Yesterday on Twitter, Salon's Glenn Greenwald promised followers a forthcoming story detailing allegations of torture against Private First Class Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking to WikiLeaks. Manning, you may recall, is currently in the brig at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

"A major story brewing is the cruel, inhuman treatment - torture - to which Bradley Manning is being subjected: more to come shortly," Greenwald pledged on December 14. Greenwald's story was published early this morning.

So what was Greenwald's big scoop? What's the "torture" that Manning is subjected to?

If you said that he's in solitary confinement, can't watch MSNBC, and doesn't get a soft pillow with his cot, you guessed correctly (emphases mine):

What happens when the Left likes Stephen Colbert more than Jon Stewart? In a Tuesday interview on taxpayer-funded Pacifica Radio program Democracy Now, radical lefty Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com loved Colbert's "March to Keep Fear Alive," but did not like the centrist-against-extremists pose of Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity," since all the extremism is on the Right, and there's only tiny fringes of that on the Left. First, Colbert:  

Well, that, I think, is actually something that I found incredibly encouraging, because the rally there is “to keep fear alive.” And, of course, the American right is dependent, more than anything else, on fear. And as we talked about earlier, Democrats use fear, as well, to motive their base. And so, the role that fear plays in our political culture and the way in which politicians exploit that, I think, is one of the most central issues. And to the extent this rally is designed to mock that, I think that’s a good thing.

It turns out that Colbert's fake-conservative bashing of "Fear" is a more authentic liberal pose than Stewart's phony centrism, but Greenwald resents Stewart's "Million Moderates March" pose precisely because of his "very influential voice" in the media and on the Left:

Last Wednesday, Keith Olbermann falsely compared statements Samuel Alito made during his 2006 Supreme Court confirmation hearings to the now controversial and seemingly racist remark Sonia Sotomayor uttered during a 2001 speech.

In her lecture to the Boalt School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, Barack Obama's nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

By contrast, Alito in 2006 talked about his background indeed impacting his decisions, but never said that would make him "more often than not reach a better conclusion than" women of a different race.

Olbermann, as he so often does with his agenda-driven drivel, missed this obvious distinction (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

On Wednesday, NewsBusters reported the continued angst the Netroots are feeling about presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama's recent flip-flops while pointing out how few media outlets seem interested.

Surprisingly, the New York Times Wednesday not only addressed Markos Moulitsas's decision to withhold a campaign contribution to the junior senator from Illinois, but also reported the growing concern of many Obama supporters.

The piece, entitled "Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity," was written by none other than James Risen, who readers should remember as the co-author of the controversial December 2005 article "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" (emphasis added throughout):