CNN aired a story this afternoon reporting that human rights groups are urging President-elect Obama to “investigate whether the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes,” specifically, torture techniques that were approved for use against terror suspects. CNN reporter Kelli Arena noted that human rights groups argue that torture should never be used, but that “[i]ntelligence experts say that would be a mistake.” Which “expert” did Arena turn to to make that case? Former White House Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend. At no point did CNN identify Townsend as a former Bush official. Instead, she was labeled an “intelligence expert” and “CNN national security contributor.” Watch it:

CNN was either too lazy to find another “intelligence expert,” or they didn’t have any luck finding anyone else to say it’s okay to torture.

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The AP reports:

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term.

The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday’s count.

That’s an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

In their GOP conference meeting today, Senate Republicans punted on whether to formally kick Stevens out of their caucus.

Today on ABC’s “The View,” former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabe discussed his pride that an African-American has been elected president. When host Joy Behar asked if he feels the same about gay rights, he said that the two were “a different set of rights,” and suggested that the gay rights movement hasn’t suffered enough violence to be a real issue:

HUCKABEE: It’s a different set of rights. People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that’s not really the issue. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights.

BEHAR: Well, segregation was an institution, too, in a way. It was right there on the books.

HUCKABEE: But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge.

Watch it:

Huckabee is echoing a newly popular conservative trope. Last week, Tony Perkins claimed that gay rights and civil rights are “totally different.” Tara Wall, deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Times, wrote today that “[t]here is no comparison” between blacks’ struggle and gay people’s struggle because “[b]lacks were stoned, hung, and dragged for their constitutional right to ‘sit at the table.’ Whites — gay or not — already had a seat at that table.”

To suggest that a civil rights movement must meet some sort of violence threshold is an incredibly dangerous argument — not to mention blind to the serious violence gay people have already suffered. 16.6 percent of all hate crimes reported by the FBI in 2007 “resulted from sexual-orientation bias,” and the number of hate crimes directed against gays and lesbians increased six percent from 2006. More striking, a 2007 study by the University of California, Davis, found that “[n]early four in 10 gay men and about one in eight lesbians and bisexuals in the United States have been the target of violence or a property crime because of their sexual orientation.”

The murders of Matthew Shepherd in 1998 and 15-year-old Lawrence King earlier this year brought renewed public focus to the lethal danger of homophobia. The violence gay activists face will gain more attention in two weeks, when “Milk,” a new feature-length movie about the first openly gay elected official, is released. Harvey Milk struggled for the political rights of gay people — just like civil rights leaders pushed for African-Americans’ political rights — and he was ultimately killed for it.

Huckabee’s lame violence threshold is nothing more than a shoddy attempt to conceal his deep and fundamental homophobia.

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This summer, six attorneys “rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit” against “former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration” in the hiring process for the Honors and Summer Law Intern Programs. Today, McClatchy reports that the Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend Gonzales, which could cost taxpayers up to $24,000 a month:

According to a person with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department has imposed a limit of $200 an hour or $24,000 a month on attorneys’ fees. Top Justice Department attorneys generally earn no more than $100 per hour. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Though “lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil division often represent department employees who’re sued in connection with their official actions,” Gonzales’ lawyer said that “private counsel can often be useful where (department) officials are sued in an individual capacity, even where the suit has no substantive merit.”

A South Texas grand jury has returned multi-count indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on charges related to the alleged abuse of prisoners in Willacy County’s federal detention centers:

The indictment accuses Cheney and Gonzales of engaging in organized criminal activity. It criticizes Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and “at least misdemeanor assaults” on detainees by working through the prison companies.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation into abuses at the federal detention centers.