Who Watches The Guys Watching The Watchmen?

Smartypants has a hell of point here on Glenn Greenwald and the NSA leaks:  the person deciding whether or not there is any harm is declassifying these programs to the public is...Glenn Greenwald.

I appreciate very much that Glenn is owning responsibility. I think that is important. But once again, the question comes back to trust. What he's suggesting is that we should trust him to calibrate the potential for harm from this information being leaked. He evaluates that and then decides on the balance between public value and harm.

 

And no, Greenwald believes there's no harm in everything he's leaked so far.  Zero.  But he's made that decision himself.

 

I think that's why this story has grabbed me so strongly. The level of harm this particular leak might/might not have caused is not self-evident to me. But of all people on the planet I want to see making decisions about something like that, Glenn Greenwald is near the bottom of my list. I fear this is dangerous territory we've entered when ideologues like Greenwald and Rosen are the arbiters of our national security. 

 

So my question for Greenwald is this:  when is the government allowed to have secrets, and why are you the one making that judgment, rather than the President?

Leaking Like A Sieve

Steve M. is asking the right questions about the timing of this week's NSA "revelations".  Who benefits from this, and why now?  The benefit part is easy:  Republicans who are going after the President, not the policy they passed and renewed.

Result: Obama's approval ratings go down; Democrats (and only Democrats) are associated in the public mind with highly intrusive "big government"; Republicans make significant gains in the 2014 midterms; this scandal and others hurt the Democrats' 2016 presidential candidate the way Monicagate hurt Al Gore in 2000 ... and yet the surveillance state remains in place, and is possibly even expanded in secret by President Christie or Rubio or Jeb (all of whom would be likely to stock their administrations with veterans of the Bush White House).

The right is working hard to make us forget that these policies were the work of two presidents from two different parties, endorsed in a bipartisan way in Congresses that have had several shifts in party control, and mostly OK'd by the courts. For the right, the real and faux scandals of the past few months are table-setters for this week's revelations.

And that's really the crux of this.  This was a program that was in operation supposedly since 2007, created under Bush and Patriot Act.   But we're only finding out about this now, just after A) Republican sources lied about Benghazi emails to get that story back in the news, B) a Republican appointee planted a bombshell question about the IRS "targeting" the Tea Party in 2010 , and C) A FOX News contributor was being investigated by the DoJ for a leak in 2009.

Now we have D) where an ongoing and renewed six-year classified program is being leaked to Glenn Greenwald, a guy who virulently dislikes the President, the NSA, and the federal government.  Greenwald completely blew the story out of proportion and he's all but promising more soon. All of these leaks and scandals came down in the space of just five weeks. 

Has anyone bothered to ask why?

I'm thinking no.  You should be.  Republicans are trying to pretend they have nothing to do with any of these issues, and in the words of El Rushbo, America is under a "coup" by the illegitimate usurper President.  We're seeing an "atmosphere of endless scandal" being built right before our eyes and at every turn the President, not the policy, is under attack.  They are all policies the Republicans supported and used, but now it's all Obama's fault.

All this seems awfully convenient for the GOP, doesn't it?  There's a reason for that.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A gunman in Santa Monica, California was killed in a firefight with police after killing four and wounding five others.
• After allegedly framing her estranged husband, a Texas woman has been arrested in connection with sending threatening letters laced with ricin to the White House.
• Michigan Congressman John Dingell has become the longest-serving member of Congress, surpassing the late Sen. Robert Byrd's 57-year plus career length this week.
• The commanding general of US Army forces in Japan has been suspended after allegedly failing to investigate allegations of sexual assault.
• China has reclaimed the mantle of the most powerful supercomputer with the Tianhe-2, clocking in at a massive 30.65 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.

Last Call For Season Six

David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire and several other shows, thinks America needs to stop being quite so damn paranoid over PRISM.

You would think that the government was listening in to the secrets of 200 million Americans from the reaction and the hyperbole being tossed about. And you would think that rather than a legal court order which is an inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed, something illegal had been discovered to the government’s shame.

Nope. Nothing of the kind. Though apparently, the U.K.’s Guardian, which broke this faux-scandal, is unrelenting in its desire to scale the heights of self-congratulatory hyperbole. Consider this from Glenn Greenwald, the author of the piece: “What this court order does that makes it so striking is that it’s not directed at any individual…it’s collecting the phone records of every single customer of Verizon business and finding out every single call they’ve made…it’s indiscriminate and it’s sweeping.”

Having labored as a police reporter in the days before the Patriot Act, I can assure all there has always been a stage before the wiretap, a preliminary process involving the capture, retention and analysis of raw data. It has been so for decades now in this country. The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the FBI and NSA are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. But the legal and moral principles? Same old stuff.

It's a pretty sobering column, and considering the speed at which national security minded Republicans are suddenly pretending deafness and blindness to the program in order to avoid any responsibility for it, I'm going to agree with Simon here. 

For his part, President Obama addressed PRISM today:

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Mr. Obama said, delivering a 14-minute answer to two questions about the surveillance programs at an event that was initially supposed to be devoted to the health care law. “That’s not what this program is about.” 

The president’s remarks, during a four-day trip to the West Coast, were his first since the revelations this week of programs to collect information about phone calls and Internet traffic. Mr. Obama said the programs help prevent terrorist attacks and they are kept in check by rigorous judicial and Congressional oversight. 

He acknowledged that the public may be uncomfortable with the broad reach of the formerly secret programs, but he said he believed the government had struck the right balance between the need to fight terrorism and the need to protect privacy. 

“You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Mr. Obama said, repeatedly stressing that the lawmakers from both parties and federal judges were aware of the efforts. “You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.” 

And this is true because, as Josh Barro says, Congress and the American people demanded that Something Be Done To Keep Us Safe.

More Manchin On The Hill

West Virginia Dem Sen. Joe Manchin wants the NSA's PRISM program gone, and AG Eric Holder along with it.

President Barack Obama should end the broad surveillance of telephone calls and Internet usage, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said today.

“It bothers me, and I think it bothers you and every other American,” Manchin, of West Virginia, said in an interview on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television. “It should be stopped as far as the broad base that they’re doing. If there’s a profile and targeting that goes on, then fine.”

Manchin, 65, also indicated that Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been criticized for targeting news organizations, among other issues, should consider resigning.

“Whenever you feel that you have lost your effectiveness or may be losing your effectiveness to the detriment of the job that you do,” he said about Holder, “you have to evaluate that and make a decision. And I think we’re at the time now where decisions have to be made.”

Manchin of course, being a red state Dem, never misses a chance to attack Barack Obama in a state like West Virginia.  It doesn't matter of course that the program was going on since 2007, and Manchin, like the rest of Congress, was briefed about what was going on.  He's got NOBAMA points to score, especially after the failure of his gun bill.

So no surprise that the first Dem to officially turn on the President is the one from the state where Romney won by 37 points.

Our Crazy Goes To Eleven

Congratulations, Minnesota.  You don't have Michele Bachmann to kick around for much longer, so the Crazy Patrol has deemed fit to give you somebody even more insane to make you a national embarrassment: virulently homophobic jackass Tom Emmert, the guy who tried to get Minnesota to secede from the country.

Former Minnesota state Rep. Tom Emmer is making good on his promise. During the lengthy recount that followed his failed 2010 gubernatorial campaign, he vowed not to go away “regardless what happens.”

Emmer eventually conceded that race after weeks of legal wrangling, but he returned to politics Wednesday and announced his intention to run for the House seat Rep. Michele Bachmann is leaving behind. Loyal TPM readers will no doubt remember Emmer from his 2010 race, which even before it devolved into court cases and recounts, was a rather wild ride complete with talking dolls, coin-throwing attacks, and drinking drama.

Emmer is currently host of a talk radio show that features, among other things, musical parodies of pop hits like a version of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” that mocked Occupy Wall Street and a hilarious Carly Rae Jepsen spoof entitled “Call Me Bath Salts.” When he announced his bid for Bachmann’s seat, Emmer said he will be leaving his radio gig to focus on the race. According to MinnPost, though Emmer is expected to face opposition, he is “the front-runner” to win the Republican nomination.

So good luck with that.  Emmert is such a clown that Target had to take their money back from his 2010 campaign for Governor due to the massive boycott they were facing.  And remember this greatest hit?

Perhaps the greatest moment of Emmer’s gubernatorial crusade came when he declared war on waiters and waitresses by calling for Minnesota to lower their minimum wage. Emmer’s rationale for this proposal was that many waiters and waitresses earn six figures annually and, thus, should be more reliant on tips.

“With the tips that they get to take home, they are some people earning over $100,000 a year,” Emmer said.

Emmer’s plan sparked a massive backlash culminating in a protestor dumping a bag of pennies on Emmer during a town hall event.

“I have a tip for you too, Emmer!” they shouted. 

That's right, this moron is the "Waitresses make $100,000 a year, let's eliminate minimum wage!" guy.   Let that sink in.

StupidiNews, Job Numbers Edition!

• A dozen states are under flash flood watches as hurricane season brings Tropical Storm Andrea to the East Coast.
• Student loan rates for millions of Americans will double on July 1 after Senate Republicans filibustered Democratic efforts to fix the rate for another year.
• President Obama will meet today with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a high-level summit in California, aimed at trade talks and security issues.
• US payrolls increased by 175,000, with a slight uptick in the jobless rate to 7.6% in May.
• Apple will be teaming up with Brightstar Corporation for a deal to allow customers to trade in iPhones and iPads for cash.

Last Call For Red (State) Handed

Republicans do love bringing home the bacon no matter how much they complain in public about public dollars.  And man, do they ever love tasty, tasty Obamacare bacon for constituents.  Lee Fang catches Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman and others in flagrante deporko:

Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.

As I reported here last September, Congressman Paul Ryan, who as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 called for its repeal, sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district two years earlier. The Nation has obtained documents revealing that at least twenty other Obamacare-bashing GOP lawmakers have similarly pleaded for ACA funds on behalf of constituents. Among them are Kristi Noem, a Republican lawmaker from South Dakota likely to run for the Senate next year, as well as Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016.

In one of two letters sent by Portman to the Department of Health and Human Services, the senator requested ACA funds to help a federal health center in Cleveland, where the money could help “an additional 8,966 uninsured individuals” to receive
”essential services,” in his words. In Noem’s case, the congresswoman requested ACA funds to construct a community health center in Rapid City to provide primary services to the uninsured. Both Noem and Portman won office in 2010 campaigning vigorously against the law and have since worked to repeal it.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Republicans pulled the same crap to get millions in stimulus money during President Obama's first term.  Now they're doing the same with Obamacare grants.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip, wrote to the Centers for Disease Control to recommend a grant for Houston and Harris County. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican and the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter praising the same grant request, calling the effort a “crucial initiative to achieve a healthier Houston/Harris County.” Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi also recommended grant request approval for public health or health clinic funding.

House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”

In public, it's "repeal Obamacare!"  In private, it's "Take the money and run."

The "We're Perfectly Okay With Death Penalty Racial Bias" State

And that would be my home state of North Carolina, where Republicans with complete control over the government have decided that a law that would allow somebody to do something about the overwhelming racial bias of the death penalty needs to go.

A law that allowed death-row inmates to challenge their sentences based on racial bias claims was repealed by the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday, paving the way for executions to resume in a state that has 152 people on death row. 

The law, the only one of its kind in the country, allowed inmates to use state and county statistics and other material to claim that race played a role in their sentencing. Since the law took effect in 2009, nearly everyone facing execution — not all of them black — has used it in hopes of reducing sentences to life in prison. 

In the weeks before the State House of Representatives took up the Racial Justice Act, most lawmakers acknowledged it was headed for repeal. Still, the legislative debate stretched over two days and was noteworthy for both its emotion and its ideology. 

Those who voted to rescind it recited the names of people whose killers were on death row and said the law had clogged the courts and denied justice to victims. 

It was also called a deeply flawed piece of legislation. 

“It tries to put a carte blanche solution on the problem,” said Representative Tim Moore, a Republican. “A white supremacist who murdered an African-American could argue he was a victim of racism if blacks were on the jury.” 

Sure, we can't this law, because it might help white supremacists.  Meanwhile, let's put people to death because we were able to railroad a case through a jury and sentence the felon to death because he's black.

Now the ultimate fate of the prisoners rests with a court system, where these same Republican "purveyors of justice" have slashed $80 million from state courtroom budgets and law enforcement forensics labs over the last four years.

And so it goes back home.  Republicans can't punish minorities fast enough.

Department Of The Obvious

Greg Sargent discovers that Sen. Marco Rubio might not be as honest and forthright about immigration reform as previously thought.

The fate of immigration reform comes down to this simple question: Can Republicans accept a pathway to citizenship that cannot be undermined by border security “triggers” that are deliberately designed for the very purpose of undercutting the prospects for real reform?

GOP Senator John Cornyn has been pushing a new immigration compromise that would dramatically strengthen the border security “triggers” that would have to be met to make a path to citizenship operative. The argument is that this is the only way enough Republicans can be enticed to support reform to enable it to pass the Senate in broad numbers. Senate Democratic aides are rejecting Cornyn’s proposal, arguing that it is deliberately designed to make the pathway to citizenship unattainable — in other words, to undermine the core of reform.

This has put Marco Rubio in a box, and it needs to be acknowledged that Cornyn’s move really does threaten the prospects for reform.

Or it could be, much more likely in fact, that Cornyn is working with him and is really giving Rubio the out he needs.  Now he can say that his own bill no longer meets his security criteria, and gosh, those nasty Dems are the ones who will force the bill to die.

Rubio gets to eat his cake and yours too.

It's almost like that was the plan all along.

StupidiNews!

• Government leaks indicate Verizon has handed over cell phone data to the NSA since April 19, the day that the Boston bombing suspect was arrested.
• Former Mexican President Enrique Fox is calling for full legalization of marijuana in order to reduce the power of Mexican drug cartels.
• The contractor hired to demolish a building in Philadelphia where six were killed in yesterday's collapse of a neighboring building has an insurance fraud conviction.
• SodaStream stock got a huge boost in Germany as rumors circulate that the at-home soda making machine manufacturer is in talks with PepsiCo over a possible buyout.
• A new Pew Research study finds for the first time over half of American adults own a smartphone, and over 90% own a cell phone.

Last Call For Nullification Nonsense

South Carolina could become the first state to openly pass a blatantly unconstitutional nullification law for Obamacare, wasting taxpayer money and forcing the US government to fight it in court.

A proposed bill, on special order in the state Senate, would allow the state attorney general to take businesses, including health insurers, to court if he “has reasonable cause to believe” they are harming people by implementing the law. The bill already has passed the House.

If it passes, the bill could push South Carolina to the forefront of Obamacare resistance, giving the state’s Republican leaders a national stage. It also could push South Carolina into yet another costly legal battle in the federal courts that, critics say, is unnecessary and avoidable.

“It is going to get us in court, as we all know. But ... it is worth the risk to see if we can protect our state from this far-reaching federal legislation,” state Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, one of the lawmakers pushing for the Senate to pass the bill this week before it adjourns for the year.

Many Senate Democrats, and some Republicans, dismiss the bill as nothing more than a symbolic political salvo meant to provide fodder for lawmakers’ legislative newsletters and campaign signs. But health-insurance companies are worried the bill could complicate further their efforts to navigate the regulatory landscape.

“We need to make sure that companies – health-care providers in South Carolina – aren’t faced with situation where the federal government says you must and the state government says you cannot,” said Bob Coble, an attorney for Nexsen Pruett who represents several hospitals.

Which is the point:  the same people who say the federal government is using the coercive power of the state to hurt citizens are the ones passing a law expressly giving the state AG the right to use the coercive power of the state to hurt citizens.  Awesome.

Also, the point is to elicit political change by subjecting businesses, insurers, providers, and citizens to harm over their political choices and letting them know that if they are caught disagreeing with the SC GOP, they face serious and harmful reprisal. 

There's a term for that, and it begins with the letter "T".

Let that sink in for a bit, what these assclowns are doing, then tell me again they're not virulently racist sacks of manure.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/06/03/2800482/obamacare-nullification-bill-on.html#storylink=cpy

Batter Up (To No Good)

If what ESPN's reporting Tuesday evening is true, then the sport of baseball's about to take another Steroid Era fastball to the junk with no cup, as a major provider of performance-enhancing drugs is ratting out his all-star clients.

Major League Baseball will seek to suspend about 20 players connected to the Miami-area clinic at the heart of an ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal, including Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun, possibly within the next few weeks, "Outside the Lines" has learned. If the suspensions are upheld, the performance-enhancing drug scandal would be the largest in American sports history.


Tony Bosch, founder of the now-shuttered Biogenesis of America, reached an agreement this week to cooperate with MLB's investigation, two sources told "Outside the Lines," giving MLB the ammunition officials believe they need to suspend the players.

One source familiar with the case said the commissioner's office might seek 100-game suspensions for Rodriguez, Braun and other players, the penalty for a second doping offense. The argument, the source said, is that the players' connection to Bosch constitutes one offense, and previous statements to MLB officials denying any such connection or the use of PEDs constitute another. Bosch and his attorneys did not return several calls. MLB officials refused to comment when reached Tuesday.

Bosch is expected to begin meeting with officials -- and naming names -- within a week. The announcement of suspensions could follow within two weeks.

Gonna be a weird All-Star game with no actual all-stars playing, considering about a score of them are about to get dump trucks dropped on them from Bud Selig's office.  And A-Rod getting 100 games out?  That's pretty much lights out for his career.

Not that I'm all broken up about any Yankees getting the hook for a century or anything.

Going For The Throat

President Obama, having gotten Judge Sri Srinavasan appointed to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals without any fuss whatsoever, now unveils the full majesty of his move:  appointing three more judges at the same time to fill the remaining three seats on the court's bench.

The president’s simultaneously nomination of the three judges for the D.C. Circuit, first reported by CQ Roll Call on May 10, sends a strong message that he intends to push for the nominees in a way that he has not lobbied for his other lower-court choices. Obama had never appeared alongside a judicial nominee other than for the Supreme Court, according to advocates.

The D.C. Circuit is widely considered the second-most-powerful court in the nation because of the important national security and administrative law cases it hears. It received its first new judge since 2006 last month when the Senate confirmed Sri Srinivasan, the former principal deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, in a unanimous vote. Senate Republicans had twice filibustered Obama’s previous choice to the court, Caitlin J. Halligan, whose nomination was withdrawn earlier this year.

Obama nominated Patricia Ann Millett, an appellate attorney in Washington; Cornelia T.L. “Nina” Pillard, a law professor at Georgetown University; and Judge Robert L. Wilkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Senate confirmed Wilkins to his current post by a voice vote in December 2010.

Republicans are now stuck having to pass all three nominees and giving the President exactly what he wants, or filibustering the nominations and facing a bully pulpit call for the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters.

Either way, the President wins.  I love it.

StupidiNews!

• Flooding along the Mississippi River has forced evacuations north of St. Louis as a second levee breach in two days threatens thousands of residents.
• House Republicans are moving forward with legislation that would ban all abortions in America past 20 weeks.
• A federal bankruptcy judge has removed the last major obstacle to US Airways merging with American Airlines and becoming the world's largest air carrier.
• A new report finds fewer US families are dealing with medical bankruptcies, indicating health care costs are on the way down.
• A new ruling from the International Trade Commission in Samsung's favor could ban the sale of older Apple iPhone and iPad models in the US.