comfortably to his new role as a member of the Democratic caucus, Politico reports.
• In response to Kaine's request that Pawlenty attempt to use his influence to end the MN Senate election contests between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, Pawlenty today rebuffed the DNC chairman, saying that there were still matters for the courts to decide.