MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said this afternoon that Susan Rice’s withdrawal as a candidate for Secretary of State will not “help Republicans at all” because members of the party “forced out” a woman of color “before she was nominated.” For months now, Republicans, in an effort spearheaded by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have relentlessly pursued blocking Rice’s chances for a Secretary of State nomination. Mitchell explained her perspective on MSNBC earlier today:

MITCHELL: I think that this had become sort of an impossible challenge for her to be confirmed, that she realized that, the White House realized it as well. I think they know that they are on good political solid ground, as you were just pointing out. This is not going to help Republicans at all, the fact that a woman and a woman of color has been forced out of a confirmation process even before she was nominated.

Here’s the video:

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Fellow MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski similarly criticized the GOP last month for what “looks like a bunch of old white men running women out of Washington,” as Brzezinski said. “Do the Republicans really think this is going to help their brand?” Scarborough wondered, referring to the GOP’s campaign against Rice, adding:

“This is the first big fight following an election where Republicans got routed not just among African-Americans but among hispanics, among Asian-Americans. I really wonder do a bunch of old white guys…want to make their first big battle, post election, a battle going up against a younger woman of color?”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said in November that the use of racial “code words” was rampant in the GOP’s attacks on Rice.

NBC news is reporting Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration for Secretary of State. NBC’s Brian Williams reports that in a letter to the President, Rice said: “I am highly honored to be considered by you for appointment as Secretary of State.

“The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized. I am saddened that we have reached this point even before you have decided whom to nominate.” President Obama has also put out a statement reading in part: “While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment and put our national interests first.”

In a landmark ruling today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the CIA tortured a German citizen during his time in custody.

Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese decent, was found to have been taken in 2004 in a joint U.S.-Macedonian effort first to a hotel near the Skopje, Macedonia airport, then to an extraordinary rendition location — also referred to as a “black site” — in Afghanistan. In both locations, the Court has ruled that the actions of both the CIA and Macedonia qualified “beyond a reasonable doubt” as torture:

“Masri’s treatment at Skopje Airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction,” the court ruled.

It added: “Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court’s view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention].“

El-Masri was also awarded 60,000 Euros in the verdict, to be paid by Macedonia. The ruling is the first from Europe’s highest judicial authority on human rights that specifically labels the CIA’s actions during the Bush era of extraordinary rendition as torture.

According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the practice of taking foreign nationals to third countries for harsh interrogation, often utilizing torture, officially halted in 2009, as the U.S. sought to seek “assurances” that the host country would not utilize torture. Despite that, the renditions themselves remain classified, meaning the full extent of the current program is still unknown.

The ruling comes at a time when the debate over torture is reigniting in the United States. Depictions of the act in the film Zero Dark Thirty has prompted defenders of the torture program under the Bush administration to reemerge, while the Senate Intelligence Committee is due to approve a 6,000 page report on the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Thursday.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has no idea what happened in Benghazi but he does know that it’s worse than Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal times 10. Here’s King from a Washington Times article published on Wednesday:

“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,” Mr. King said. “I don’t think the public has any idea, and I tell you, I don’t either, of the chronology of the events — what took place, and who was where doing what and why. And all the way down through — we still haven’t seen an autopsy report on the ambassador yet. Simple questions that you would ask in the first 24 hours have not been asked yet.”

Of course, mainstream media outlets have extensively reported emerging details about the assault, many of which have undercut Repubican attempts to create a faux-scandal out of the events, over the past three months.

And perhaps King should consult ThinkProgress’ comprehensive timeline on Benghazi to get the details on what is publicly known about the attacks and their aftermath.

By Peter R. Neumann

The FBI arrested two men from Alabama on terrorism charges on Tuesday, claiming they wanted to travel to Somalia to join the militant group Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

According to the criminal complaint, the two met online and spent hundreds of hours in extremist online forums, talking to Al Qaeda supporters and watching the latest videos from “jihadist battlefronts” like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

They are the latest in a series of cases in which face-to-face radicalization seems to have been replaced by the internet. Today’s homegrown extremists, it appears, are no longer hanging out at radical mosques or being lured into extremism by real-world recruiters. They meet and socialize on extremist websites and get their information from mainstream platforms like YouTube, Paltalk, Facebook and Twitter.

Counterterrorism officials have long spotted this trend. Late last year, the White House promised an “internet strategy,” aimed at “countering and preventing violent extremist online radicalization.”

A new report by the Bipartisan Policy Center — published last week and endorsed by the former 9/11 Commission chairs Governor Tom Kean and Rep. Lee Hamilton — made suggestions for what this strategy should look like.

Some of its recommendations are counterintuitive.

Based on dozens of case studies and interviews with leading experts and officials, it concluded that online radicalization is here to stay, and that future attacks against the homeland will involve individuals who have been radicalized — at least in part — on the internet. However, it argues that “knocking down” websites or censoring the internet is not the solution.

Going through a long list of measures that can be used to remove content from the internet, the report concludes that doing so would not just be unconstitutional, but also ineffective.

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