President Obama's Department of Justice had said that it planned to release still more secret torture memos written by notorious UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo. But now there is word that the administration may go back on that promise. According to the New York Times and Newsweek, high-ranking Obama adviser John Brennan is leading a campaign within the White House to keep the memos under wraps. And journalist/human rights attorney Scott Horton is also reporting that top Republican Senators are blackmailing the administration, promising to block key legal appointments if the president makes the memo public.

At the same time, the New York Review of Books last night published the entire International Red Cross report on torture. Previously only parts of the damaging report had been made public. The full report demands investigations and prosecutions of the people responsible for torturing up to 14 prisoners it examined. Remember, it was Yoo who gave the Bush administration legal authority to torture people. Presumably, Yoo would be a target of the Red Cross' investigation demand, which is all the more reason for why the Berkeley law professor's work should be released.

-- Robert Gammon