Lithwick: No More Kabuki Theater.

"Holder has fallen prey to the sort of magical legal thinking that seeps through the whole CIA report: the presumption that if there's a legal memo, it must be legal...In other words, we are now protecting the good-faith torturers. That isn't just wrong, it's outrageous. It ratifies the most toxic aspect of the whole legal war on terror: that anything becomes permissible if it's served up with a side of memo. Paper your misconduct with footnotes and justifications--even after the fact--and you can do as you please."

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick explains the fundamental problem with the Justice Department's new inquiry into Dubya-era torture: "Pretending we are investigating and curtailing a torture program isn't all that different from pretending we didn't torture in the first place."

Meanwhile -- hold on to your hats, people -- Slate's Tim Noah discovers that Dick Cheney hasn't been entirely truthful about what's in the theoretically exculpatory CIA memos. "Portions have been redacted, so perhaps the evidence Cheney claims that enhanced interrogation saved American lives has been blacked out. But judging from what's visible to the naked eye, the documents do not provide anything like the vindication that Cheney claims." (Of course, even if they did provide said vindication, the question of whether or not torture is effective -- 24 notwithstanding, we're pretty sure it isn't -- is a completely separate question from whether or not torture is legal -- it isn't.)