Some promising presidential appointment news for those of us committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture -- Leon Panetta has been named director of the CIA, and Dawn Johnson has been appointed to head the Office of Legal Council. (The OLC is the branch of the Department of Justice that advises the White House on the lawfulness of its actions. Previous office-holder, John Yoo, was the author of the infamous torture memos, intended to provide a legal framework for torture during the Bush administration).

Panetta's condemnation of torture (and specifically, the manipulation of fear to justify it) and Johnson's call for the OLC to serve as a much-need check, not "rubber-stamp" for the administration have anti-torture acolytes Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald feeling optimistic.

However, as we've noted previously, public pronouncements of policy ideals are one thing, implementation is wholly another. As today's story about the military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan shows, ending morally questionable interrogation and detention practices will be a complicated task indeed.

In other words, we have reason to be encouraged but not complacent. Let's keep up the pressure, and hopefully we'll see real progress soon.