Just a bunch of links I’ve collected for my American Dialogues course:

The first round. I’m mixing commentary from bloggers with that of columnists for the “traditional media,” as well as overview news articles. More later, ac (after coffee).

• Michael Berube, Debate summary (in which, for once, I do not pretend to be a Republican)
• Andy Cline, It’s not a game, Not just another day, Mr. Lehrer.
• Dan Froomkin, The President Gets Defensive (WaPo)
• Howard Kurtz, Spin the Battle (WaPo)
• Lawrence Lessig, Reporting the debate
• Michael Powell, The Battle, If Not The War, To Kerry; Bush Hit Off-Notes With Debate Viewers (WaPo)
• Dana Milbank, Reaction Shots May Tell Tale of Debate; Bush’s Scowls Compared to Gore’s Sighs (WaPo)

And a second round of links to post-debate commentary:

• David Broder, Bush’s Real Opponent (WaPo)
• David Brooks, Sense and Sensibility (NY Times)
• Richard S. Dunham, Kerry Lands the First Punch
  (Business Week)
• Jim Lindgren, A Comment on the Debates (Volokh Conspiracy)
• Lots of comments at Little Green Footballs
  
• Michelle Malkin,
  Random Post-Debate Thoughts
  
• Media Matters, After “make-or-break” buildup, CNN commentators downplayed debates’ significance
  
• The First Debate, staff editorial at NY Times
• Several letters to the editor at the NY Times: “After the First Debate, Americans See a Winner“
• Andrew Sullivan
  
• Ciro Scotti, See Bush Debate. See Him Squirm.
  (Business Week)
• Talking Points Memo, Now comes the hard part: winning the spin
  
• The First Debate, staff editorial at WaPo.

Tonight’s presidential debate is on foreign policy. I know what I’d like the first question to be.

Others have made this point, but it bears repeating: Maybe you don’t think it’s wrong to torture people. Maybe your conception of “evildoers” is such that you can think of them as less deserving of human rights than others. But have you ever stopped to think that the more the world perceives the U.S. as a nation that condones and facilitates oppression, pain, suffering, and injustice, the more likely we are to suffer oppression, pain, suffering, and injustice ourselves? When our soldiers are captured by the people they are fighting, what is their treatment likely to be when it’s known around the world that we stop at nothing to get what we want?

“Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects to Nations That Might Torture Them,” by Dana Priest and Charles Babington (Washington Post):

The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership’s intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.

The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.

The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department “really wants and supports” the provision.