Will the Outgoing Administration Be Called to Account by the New One?

Making News

Obama Announces More Cabinet Picks ()

Barack Obama's cabinet continues to take shape, well before he's sworn in to office. Today, he appointed as Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, head of public schools in Chicago since 2001. David Mark is senior editor at Politico.com and author of Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning.

Guests:

• David Mark: Senior Editor, Politico, @DMarkPOLITICO

Main Topic

New Reports Raise Questions About Bush's Iraq Legacy ()

With a month left in office, the Bush Administration is getting reviews and voicing its own assessments of the past eight years. An unpublished official history of the Iraq reconstruction says it was crippled before it began and bungled in execution. John McCain and other Republicans signed a unanimous Senate report that so-called "abusive" interrogation techniques in the war on terror were not the work of a few low-level "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, but that top Administration officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, Air Force General Richard Myers and Condoleezza Rice, signed off on water-boarding and other practices some call torture.  Now, Vice President Cheney says that's true.  Should he and others be praised for protecting the country or investigated for possible crimes?

Guests:

• Roy Gutman: Foreign Editor, McClatchy Newspapers
• Caroline Frederickson: Director of the Washington Legislative Office, ACLU
• Scott Horton: Visiting Professor of Law, Hofstra Law School
• Bruce Fein: Principal, American Freedom Agenda, @RonPaul
• T. Christian Miller: Reporter, ProPublica

Links:

• Gutman's article on Senate probe into Bush Administration officials
• ACLU on Cheney's praise of Guantanamo
• Horton's cover story, 'Justice after Bush'
• Fein's 'Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle of Our Constitution and Democracy'
• Miller's 'Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq'

Reporter's Notebook

Fed Lowers Interest Rate to Historic Lows ()

When Barack Obama held his news conference today, the Federal Reserve was expected to lower the benchmark interest rate to 0.5%, the seventh rate change this year. Instead, it dropped the rate to between zero and 0.25%, the lowest level in more than 50 years.  Even Ben Bernanke acknowledges it won't do much good. Daniel Gross is senior editor at Newsweek.

Guests:

• Daniel Gross: Senior Editor, Newsweek, @grossdm