Last Call For Rep. Mike Rogers

Michigan GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, is retiring.  But don't cry for him, he's heading for the wingnut talk radio circuit where the real money is.

“There is a whole celebrity political class in Washington, D.C., today that I think is doing a huge disservice to the functionality of our national security — who are using it to foment their isolationalist tendencies — and I think it is dangerous, really dangerous,” said Rogers, also criticizing some Republicans for “talking just like Obama’s foreign policy.”

He’s been a lonely voice, he says, for rational debate about what U.S. intelligence agencies do to protect the country.

“I don’t think I can change that dialogue unless I have a national platform,” he said

He downplayed his importance in Congress, saying a citizen legislature required new blood.

“Everybody knows their time. This institution is going to be fine — maybe even better off — who knows,” he joked.

He said he will become a radio talk show host for after his term ends in December — returning to a college passion. He plans to have former intelligence officials and ex-spies on his show but will also be talking about topics across the political spectrum.

“I did one radio show when I was in college that was a disaster — let’s give it a whirl — maybe I’ve gotten better at it,” he joked.

Rogers’ new radio show will air nationally starting in January as a syndicated host at Cumulus Radio.

“It gives me a chance to talk to people in their cars, in their living rooms, in their kitchens about these issues — about American exceptionalism, about national security,” he said.

 Cumulus owns hundreds of radio stations across the country, so his show will get national airplay.  It won't be the last you hear of this guy, that's for sure.

Governor Skeletor Collects The Loot

Why shouldn't Gov. Rick Scott use corporate lobbyist cash to fund his trips when the GOP has total control of the government in Florida and can write laws to make it legal?

Months before Florida Crystals Corp. won a no-bid contract to farm sugar on state-owned land, its top lobbyist and president met with Governor Rick Scott in the home of King Juan Carlos of Spain.

They got access during a 2012 trade mission underwritten by corporations including the company, which is co-owner of the Domino Sugar brand. The trip, intended to recruit businesses to Florida, also provided a lobbying opportunity for those already in the state. After the meeting at the palace, Florida Crystals executives joined Scott at a reception they sponsored, featuring Spanish omelets and dry-cured ham.

Governors increasingly are using corporate money to fund their excursions, often from businesses that stand to benefit from state decisions. While taxpayers traditionally paid for trade missions, at least 15 states have started collecting donations to cover costs, including six since 2010. Scott, a 61-year-old Republican, has tapped the private money most often, making 10 overseas visits in the past three years, twice the pace of his predecessor, according to public records.

“It’s an opportunity that the vast majority of people and companies never get,” said Hayden Dempsey, a Tallahassee lobbyist and former aide to the governor who went on the Spain trip. Scott, he said, was “very accessible.”

In the months after, Scott approved a 30-year lease extension that Florida Crystals sought on 8,700 acres of state land. He also signed a bill helping the company limit payments to clean up pollution near its South Florida farms.

That's how government works. Lobbyists buy the government with trips and loot and get the laws they need to make tons of profit at taxpayer expense, and they even get to destroy the environment free of charge. And all of this is 100% legal, because the laws are written to make it this way.  Free speech baby, free speech.

So what if regular Floridians get exploited and harmed?  Who cares?  They don't have the corporate billions.  If their rights meant anything, God would have made them rich enough to afford free speech.

It's the GOP way.

Someone Please Show Condi Rice The Door

Because her failures as National Security Adviser and as Secretary of State got us and kept us in two ridiculous wars that we'll be paying for in several ways for decades, anything she has to say about foreign policy is automatically void and meaningless.

Speaking before a group of over 2,000 attendees at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner in Washington D.C., former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice revived speculation in her future political prospects with a speech in which she took aim at America’s “weary” foreign policy under President Barack Obama.

“Right now, there’s a vacuum,” Rice said, according to a report via The Weekly Standard’s Stephen F. Hayes. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.”

Rice sited the ongoing civil war in Syria, the return of Al Qaeda to Iraq, China’s antagonism toward Japan and the Philippines, and Russia’s aggression in Europe as examples of how the post-Cold War order is beginning to fray.

“I fully understand the sense of weariness,” she revealed. “I fully understand that we must think: ‘Us, again?’ I know that we’ve been through two wars. I know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism.”

“I know that it’s hard,” Rice continued, “but leaders can’t afford to get tired. Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

And leaders can't afford to lie us into two wars of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands.  But keep telling yourself that running Condi Rice in 2016 is going to somehow work out better than McCain or Romney.

Run the war criminal, Republicans.  Watch what happens.

PS, if four deaths in Benghazi disqualifies Hillary Clinton from the White House, then Condi Rice disqualified herself about a thousand times over again.

StupidiNews!

• The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court ruling stopping parts of Texas's abortion laws, meaning the restrictions on clinics involving hospital admitting privileges will go into effect.
• New research estimates one out of every 68 US kids has autism, a 30 percent increase from 2012's estimates.
• After being indicted on corruption and firearms trafficking charges, California's Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, State Senator Leland Yee, has withdrawn from the race.
• FIFA officials say last-minute problems with Rio's World Cup venues are forcing the organization to "rethink" how it will handle the 2018 tournament.
• New studies show that medical marijuana laws may actually lower the violent crime rate in a state, but the jury is still out on full legalization's effects on crime.

Last Call For Bridge Trolls

Gov. Chris Christie, please pick up the white courtesy phone.  Your last shot at the White House 2016 is calling and may be a bit delayed in arrival.

The Port Authority official who oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge said he informed Gov. Chris Christie about it at a Sept. 11 memorial while the closings were occurring, according to the findings of an internal investigation released by lawyers for the governor on Thursday.

The official, David Wildstein, told Mr. Christie’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak, of the Sept. 11 conversation at a dinner in December just before his resignation from the Port Authority, according to the report.

The report said that Mr. Christie did not recall any such conversation, and it found no evidence that he was involved in the scheme, which snarled traffic for thousands of commuters in Fort Lee, N.J., from Sept. 9 through the morning of Sept. 12.

In other words, Christie is now dumping everything on his aides and playing dumb as his official position.  Oh and his own investigation says he's innocent.  Sure he is.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said today that former aides were "inexplicably stupid" when they allegedly shut down lanes of busy George Washington Bridge and flooded a New Jersey town with traffic.

The exclusive interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer was his first television interview since his January press conference on the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.

"When things were first reported, I said: 'This can't possibly be true. Because who would do something like that?'" Christie told Sawyer. "Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things."

Good luck sticking with that story, Chris.  You're going to need it.

I'm Surprised It Took This Long

Tommy Christopher points out this ugly steamrolling of Chris Hayes by Koch Brothers goon Jennifer Stefano.  She's all smiles at the beginning, and Chris Hayes of course tries his earnest best to be above the fray as the topic is Obamacare.  Five minutes later, Hayes is visibly stunned by the amount of pure bullshit Stefano has spewed on his show and he's clearly not sure what to do about it.



By the end Stefano is all but calling Hayes a woman-hating criminal.  He's had Stefano on his show before, but he's shocked that Stefano is ripping into him personally.  I'm sure he saw her as a friend up until this point, because the whole purpose of Chris Hayes's show is to have a decent discussion on the topics of the day's news.

The poor naive little lamb.

News flash, Chris:  Conservatives from Americans for Prosperity are not there to be your friend.  They are there to kick you in the head and spout as many lies per minute as they can about President Obama and his policies.  They are there to do exactly what Stefano did to you, that is use you like a punching bag and pummel you on your own show.  They are daring you to devolve into a screaming match, because lord knows if your goal is to try to inform your viewers about the Affordable Care Act, her job is to stop you from doing that, and she did exactly that.

The lesson you're supposed to draw from this is that conservatives from think tanks are not your friends, Chris.  They are your tormentors.

Maybe you should stop inviting them on your show?

Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

Russian troops continue to mass on the border with Eastern Ukraine as there appears to be no diplomatic solution in sight to Crimea.

U.S. and European security agencies estimate Russia has deployed military and militia units totaling more than 30,000 people along its border with eastern Ukraine, according to U.S. and European sources familiar with official reporting.

The current estimates represent what officials on both sides of the Atlantic describe as a continuing influx of Russian forces along the Ukraine frontier, the sources said.

The 30,000 figure represents a significant increase from a figure of 20,000 Russian troops along the border that was widely reported in U.S. and European media last week.

But U.S. and European security sources noted that these estimates are imprecise. Some estimates put current troop levels as high as 35,000 while others still suggest a level of 25,000, the sources said.

That's not the bad part.  The bad part is we don't know what they are up to, thanks to that sudden NSA blind spot of ours that developed in the last month or so.

U.S. officials said that what Russian President Vladimir Putin actually plans to do with his forces deployed on the Ukraine border is unknown. Some officials say intelligence information available to policymakers regarding what Putin is thinking, and what he is saying to his advisors and military commanders, is fragmentary to non-existent.

But the portents are potentially ominous. "No one's ruling out the possibility of additional Russian military aggression," one U.S. official said.

Crimea is one thing, but Eastern Ukraine is another.  Putin is playing with fire, and we're lacking the intel resources to see where he's going with this insanity.  An actual shooting war in Ukraine is not going to be good for anyone on Earth.

StupidiNews!

• In a major ruling the National Labor Relation Board has ruled that Northwestern University's football players are employees and can choose to form a union.
• Two Boston firefighters were killed and 17 people were injured in a nine-alarm apartment building fire in the Back Bay neighborhood.
• Bank of America will pay $9.3 billion to settle mortgage bond issues stemming from the financial crisis of 2008.
• Ukraine is on the verge of finalizing a deal with the International Monetary Fund for $15-$20 billion in aid loans.
• Sen. Joe Manchin is backing off his former stance to create legislation to ban Bitcoin as criticism of the plan has been harsh from both Silicon Valley and the IRS.

Last Call For Kick Started, Kicked Out

Barry Ritholtz makes a very important observation: this week's announcement that Oculus, the Kickstarter funded company making virtual 3-D gaming glasses technology that got bought for $2 billion by Facebook, proves that everything critics had to say about the deregulation of crowdsource funding in 2012's JOBS Act (including myself) was 100% accurate.

With Facebook acquiring virtual-reality company Oculus, one of the all time great sucker plays -- the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,” signed by President Barack Obama on April 1, 2012 -- has been revealed as the massive bait-and-switch it is. (The JOBS Act? Hows that for a misleading title?)

It is relatively uncommon for the chairperson of the SEC to object to new deregulation, but when new laws are thought to be anti-investor, it's no surprise. Regardless of strenuous objections, the JOBS Act became law, making it all-too-easy for companies to raise money. It was more of the same radical deregulation that helped cause the financial crisis. This was not about making markets work more smoothly, but rather, an extreme form of “smash & grab” capitalism.

Bill Black called it a “recipe for fraud.” But Professor Black was wrong -- it's not a fraud, it’s a scam. You see, fraud involves something where there is a violation of the law; no rules appear to have been broken here. This is how the JOBS Act is supposed to work: Let people make dumb decisions on their own, without any protection.

A scam on the other hand, is when people are legally duped out of their money. When the auto dealer offers you “rust-proofing,” it’s a scam. When a retail stockbroker offers you entry into a special purpose acquisition company, it’s a scam. Ordering something from a late-night infomercial -- Order now, and get a 2nd one free, you just pay shipping & handling! -- is a scam. These are legal ways to separate fools from their money.

And who got scammed?  Why, the Kickstarter backers, of course.

What did the KickStarter funders of Oculus get? Note I use "funder" and not "investor," because investors have a potential for an investment return. These funders, who backed the company three months after the JOBS Act passed, did not. As the Journal noted, they were promised “a sincere thank you from the Oculus team.” And, for $25, a T-shirt. For $300, the dangle of “an early developer kit” including a prototype headset. Total money raised: $2.4 million from 9,500 contributors.

Which just got turned into $2 billion.  The Kickstarter folks get a t-shirt for seeing their investment multiplied a thousand-fold.

And from a legal standpoint, thanks to the deregulation in the JOBS Act that the GOP created, they don't even have to cough up the damn t-shirt.  Legally, they get nothing.

Working as intended.  Have you contributed to any startups through Kickstarter or any other crowdsourced avenue since the JOBS Act became law?

Might want to reconsider in the future.  Very much so.

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon Arrested On Federal Corruption Charges

Wow, Patrick Cannon didn't even make it through his first year as Mayor of Charlotte before getting arrested on bribery and corruption charges.  And yes, he's a Democrat.  There are bad politicians who are Democrats just as there are bad politicians who are Republicans.

The mayor of Charlotte was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigations on Wednesday on charges that he violated federal public corruption laws.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Patrick DeAngelo Cannon was charged with theft and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, honest services wire fraud and extortion under color of official right.

According to court documents, during the course of a separate criminal investigation, the FBI received reliable information that Cannon, a Democrat, was potentially involved in illegal activities associated with his position as an elected official, and began an undercover investigation in or about August 2010.

The complaint and affidavit allege that during the course of that investigation, Cannon allegedly solicited and accepted money bribes and things of value from undercover FBI agents, posing as commercial real estate developers and investors wishing to do business in Charlotte.

According to the documents, Cannon solicited and accepted bribes and items of value in exchange for the use of his official position as Charlotte Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and/or as a City Council Member.

The complaint and law enforcement affidavit allege that Cannon accepted the bribes from the undercover FBI agents on five separate occasions.

On the last occasion, on February 21, Cannon allegedly accepted $20,000 in cash in the Mayor's office.

According to the complaint and the affidavit, between January 2013 and February 2014, Cannon allegedly accepted from the undercover agents over $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room, and use of a luxury apartment in exchange for the use of his official position.

The big question of course is that Cannon was elected Mayor last just November, and the sting goes back his City Council days in 2010.  He's been under investigation for nearly four years.  Cannon certainly would have lost to Republican Edwin Peacock for Mayor if he had been arrested six months ago after Mayor Anthony Foxx went on to become US Transportation Secretary.  Of course, he would have lost in the primaries to City Councilman James Mitchell too, so.

So why now?  The bulk of this stuff happened before he was Mayor.  Cannon also owned the largest private parking company in Charlotte, E-Z Parking, and you can imagine the kind of nonsense that went on there in deals between the company and the city.

Republicans are calling on Cannon to resign immediately.

Also, dammit Democrats.  Stop this.  You're better than this.

Jurist Prudence

If there was a moment in yesterday's Supreme Court oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case where things got weird, convoluted, and political, it was when Justice Elena Kagan quoted Justice Antonin Scalia's own arguments from 1990 on why your boss's religious views should not affect employees:

During oral arguments Tuesday about the validity of Obamacare's birth control mandate, Justice Elena Kagan cleverly echoed Justice Antonin Scalia's past warning that religious-based exceptions to neutral laws could lead to "anarchy."

"Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard," she told Paul Clement, the lawyer arguing against the mandate for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. "So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative."

Kagan's remarks might sound familiar to the legally-trained ear. In a 1990 majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia alluded to the same examples of what might happen if religious entities are permitted to claim exemptions from generally applicable laws. He warned that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."

Of course, that was 24 years ago when the President was a Republican, so this time around those religious exceptions to a law a Democratic president signed into law are necessary, in Scalia's eyes.   But in 1990, he wisely wrote of "slippery slope" arguments.

"The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," Scalia wrote in the 6-3 opinion, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."

In other words, if Hobby Lobby is allowed to except itself from Obamacare's mandate, what can't it except itself from?  That's the golden ticket..

StupidiNews!

• LA County Sheriff's Department investigators have concluded that "Fast & Furious" movie star Paul Walker was killed while driving too fast, at least 80 MPH in a 45 MPH zone.
• As expected, as US appeals court has extended the stay of same-sex marriages in Michigan pending the state's appeal over the unconstitutional finding of its ban on the practice.
• The death toll in Sunday's mudslide near Seattle is up to 14, with dozens still reported missing as search and rescue teams comb through the area.
• Senate majority leader Harry Reid has removed legislation from a Ukraine aid package boosting the International Monetary Fund opposed by the GOP in exchange for quick passage later this week.
• Minecraft developer Markus "Notch" Persson has canceled plans to bring the game to the Oculus Rift 3-D display system after the company's surprise acquisition by Facebook on Tuesday.

Last Call For One Hell Of A Coincidence

Business Insider writer Michael Kelley is asking the right questions here about our old friend Dudebro Defector and the NSA's sudden blind spot in Russia.

U.S. officials think that Russia recently obtained the ability to evade U.S. eavesdropping equipment while commandeering Crimea and amassing troops near Ukraine's border.

The revelation reportedly has the White House "very nervous," especially because it's unclear how the Kremlin hid its plans from the National Security Agency's snooping on digital and electronic communications.

One interesting fact involved is the presence of Edward Snowden in Russia, where he has been living since flying to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23.

In July, primary Snowden source Glenn Greenwald told The Associated Press that Snowden "is in possession of literally thousands of documents that contain very specific blueprints that would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it."

So it's either a crazy coincidence that the Russians figured out how to evade NSA surveillance while hosting the NSA-trained hacker, or else it implies that Snowden provided the Russians with access to the NSA's blueprint.

No doubt Kelley's article is going to draw a massive screed from Double G and the usual suspects.  But as the people who support Snowden's actions remind us, we need to have a serious debate about American intelligence capabilities, and that includes debating the consequences of someone with the vast knowledge of these capabilities defecting to a foreign country.

I've said on a number of occasions that the actions of Snowden and his partners are not consistent with the goal of reigning in the NSA through existing means, but very consistent with the goal of taking it upon themselves to irreparably damage our intelligence-gathering abilities as a lesson to the Unites States government.

The threats have been made that if anything happens to Snowden, the full trove of information would be leaked. 

It's a reasonable question to ask if that's already happened.

Honey Badger Mode Activated

Sen. Harry Reid came out swinging Monday afternoon as the US Senate returned to work, noting that recent Republican filibustering of a Russian sanctions bill may not only have not helped portray the US as weak, but actually contributed to the Russian invasion of Crimea.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that Republicans may have helped Russia annex Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in a surprisingly sharp attack ahead of a test vote on a bill authorizing more U.S. sanctions on Russia and $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine.

Outlining the Senate's agenda after a one-week recess, the Nevada Democrat said the first item would be the Ukraine bill that Republicans blocked just before lawmakers went on break. He urged Republicans to consider "how their obstruction affects United States' national security as well as the people of Ukraine" and said their delay of any congressional action "sent a dangerous message to Russian leaders."

"Since a few Republicans blocked these important sanctions last work period, Russian lawmakers voted to annex Crimea and Russian forces have taken over Ukrainian military bases," Reid said. "It's impossible to know whether events would have unfolded differently if the United States had responded to Russian aggression with a strong, unified voice."

Reid's charge comes despite widespread support among Republicans and Democrats in Congress for providing Ukraine with much-needed economic assistance and hitting Russian President Vladimir Putin's government with sanctions.

And GOP Senate aides noted the House has passed different legislation, meaning the Senate bill could not have become law before recess anyhow. They blamed Reid and Democrats for blocking the Senate from taking up the House legislation.

Nice to see the former Golden Gloves boxer actually throw a few punches for once instead of constantly taking Republican shots on the jaw.  Yes, Republicans did block Senate legislation on Ukraine sanctions, and it's good that somebody pointed this out.

It's Taxpayer-Funded School Creationism Time!

Pay attention class, because this is what the rapidly growing charter school movement is doing to US science education.

Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies.

Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment.

Public debate about science education tends to center on bills like one in Missouri, which would allow public school parents to pull their kids from science class whenever the topic of evolution comes up. But the more striking shift in public policy has flown largely under the radar, as a well-funded political campaign has pushed to open the spigot for tax dollars to flow to private schools. Among them are Bible-based schools that train students to reject and rebut the cornerstones of modern science.

I've talked before about Jeb Bush and his privatization mess in Florida, from his for-profit disaster relief scam to his own charter school nonsense (the number one reason why he can never be allowed in the White House) but this is already a reality in a third of America and that number is growing as cash-strapped states are turning to church cash to fund schools.  And of course, there's a catch:

Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do. A POLITICO review of hundreds of pages of course outlines, textbooks and school websites found that many of these faith-based schools go beyond teaching the biblical story of the six days of creation as literal fact. Their course materials nurture disdain of the secular world, distrust of momentous discoveries and hostility toward mainstream scientists. They often distort basic facts about the scientific method — teaching, for instance, that theories such as evolution are by definition highly speculative because they haven’t been elevated to the status of “scientific law.”

And this approach isn’t confined to high school biology class; it is typically threaded through all grades and all subjects.

One set of books popular in Christian schools calls evolution “a wicked and vain philosophy.” Another derides “modern math theorists” who fail to view mathematics as absolute laws ordained by God. The publisher notes that its textbooks shun “modern” breakthroughs — even those, like set theory, developed back in the 19th century. Math teachers often set aside time each week — even in geometry and algebra — to explore numbers in the Bible. Students learn vocabulary with sentences like, “Many scientists today are Creationists.”

Awesome.  And it's only going to get worse.

Some 26 states are now considering enacting new voucher programs or expanding existing ones, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. One concept that is gaining popularity, on the table in eight states: setting up individual bank accounts stocked with state funds that parents can spend not just on tuition but also on tutors or textbooks, both secular and religious. On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the approach constitutional; lawmakers there are already working to broaden eligibility.

Taxpayer money to buy creationist textbooks is just the tip of the iceberg.  We're setting up to produce a generation of FOX News viewers, fed from Kindergarten.

And they'll grow up to be FOX News voters, too.