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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder - Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. More

Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal. He previously served as the politics editor, and is now a contributing editor, for The Atlantic, where he curated the influential Politics channel on TheAtlantic.com and contributed to the magazine. He was also a chief political consultant to CBS News. Earlier, at NJ's Hotline, Ambinder was the founding editor of "Hotline On Call," a pathbreaking political news blog. He also worked as a producer and reporter for the ABC News Political Unit and was one of the founders of ABC's "The Note." Born in New York City, raised in Central Florida, Ambinder is a 2001 graduate of Harvard and lives in Washington, D.C.

The Sunday Shows In Five Sentences Or Less

By Marc Ambinder
Aug 30 2009, 1:27 PM ET Comment

Miss the Sunday shows? Here's a quick recap.

1. On This Week, Liz Cheney insisted that waterboarding wasn't torture. On Fox, Dick Cheney said he didn't know whether he'd speak to a prosecutor who asked for an interview with him. (Full transcript here.) He said that even in cases where the EITs went beyond what the Justice Department had authorized, he was OK with it. Cheney also acknowledged that he pushed for military action against Iran during the latter years of the Bush administration. He also said that the CIA was directed not to report about the recently canceled Al Q targeting program until it was operational, but he didn't say whether he had given the order.

2. On CNN's State of the Union, Sen. Orrin Hatch endorsed the idea of appointing Vicki Kennedy to serve as senator from Massachusetts until a special election is held. He said the public option was, for all intents and purposes, not going ot pass.

3. Democrats said the DOJ investigation into the CIA's EIT program was appropriate; Republicans, save for John McCain, said it wasn't.

4. Dianne Feinstein, on torture: "It did produce some information, but there is a great discrepancy, and I think a good deal of error out there in what people are saying it did produce. And we need to straighten that out."  McCain: " I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan. I think that these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq who told me that. I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And so -- and I believe that information according to the FBI and others could have been gained through other methods."

5. Meet the Press's full-hour Kennedy tribute.


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Marc Ambinder
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