Sanity Breaking Out All Over

This is encouraging:

House and Senate negotiators working on an intelligence bill have agreed to limit CIA interrogators to techniques approved by the military, which would effectively bar them from using such harsh methods as waterboarding, congressional aides said Wednesday.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees decided to include the ban while working out differences in their respective bills authorizing 2008 spending for intelligence programs, according to the aides, who spoke anonymously because the negotiations were private. Details of the bill are to be made public Thursday.

That will set the stage for another veto fight with President Bush, who last summer issued an executive ordered allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what's allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual.

Fight Bush. Make the Republicans cast a vote for torture. Expose them.

Why I say that sanity is breaking out all over is that I'm including this deal on freezing mortgage rates that actually might (gasp!) help some people.

The Bush administration has hammered out an agreement to freeze interest rates on certain subprime mortgages for five years to combat an escalating number of home foreclosures, congressional aides said Wednesday.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not been released, said the five-year moratorium was a compromise between desires by banking regulators for a time frame of up to seven years and mortgage-industry arguments that the freeze should last only one or two years.

Another person familiar with the matter said the rate freeze would apply to borrowers with loans made from Jan. 1, 2005, through July 30 of this year with rates that are scheduled to rise between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 31, 2010.

"Fixing the reset period is an important action, and it's good that everyone now seems to be pushing in the same direction," said Michael Barr, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

It's a stopgap, but anything that allows some homeowners a little relief from predatory lending is a positive step.

And...

A new agreement between the Pentagon and the State Department gives the military in Iraq more control over Blackwater Worldwide and other private security contractors.

The agreement was signed Wednesday at the Pentagon by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, whose department uses Blackwater to guard its diplomats. It spells out rules, standards and guidelines for the use of private security contractors.

The agreement also says contractors will be accountable for criminal acts under U.S. law. That partly clarifies what happens if a contractor breaks the law, but leaves the details to be worked out with Congress.

If I didn't know any better, I'd say we had a functioning government that responds to challenges.

UPDATE: It should be noted that the deal to freeze subprime rates should only effect about 12 precent of all borrowers in distress. That's better than 0%, but is insufficient to deal with the crisis. Atrios thinks it won't do a damn thing. I maybe jumped the gun.