The US used to torture people. We're about to learn just how bad it got.

1. What we're about to know about torture

• The Senate intelligence committee is expected to release a report on the CIA's torture program Tuesday morning.

  [The Guardian / Spencer Ackerman]

• "The report … describes how senior al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened by his interrogators with a buzzing power drill."

  [Reuters / Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason]

• "The report documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick."

• As it stands, we don't know a whole lot about the extent of the US torture regime, but this Jane Mayer piece from 2007 details much of what we do know.

  [New Yorker / Jane Mayer]

• The fact that the CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes means there's a lot we may never know about US torture practices.

  [NYT / Mark Mazzetti]

• The Obama administration has beefed up security at US facilities abroad in anticipation of protests.

  [NBC News / Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Carrie Dann]

• Noted torturer and former CIA covert ops chief Jose Rodriguez defends the torture he did.

  [Washington Post / Jose Rodriguez]

• Some, like former CIA chief Michael Hayden, have argued releasing the report will encourage more attacks, but it's not really clear how that would work.

  [Washington Post / Dan Drezner]

• Reports suggested that Secretary of State John Kerry had similar concerns, but the State Department insists otherwise.

  [Bloomberg View / Josh Rogin]

• George W. Bush calls the CIA personnel who conducted the torture "really good people and we’re lucky as a nation to have them."

  [NYT / Peter Baker]

• The case for torture reparations.

  [New Republic / Jessica Schulberg]

2. Misc. - politics

• Big shot GOP donors are split between Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Mitt Romney — and are already being asked to commit to one.

  [NYT / Nicholas Confessore]

• House and Senate leaders are finalizing details on a massive spending bill that will fund everything but the Department of Homeland Security through next September.

  [Washington Post / Ed O'Keefe]

• But the process is taking longer than expected and may be pushed right up until funding is about to expire.

  [Roll Call / Matt Fuller and Emma Dumain]

• Mary Landrieu lost her Senate seat over the weekend, meaning Republicans will have a 54 seat majority.

  [New Orleans Times-Picayune / Cole Avery]

• Economic cycles and political cycles don't line up predictably, which is harmful to democracy.

  [Bloomberg View / Jonathan Bernstein]

• The conservative case for reining in the police.

  [Slate / Reihan Salam]

3. Misc. - other

• Thirteen people were killed in a botched US special forces raid in Yemen, including the two hostages it was conducted to rescue.

  [Reuters / Mohammed Ghobari and Mohammed Mukhashaf]

• How watermelons became a racist trope.

  [The Atlantic / William Black]

• A convincing body of research suggests that open office plans are a bad idea.

  [New Yorker / Maria Konnikova]

• Google found 56.1 percent of ads on their platforms are never "in view" (visible for a second or more) for any users.

  [Quartz / Zach Wener-Fligner]

• The case for brain drain from developing countries.

  [The Atlantic / Alexandra Ossol]

• For the sake of the long-term unemployed, the Fed should let inflation go a little higher than planned.

  [FT / Gene Sperling]

4. Verbatim

• "So he stole into the x-ray room, took a urinary catheter, made a slit in his own arm, threaded it up his vein and into his own heart and convinced a nurse to help him take a series of nine x-rays showing the tube inside his own heart."

  [The Guardian / Atul Gawande]

• "For the people of Old Bhopal who woke up on the night of December 2, finding it difficult to breathe, their eyes burning, it was as if some great, unknown evil had taken place."

  [The Baffler / Siddhartha Deb]

• "According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Jackson's 39 years is the longest wrongful incarceration term to end in release in American history."

  [Cleveland Scene / Kyle Swenson]

• "Atlantic City is a graveyard, and the Taj Mahal—conveniently located a few yards east of a funeral parlor—is next in line to be buried, the fifth Atlantic City casino to close in the last year."

  [Daily Beast / Olivia Nuzzi]

• "When I first met Ilana I thought she was Maeby from Arrested Development."

  [Broad City's Abbi Jacobson to Vanity Fair / Nell Scovell]

• "The domination of the Supreme Court docket by firms that commonly represent business interests has a direct, largely unseen effect on consumers seeking to sue corporations: These individuals must select from a much smaller and, in many instances, less successful pool of lawyers to handle their cases."

  [Reuters / John Shiffman, Janet Roberts, and Joan Biskupic]

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