Attorney General Eric Holder has opened an inquiry into CIA torture. On Monday, Holder appointed veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to look into whether CIA interrogators and contractors should be charged for the torture and abuse of foreign prisoners. Holder says he ordered the probe in response to a Justice Department recommendation to reopen nearly a dozen prisoner abuse cases that the Bush administration had closed. Holder says he was further influenced by the 2004 CIA report on the prisoners’ torture and abuse, which he released on Monday.

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The New York Times is reporting the CIA hired contractors from Blackwater in 2004 as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of al-Qaeda. The CIA spent several million dollars on the program, which the Times claims did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. We speak to independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of the bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

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As premier of Saskatchewan, Tommy Douglas pioneered a number of progressive policies there, including the expansion of public utilities, unionization and public auto insurance. But his biggest achievement was the creation of universal health insurance, called Medicare. It passed in Saskatchewan in 1962, guaranteeing hospital care for all residents. The rest of Canada soon followed, province by province. After his death, Douglas earned the title of “The Greatest Canadian” in a poll by the CBC.

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Documents released by Congress this week offer powerful new evidence that Karl Rove and other senior Bush administration figures took the lead in the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006. We speak to former New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias, who was fired after refusing Republican pressure to take on allegations of voter fraud and pursue cases against Democrats to help a Republican lawmaker’s re-election campaign.

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