Cheney Should Have Run in 2008

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

Hillary Clinton, as 'buyer's remorse' plagues a third of the country

(NEWSER) - The most popular politician nationwide is the one that got away: Hillary Clinton. Nearly two-thirds of the country sees the secretary of state favorably, and a third are battling what Bloomberg terms “buyer’s remorse” over not electing her president. Just over a year ago, only a quarter of Americans felt that way. “Looking back, I wonder if she would have been a stronger leader, knowing the games and the politics and all that goes on,” says a Florida woman. “I don’t think she would have bent as much.” More»

Dick Cheney makes a farce of our 'rule of law': Dahlia Lithwick

(NEWSER) - With his memoir, and accompanying media blitz, Dick Cheney is trying to provoke us into once again discussing the merits of torture, a topic “about as compelling as a debate about the efficacy of slavery or Jim Crow laws,” writes Dahlia Lithwick of Slate . Almost everyone agrees torture isn’t effective, ethical, or legal. Except it must be legal, Lithwick writes, because Cheney got away with it. More»

Group wants torture allegations investigated

(NEWSER) - Human Rights Watch wants George W. Bush and his top officials prosecuted for war crimes and criminal conspiracy, the Guardian reports. In a new report, the US group calls for foreign governments to move forward with the prosecution if the Obama administration does not investigate. In addition to allegations of torture and prisoner mistreatment, the report also accuses the Bush administration's legal team of conspiring to prepare invalid opinions authorizing such abuses. More»