The New York Times: on Homeland Security

James Mattis: Don't revisit old issues; let women in combat roles

Mattis said that he had no intention of revisiting the Obama administration's decisions on social issues at the Defense Department, like the opening of combat roles to women.

Mike Pompeo: No torture, including coercive methods like waterboarding

Elizabeth Warren: Reduce size of standing army to reduce deficit

Only late in the debate did Warren try to explain why and how she would cut the military budget. She said that Brown's determination not to raise taxes meant that the budget would not be balanced and the deficit would not be reduced, which would lead to across-the-board cuts in all agencies. She would rather make planned cuts, such as by reducing the size of the standing army, she said, than allow across-the-board cuts that could hurt needed programs.

Merrick Garland: Release non-enemy combatants from Guantanamo prison

The imprisonment of the 17 Uighurs has drawn wide attention because of their claim that although they were in Afghanistan when the US invaded in 2001, they were never enemies of this country and were mistakenly swept into Guantanamo.

The one-paragraph notice from the appeals court said a three-judge panel [including Merrick Garland] found in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, a former fruit peddler who made his way from western China to a Uighur camp in Afghanistan. "The court directed the government to release or to transfer Parhat, or to expeditiously hold a new tribunal," the notice said. It said the court had found "invalid" the military's decision that he was an enemy combatant.