Last Call For Snowden's Motives

If this story from the South China Morning Post is true, young Edward Snowden is in a crapload of trouble (wherever he is).

Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone – to obtain evidence on Washington’s cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal.

For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

During a global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts “in the course of pursuing specific work”.

In other words, Snowden specifically took the job so he could leak.  That was always his intent.

He's done.  The only question is who else he brings down with him.  Yes, Mr. Greenwald, I'm looking at you.  Greendwald supposedly has been in contact with Snowden for months.  If Snowden's sole purpose was to get at classified material with the intent to leak it, what Greenwald knew and when suddenly becomes very germane.  He's not a journalist at this point.  He's a possible accomplice and possible co-conspirator.

Things just got real interesting.

SCOTUS-Palooza

The Supreme Court handed down a number of big rulings today, including Fisher vs. Texas.  In the case of Fisher however it was a non-ruling, the summary judgment of the 5th Circuit sent back down for further ruling.  Kevin Drum:

Well, the Supreme Court has finally handed down a ruling in one of this year's high-profile cases, and.....it punted. In a case challenging affirmative action at the University of Texas, the Supremes ruled that the Fifth Circuit court failed to apply strict scrutiny when it upheld the university's claim that affirmative action was necessary as way of promoting diversity. Key quote: "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity."

So now it goes back to the Fifth Court, and then most likely back up to the Supreme Court someday. For now, nothing has changed.

Clarence Thomas made it clear though that if the court had ruled, he would have eliminated all affirmative action nationally:

While it does not, for constitutional purposes, matter whether the University’s racial discrimination is benign, I note that racial engineering does in fact have insidious consequences. There can be no doubt that the University’s discrimination injures white and Asian applicants who are denied admission because of their race. But I believe the injury to those admitted under the University’s discriminatory admissions program is even more harmful.

He goes on to basically say that affirmative action now is as legally indefensible as Jim Crow laws, segregation, slavery, and the Confederacy were in America's past.

It was the other decisions that made things worse, particularly for those seeking a course of action to fight workplace discrimination.  Two decisions, Vance v. Ball State University and UT Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, made it much harder to bring workplace discrimination (Vance) and retaliation (Nassar) cases. Both were 5-4 rulings written by Justice Kennedy (natch.) Vance addressed this question: who's liable for harassment in a company, supervisors or co-workers?

Under Title VII, an employer’s liability for workplace harassment may depend on the status of the harasser. If the harassing employee is the victim’s co-worker, the employer is liable only if it was negligent in controlling working conditions. In cases in which the harasser is a  “supervisor,” however, different rules apply.

Kennedy's ruling:

An employee is a “supervisor” for purposes of vicarious liability under Title VII only if he or she is empowered by the employer to take tangible employment actions against the victim.

In other words, co-workers aren't company liable for harassment claims.

Nassar had a similar ruling that retaliation claims were held to a strict standard.  Not a good day to be an employee, but for now, affirmative action lives.

For now.  More SCOTUS fun tomorrow in a rare Tuesday session.  Still to go:  rulings on DOMA, California's Prop 8, and the big one, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Gang Of Eight Head Fake

Senate Democrats say they're very close to 70 votes for immigration reform, which is going to make things all the more tragic when the GOP-led House kills the bill.

Immigration reform has gotten a new burst of life as a growing number of Senate Republicans have embraced the 1,000-page-plus legislation, setting up President Obama for a big victory this week.

The sudden surge in Republican support has been a pleasant surprise for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who urged the bill’s authors to focus on winning 60 votes — the minimum for passing it.

Instead, Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the leaders of the Gang of Eight, are marching toward 70 votes, a target intended to put maximum pressure on the House to act.

The House is the X factor. The lower chamber is expected to pass narrow immigration bills that do not include a path to citizenship, which is a staple of the Senate legislation. Conservatives in the House, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), strongly oppose the Senate bill.

Still, an overwhelming bipartisan vote would be a strong boost for a Senate bill that just days ago was teetering.

What's going on here is there's more than a few Republicans who see the opportunity to sign on to the long game and say "Hey, I supported immigration reform."  They also know that Republicans in the House will never pass anything even remotely like the Senate bill, if they end up passing anything at all.

If John Boehner were even mildly competent, he would have already passed a massive border security and visa expansion bill with no path to citizenship measures and told the Senate to suck it.  Democrats would have choked on it and the GOP could say "Well, we actually passed a bill, unlike the Democrats."  It would have gotten them through 2014 easily, and handed another setback to President Obama.

However, because Boehner is herding cats and Eric Cantor is hanging around like Iago going "Hey bro, that's an awful bad break for ya" every 35 minutes, that hasn't happened yet.  It's still possible that Boehner, a handful of Republicans, and a pile of Democrats could pass the Senate bill, but I'm thinking that's not going to happen.

Rather, the most likely outcome is that Boehner tries to pass the border security and visa bill, fails miserably, and the Senate version of the bill dies without a vote.

We'll see, but the practical upshot is it doesn't matter if the Senate immigration bill gets 99 votes:  it will die in the House, if not from political reality, then from Republican voter apathy.  Only 37% of GOP voters in a new Pew/USA Today poll think passing immigration reform with a path to citizenship will help the Republican party.  There's no penalty from the base for failing to pass this bill, and that's all that will matter to the GOP in the House.

Count on it.  And I'm not the only one who feels this way.

StupidiNews!

• The Obama administration is asking Russia to send NSA leaker Edward Snowden back to the states to face charges rather than allow him to seek asylum in Ecuador.
• With days of protests and legislative maneuvering, Texas Democrats are trying to prevent TRAP legislation that would close nearly 90% of the state's abortion clinics.
• Egypt's Defense Minister says that ahead of the anniversary of President Mohammad Morsi's inauguration that Egypt's military is ready to head off planned protests.
• Nelson Mandela's health condition has become critical in a Praetorian hospital in South Africa as the 94-year-old world civil rights icon battles a recurring lung infection.
• The EPA is now backing away from a fracking investigation in Wyoming, turning over data and control to GOP Governor Matt Mead.

Last Call For The Douthat Bubble

Here's a free piece of advice:  if you're a professional Beltway columnist, and you write a story about how any politician is disconnected from the reality of average Americans, you're destined for mockery for the precise reason that professional Beltway columnists are quite literally the least-qualified people in America to have any actual idea what Americans are thinking outside the Beltway.

Hence today's contestant, Ross Douthat.

After all, gun control, immigration reform and climate change aren’t just random targets of opportunity. They’re pillars of Acela Corridor ideology, core elements of Bloombergism, places where Obama-era liberalism overlaps with the views of Davos-goers and the Wall Street 1 percent. If you move in those circles, the political circumstances don’t necessarily matter: these ideas always look like uncontroversial common sense. 

Step outside those circles, though, and the timing of their elevation looks at best peculiar, at worst perverse. The president decided to make gun control legislation a major second-term priority ... with firearm homicides at a 30-year low. Congress is pursuing a sharp increase in low-skilled immigration ... when the foreign-born share of the American population is already headed for historical highs. The administration is drawing up major new carbon regulations ... when actual existing global warming has been well below projections for 15 years and counting.

If Ross had been paying attention, he'd realize that gun control really is an actual priority with a vast majority of Americans, along with a vast majority of non-Beltway scientists on climate change and yes, ordinary Americans are backing immigration reform.  

But Bubble Boy here seems to think that climate change is a myth, along with gun control and immigration reform...and he's so deluded that he thinks Americans don't care about that either.  He goes on to bleat about jobs, but fails to mention Republicans have blocked job legislation at every opportunity.

And in the end, Douthat has to admit his team are losers.

But so far, Republicans have mostly used liberalism’s relative weakness as an excuse for not moving much at all, and sticking with an agenda that’s even more disconnected from the anxieties of the average voter than the White House’s second-term priorities. 

Their assumption seems to be that eventually the public will simply have to turn to them. But their obligation should be to address both parties’ most conspicuous failure, and actually meet the voters where they are.

That's funny, Ross.  Every time the Democrats try to do that, the Republicans block them.  Pay attention.

A Strictly Poison Ivy League School

Zandar's Summer Movie Series continues with a reminder that great teams in animated history are forged by adversity, tempered by will, and then apparently quenched in the water barrel of slapstick physical comedy.



Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) weren't always the beasts of the Monsters, Inc. Scare Floor, and in fact they started out in this prequel to the 2001 Pixar hit as a couple of college freshmen newly accepted as scaring majors to prestigious Monsters University.  It's been Mike's dream since a childhood field trip to MI, and Sully's destiny as he's a legacy admission and trading on the Sullivan family name.

But as the Pixar G-rated equivalent of a couple of dipstick dudebros, Sully's constant coasting and Mike's nerdy know-it-all act quickly results in a bitter rivalry that get the both of them tossed out of the MU Scaring School by Dean Abigail Hardscrabble (the delightfully perfect Helen Mirren) and headed for ignominious defeat...until fate gives them a second chance at the program by proving they can work together and win the MU Greek Scare Games.  All they have to do is beat the the rest of the fraternities and sororities, including the top dogs on campus, Roar Omega Roar and team captain Johnny Worthington (Nathan Filion, hamming it up brilliantly), with arguably the lamest movie fraternity in history:  the brothers of Oozma Kappa.

What follows is a predictable but charming tale for the kids while remaining smart enough to engage the parents as well.  It's still a good time and worth several laughs, and as far as Pixar second stanzas go a much better film that Cars 2 (not a high bar) but comes out close enough to Toy Story 2 to make the grade (not that anything's going to touch Toy Story 3 for a while.)

All in all a good time for everyone, with some solid lessons on teamwork and a few truly laugh-out-loud moments.

Edward's Midnight Runners

NSA leaker Edward Snowden has fled Hong Kong for Moscow, where he'll be shuffled off to Cuba and possibly Venezuela.

The Hong Kong government announced on Sunday afternoon that it had allowed the departure from its territory of Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged disclosing classified documents about United States government surveillance of Internet and telephone communications around the world.

The government statement said that Hong Kong had informed the United States of Mr. Snowden’s departure.

A Moscow-based reservations agent at Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, said that Mr. Snowden was aboard flight SU213 to Moscow, with a scheduled arrival there a little after 5 p.m. Moscow time. The reservations agent said that Mr. Snowden was traveling on a one-way ticket to Moscow. 

Mr. Snowden’s final destination was unclear, but there were signs that it might be beyond Moscow. The Russian foreign ministry said that Mr. Snowden appeared to be making a connection in Moscow to another destination, but did not say where. 

Russia’s Interfax news service, citing a “person familiar with the situation,” reported that Mr. Snowden would remain in transit at an airport in Moscow for “several hours” pending an onward flight to Cuba, and would therefore not formally cross the Russian border or be subject to detention. Someone close to Mr. Snowden later told Interfax that he planned to continue on to Caracas, Venezuela. 

So at this point, China, Russia, possibly Cuba and Venezuela are having a good, long, laugh at the Obama administration.  Whether or not you think this is deserved, the damage Edward Snowden has done to the US by leaking classified info to foreign countries is pretty high, and he's a fugitive from justice.

The guy doesn't seem like a patriot to me.  It seems like everyone in the "We're not cool with the US" camp is getting in on the Snowden info gold mine.

I can't say I'm surprised.  Certainly this makes Snowden just like Dr. Martin Luther King, right?

Last Call For Scalia

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wants people to know he's not interested in making momentous decisions about rights and freedoms and social issues, because A) it's hard and B) it's hard, dammit.

With a potentially ground-breaking decision on gay marriage expected next week, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Friday morning that he and other judges should stop setting moral standards concerning homosexuality and other issues.

Why?

We aren’t qualified, Scalia said.

In a speech titled “Mullahs of the West: Judges as Moral Arbiters,” the outspoken and conservative jurist told the N.C. Bar Association that constitutional law is threatened by a growing belief in the “judge moralist.” In that role, judges are bestowed with special expertise to determine right and wrong in such matters as abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, the death penalty and same-sex marriage.

Scalia said that approach presents two problems: Judges are not moral experts, and many of the moral issues now coming before the courts have no “scientifically demonstrable right answer.”

As such, he said, it’s a community’s job to decide what it finds morally acceptable, not the courts’.

Shorter Scalia:  TYRANNY OF THE MOB FOREVAH.

So yeah, that whole Constitutional fundamental rights thing?  Naah, those aren't guarantees, those are "what the community finds morally acceptable" and stuff.  So yeah, it's totally cool to hate gay people or brown people or immigrant people because as long as 50% +1 find it morally acceptable to do so, it's cool to discriminate.

Besides, not discriminating is hard, people.  Just take it from Justice Wario here.

Perhaps he should, you know, resign if it's just too hard to adjudicate stuff.  That's just me talking.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/06/21/4121621/nc-lawyers-listen-as-justice-scalia.html#storylink=cpy

The Netroots Of The Issue

This morning House minority leader Nancy Pelosi spoke at this year's Netroots Nation conference in San Jose (And Imani Gandy and Elon White are there, the lucky bastards.)  She faced some tough questions from the audience about NSA leaker Edward Snowden, but faced them and answer them she did.  Here's what I predicted when the event happened:

Pelosi actually engaging the #NN13 crowd on NSA stuff, too bad headline will be LIBERALS BOO PELOSI OVER SNOWDEN REMARKS
— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 22, 2013

And of course, Politico's coverage from Emily Schultheis didn't disappoint with the headline "Nancy Pelosi booed, heckled at Netroots Nation 2013".

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was booed by progressive activists Saturday for defending President Obama on the NSA’s surveillance programs and suggesting that alleged leaker Edward Snowden broke the law. 

Speaking in a wide-ranging Q&A session at this year’s Netroots Nation conference, Pelosi said it’s unfair to equate Obama and former President George W. Bush on the issue of surveillance. 

“People on the far right are saying oh, this is the fourth term of President Bush,” the California Democrat said. “Absolutely, positively not so.” 

As Pelosi was saying the country needs a “balance” between security and privacy, Marc Perkel, a 57-year-old activist from Gilroy, Calif., started shouting at Pelosi during her answer and was escorted out of the room. 

“It’s not a balance. It’s not constitutional!” he yelled. “No secret laws!” 

Others in the room began shouting as well, saying things like “Leave him alone!” or “That’s what a police state looks like right there!”

It's boring how predictable Politico's hatred of the Democrats is, it really is. It's always "DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY" when the real story is "Nancy Pelosi engages critics, leads discussion on NSA policy at Netroots Nations".  Which is frankly exactly what we should be seeing from our elected leaders.

But no, that's not the headline with our "liberal" media.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• As Brazilian protests over state spending on the World Cup and Summer Games grows into the millions, President Dilma Rousseff warned against further violence.
• Charging him with theft, unauthorized communication, and willful communication of classified information, the US wants Hong Kong to arrest and extradite Edward Snowden to face trial. 
• In the wake of growing US involvement with Syria's civil war, the US is leaving 700 combat troops in neighboring Jordan following combat exercises this week.
• Ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling has gotten 10 years knocked off his sentence and could be out of prison in 2017.
• Facebook has come clean about a bug that exposed 6 million customer emails in its system for nearly a year, but assures users that the problem has now been fixed.

Last Call For More Butter

Paula Deen just got chopped by Food Network for comments she made in a court deposition about race and gender.

Celebrity chef Paula Deen's contract with The Food Network will not be renewed, the network said Friday, the latest fallout over revelations this week that she admitted to using a racial epithet in the past.

Deen's contract with The Food Network, which airs three shows featuring the chef, expires at the end of the month, the network said.

The Food Network's announcement followed reports earlier this week that Deen acknowledged in a lawsuit deposition to using the "N word," but denied telling racial jokes.

It also came the same day that Deen apologized in video statements posted online for "the wrong that I've done."

Needless to say, if you're shocked by a older Southern white woman being casually racists and talking about reenacting a plantation formal dinner with black men in white jackets as waiters, you're not from the South.

The wingers are of course furious that reenacting Jim Crow is a fireable offense in 2013.

A Fox News correspondent is attacking "the liberal, anti-South media" for unfairly "trying to crucify Paula Deen" over her admission in a court deposition that she's used racial epithets.

Todd Starnes, who also hosts a Fox News Radio segment, wrote on his Facebook page that the "liberal, anti-South media is trying to crucify Paula Deen. They accuse her of using a derogatory word to describe a black person. Paula admitted she used the word -- back in the 1980s - when a black guy walked into the bank, stuck a gun in her face and ordered her to hand over the cash. The national media failed to mention that part of the story. I'll give credit to the Associated Press for telling the full story."

Starnes also defended Deen via Twitter, writing: "The mainstream media hates Paula Deen [...] I think it's because most of them don't eat meat."

Sure, that's it, Todd.

Oh, and I'm not even kidding about the PLANTATION DINNER THING.

Bye, Paula.

Unfinished Bush Business, 1787 Edition

So, who's surprised by this in the least?

Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight while serving in office, and at least 25 presidents count slave owners among their ancestors. But new historical evidence shows that a direct ancestor of George W. and George H.W. Bush was part of a much more appalling group: Thomas Walker was a notorious slave trader active in the late 18th century along the coast of West Africa.

Walker, George H.W. Bush's great-great-great grandfather, was the captain of, master of, or investor in at least 11 slaving voyages to West Africa between 1784 and 1792.

Yeah I know, it's not like Poppy or Dubya had any control over who their ancestors are.  I was adopted, for all I know I've got a relative that made an awful lot of money for Zee Germans in the 1940's, or was a serial killer, or ate babies on trenchers of bread as medieval performance art.  Not really fair to hang this one on the Bush family.

Besides, there's enough evil that these two clown actually did in their federal political careers that would make me ashamed to have them as relatives, not to mention Poppy's dad and Dubya's granddad Sen. Prescott Bush, who really was a piece of work.  (And by piece of work, I mean he made an awful lot of money off Zee Germans in the 1940's.)

I'm not surprised by the fact, but it's far from the most reprehensible act from that particular genealogical line.

No, Obama's Black Helicopters Didn't Kill Michael Hastings

Of course there's plenty of Info Wars level tinfoil out there about the truly tragic death of BuzzFeed writer Michael Hastings in a car accident this week, but no, the LAPD confirms that sometimes a fatal car wreck is just a fatal car wreck.

The Los Angeles Police Department said there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings.

The Los Angeles County coroner on Thursday positively identified Hastings as the driver of a Mercedes that crashed on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue on Tuesday morning.

Hastings' involvement with hot-button stories has led to a variety of conspiracy theories arising on the Internet over his death. But LAPD officials said the incident appears to have been an accident and that no other vehicles were involved. Officials are trying to determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

Video of the accident scene showed the car engulfed in flames. Law enforcement sources said the car appeared to be going at a high rate of speed but emphasized that the investigation was ongoing.

So, yeah.  Car accident, it happens.  Hell, I ran over something on the way home from work yesterday that ended up damaging two tires and I got to spend the evening at Pep Boys.  Fecal matter occurs, people.

Not to take anything away from Hastings work.  As I said, I respect the fact his Rolling Stone expose' of Gen. Stanley McChrystal was, in my view, a contributing factor as to why President Obama was able to wind down Afghanistan.  McChrystal was running the place like his own personal fiefdom.

But this "the gubment killed Hastings" stuff is offensive, degrading, and stupid.  Stop it.

StupidiNews!

• Over 100,000 people face evacuation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada as flooding along the Bow and Elbow rivers reaches record flood stage due to rapid snow melt and heavy rain.
• A new study finds 2 in 5 Americans are caring for a sick or elderly relative as the US Baby Boomer population ages.
• Duke University medical school researchers have found a way to prevent epilepsy in mice, giving hope to the possibility of a cure in humans.
• US bank regulators are considering a 6% minimum capital requirement for the nation's largest banks, double the 3% the US proposed internationally.
• Facebook-owned Instagram is going directly after micro-video site Vine by offering the ability to post 3-15 second videos on the net.

Last Call For Speaker Boehner

John Boehner just lost, hugely...and so did the GOP.

In a blow to House GOP leaders, the House on Thursday rejected a five-year farm bill.

Members voted down the $940 billion bill in a 195-234 vote that only won 24 Democratic votes. Most Democrats voted against the bill because it cut food stamp programs by more than $20 billion.

Many Republicans also voted no, but for a different reason. They said it was too expensive a bill to pass when the country has $17 trillion in debt.

In the final vote, 62 Republicans opposed the bill, and with the Democratic defections, that was enough to send it to defeat.

Oops.   To recap, Republicans killed their own farm bill.  They added amendments to force SNAP recipients to have work requirements and cut $20 billion from the program.  Democrats walked away.  At that point, the plan should have been for Republicans to pass the bill anyway and tell the Senate to suck it.  Then the only question would have been how strict the work requirements would have been and how deep the cuts would have been, and it would have been a crap sandwich for the Dems.

But the GOP apparently doesn't know how this "governance" thing works because they revolted...over the fact the bill didn't punish poor brown people enough.

Even though the majority of SNAP recipients are white.  Oops.

But no, Republicans got scorched by members like Louie Gohmert, who was pissed his amendment to eliminate all food stamps failed.

Now the Republicans are up the creek, and as I keep telling people, if Boehner can't control his caucus on a farm bill, how is immigration going to pass?

Starting to believe me now, maybe?