Whole Lot of Torture Going On, Yeah

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With President Barack Obama away on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, you might think things would slow down in DC. But after a slow morning, today turned into a big news day. The latest news is Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the Justice Department will begin a preliminary inquiry into the treatment of terrorist suspects. The inquiry could lead to prosecutions. Obama will let Holder decide exactly how to proceed, according to the New York Times. The Center for Constitutional Rights is complaining that the inquiry seems to be limited to CIA employees who went beyond what-John-Yoo-wrote. But it’s not hard to see how the inquiry might snowball. Either way, the White House will try to distance itself from any political consequences of the Holder inquiry by highlighting the Attorney General’s “independence.” Bill Burton, the deputy White House press secretary, made that much clear today. From the Times:

“Well, as the president has said repeatedly, he thinks that we should be looking forward, not backward,” [Burton] told reporters in Oak Bluffs, Mass., where Mr. Obama is vacationing. “He does agree with the attorney general that anyone who conducted actions that had been sanctioned should not be prosecuted.”

The “he does agree,” part seems to imply that there are some things Holder believes with which the president does not agree. But the “it’s not me, it’s my Attorney General” line is going to be a tough one to hold.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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