Last Call For Early Christmas In Texas

GOP Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is getting an early start on the holiday victim card season.

Buttressing his already formidable reputation as a purveyor of cheap demagoguery, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a so-called “Merry Christmas bill” before jetting off to Washington to speak at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference. The legislation aims at protecting the Lone Star State’s poor persecuted Christians from any lawsuits keeping them from offering specially religious holiday greetings on public property. 

So what does the bill actually do?

It removes legal risks of saying "Merry Christmas" in schools while also protecting traditional holiday symbols, such as a menorah or nativity scene, as long as more than one religion and a secular symbol are also reflected.

"I realize it's only June. But it's a good June and the holidays are coming early this year," Perry said. "It's a shame that a bill like this one I'm signing today is even required, but I'm glad that we're standing up for religious freedom in this state. Religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion."

But it does mean more special legal protections by the state for religious organizations.  There's a word for that, you know.  It describes the government of places like Iran.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Dwayne Bohac of Houston, said he drafted it after discovering that his son's school erected a "holiday tree" in December because any mention of Christmas could spark litigation.

"We hope that this is a fire that will take off and become laws in the other 49 states," said Bohac.

The Founding Fathers had some very choice words about religion, the state, and freedom.  Rick Perry and Republicans have no use for them.

Heavy Snowden Fall

The fragmentation of NSA leaker Edward Snowden's story is now picking up substantial speed.  As he has been since the story started, The Daily Banter's Bob Cesca has continued to document the downfall of Snowden and Glenn Greenwald's account of "facts" coming apart.

It’s now been more than a week since Glenn Greenwald reported that the National Security Agency attained “direct access” to servers owned by the various tech giants, Google, Facebook, Apple and so forth. And it’s been almost a week since other sites, now including Mother Jones, The Nation and Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, began to notice significant issues with his reporting about PRISM.

I should underscore once again how consequential the “direct access” line happens to be. The implication of “direct access” is clearly that, unbeknownst to the public, the NSA and, apparently, low level IT subcontractors, enjoyed back door access to proprietary server data, horked it at will and, according to Greenwald, did so potentially without a warrant. Rick Perlstein, in a post for The Nation, quoted Mark Jaquith of WordPress who observed that the “direct access” line is “the difference between a bombshell and a yawn of a story.” (I’m sure Perlstein and Jaquith have been inundated with “Obamabot apologist!” accusations for daring to aim an incredulous post in Greenwald’s direction.)

And as I've said before, the "direct access" issue is where the largest discrepancy is...but it's far from the only one.  There may be a much bigger problem with Snowden handing over top secret information to the Chinese and the scramble by Greenwald and company to justify that.

He handed over documents about American cyber warfare against China — to China. Specifically, Snowden gave the documents to a Hong Kong publication. Perhaps he was emboldened by all of the attention, hero worship and deification he received here. Who knows. Whatever drove him to do it, it was phenomenally irresponsible on a couple of fronts. Not only could he have exacerbated an already dubious international relationship, considering how there appears to be an escalating hacking war between the United States and China, but he also managed to turn numerous Americans against him — Americans who believe he crossed the line from whistleblower to traitor.

But this cuts more deeply than any healthy skepticism some of us might possess. Greenwald’s stubbornness and Snowden’s foolishness are actually self-destructive to what they’re attempting to achieve. As I’ve written from day one, credibility will make or break not only this story, but anyone who chooses to blindly latch their own credibility to it. If Greenwald was truly interested in the endurance of this story, he would’ve stowed his ego and done whatever was necessary to preserve its integrity as well as his own reputation; because as long as “direct access” continues to disintegrate, so goes the believability of everything else he’s reported. Instead, the widening holes in this story could indicate Peak Greenwald.

That credibility is rapidly disappearing.  Now we find out from Reuters (via Bob Cesca) that Snowden may have misrepresented his education to his employers:

According to the sources, Snowden told employers he took computer classes at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, earned a certificate from the University of Maryland’s campus in Tokyo, and expected in 2013 to earn a master’s degree in computer security from the University of Liverpool in England.

A Johns Hopkins spokeswoman said she could not find a record of Snowden’s attendance but he may have taken correspondence courses for which records are not kept. A Maryland official confirmed Snowden attended at least one summer class. A Liverpool spokeswoman said Snowden registered for an online master’s degree in computer security in 2011, but did not complete it.

Oops.

It's all starting to come apart now, a crackup at breakneck speeds and of epic proportions.  Greenwald's ego and Snowden's delusions of being a master spy are blowing up in their respective faces, and if this keeps up, they're going to take down a lot of people who should have known better with them.

And So It Begins

It looks like we're getting into another Libya, folks...only Syria ain't Libya.  We're about to find that out the hard way.  The Obama administration has decided that the Asaad regime has used chemical weapons, and it's time for them to go.  Brian Jones at Business Insider:

For the last two years, the bloody conflict in Syria has careened toward a tipping point.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we may be there.

The timing of this is a little bit crazy:

• A deputy national security advisor has announced that the White House believes the Bashar al-Assad regime used chemical weapons against the rebels in Syria.
• The Pentagon has proposed a plan that would arm and train the rebels, as well as instill a limited no-fly zone over Syria.
• And 4,500 U.S. forces are a stone throw away, in Jordan, conducting a training exercise with Jordanian forces.

President Obama said last year that if Syrian president Bashar al Assad used chemical weapons, it would be a “red line” that would precipitate direct U.S. intervention in the conflict.  

“That would change my calculus,” Obama said. “That would change my equation.”

Presumably the situation in Syria now meets the criteria for U.S. military intervention. 

And so we may be about to commit a horrific mistake.   Even I have to believe that given all the GOP-created scandals, the Obama administration is trying to change the subject in a massive way.  $50 million a day for a no-fly zone over Syria, Jordan being our base of operations, and Russia, Iran and Israel as wild cards.

What could go wrong?

StupidiNews!

• Iranians go to the polls today four years after demonstrations erupted over the swift the re-election of now term-limited President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
• The US Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that human DNA can't be patented, but biotech firms are warning that the ruling will effectively end US innovation.
• The Obama administration has determined Syria's Assad regime has used chemical weapons, prompting a major shift in US military support to rebels.
• New technology means a California startup is taking a second look at the venerable blimp as a heavy-cargo delivery vessel going where planes and railroads can't go.
• NYC is looking at legislation that would require 3-D printed guns to be registered with police, and would limit their creation to licensed gunsmiths only.

Last Call For Repeal And Replace

Kevin Drum points out the obvious flaw in Republicans coming up with a plan to improve health care coverage (after they do everything they can to break Obamacare so badly that the public will demand an alternative):   Republicans don't want to fix health care.

I don't blame [NRO editor Ramesh] Ponnuru and others for trying to get conservatives to embrace some kind of healthcare plan. I think they're kind of crazy to think their proposed plan would (a) work, (b) be politically attractive, or (c) be popular, but maybe that's just my liberal bias talking. What's not my liberal bias talking, however, is the plain fact that conservatives don't care about expanding access to healthcare. As [American Prospect writer Paul] Waldman says, the evidence on this score is overwhelming. They opposed Medicare. They opposed CHIP. They've opposed every expansion of Medicaid ever. Only brutal strongarm tactics got them to support their own president's prescription drug plan, despite the sure knowledge that killing it would likely lose them the White House the following year. And of course, they've opposed every Democratic attempt to pass universal healthcare legislation in the last century.

And this goes back to the basic argument about Republicans in general:  the second they prove government can work better than the free market, they lose forever.  Obamacare has to be repealed in the GOP mindset because Republicans are terrified that it will work, much like Social Security and Medicare.  Gosh, that's why they are trying to get rid of those programs, too.  The goal is if enough people hate it, they can kill it and get away with it.  It doesn't matter what it gets replaced with, but the Democrats will certainly suffer if that happens, and that's what does matter to them.

Republicans want to run government so they can take government out of government.

Time To Change The Story Again, Glenn?

Surprise, Glenn Greenwald keeps changing his story on NSA leaker Edward Snowden and did it again last night on All In With Chris Hayes.  Here's the transcript, from LGF contributor simoom:

HAYES: In terms of the revelations that we’ve gotten so far, and they fall into a number of different categories, but I do want to ask you, before I let you go, there’s been some push back on the reporting, particularly about the PRISM program, and there’s another program codenamed BLARNEY, that come from those power point slides that use the phrase directly from the servers, direct access, and there was push back by the tech companies who are listed in those slides saying we didn’t give any direct access.

And there’s some question, I think, about what exactly that phrase means or could mean. And I just want you to clarify your best understanding of what the reality is about the nexus between how the NSA is working with these private tech companies.

Now, to Hayes's credit, this is exactly the question to ask.  Greenwald has changed his story on a number of occasions prior to last night's interview, and the factual component of his story doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  Greenwald's response is telling:

GREENWALD: Sure. We’ve published four stories so far. The only one about which there has been any questions raised is the one that the Washington — the only one the Washington Post also published which is the PRISM story. 

Again, that's not true.  The first story, the Verizon carrier story, has also been disputed in the above link, and for good reason.  Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza have been all over Greenwald on this.  It's a pattern of walk-backs.

Our story was written differently than the way the Post wrote theirs, which is why they’ve had to walk back theirs. Our story was the following: we have documents, a document, from the NSA that very clearly claims that they are collecting directly from the servers of these internet giants. That’s the exact language that this document used. We went to those internet companies before publishing and asked them, and they denied it, and we put into the story very prominently that they denied it.

Our story is that there is a discrepancy between the relationship that these, that the private sector and the government has, in terms of what the NSA claims and what the technology companies claim. 

Except the real issue is with what Greenwald claims both sides are saying.  And he's just admitted that there's issues with it, so now he's changing his story (which is now "well, at least I'm not the WaPo!")

What is definitely true, and follow-up reporting by the Times has proven this, is that there have been all kinds of negotiations about back door access. They have agreements in all sorts of ways to share data with the government. I don’t think anybody knows at this point exactly what the nature of those arrangements are and the reason we published our story and reason we presented it as this discrepancy is precisely because, whatever the tech companies and the government are doing, in terms of turning over data to the government, should be done in public. 

So, he admits that he doesn't have details or evidence on these "data sharing programs" but it sure as hell doesn't stop him from rampant speculation on what those programs are because Greenwald has decided that they are wrong, so he's going to report on them.

That's not reporting.  That's blogging.

We should know what agreements they’ve reached. We should know what the government has asked for and what they’re negotiating with now, in terms of access. What we do know for sure, is that the government has a program that targets the communication over these companies, that huge numbers of people around the world use to communicate with one another, and we think there should be accountability and transparency for whatever those exact agreements are.

That's Greenwald's opinion.  And he's pushing it as fact now, substituting umbrage for details.  "We don't know but they should tell us!" is a fine opinion to have, but it doesn't make Greenwald's account factual when he doesn't know the facts.  He's telling us what he thinks should happen.  Whether you agree with him or not, that's not reporting.  So when he's writing articles for the Guardian now as a reporter, and not doing any reporting, there's a problem.

Also a problem is Spencer Ackerman,who is a national security reporter, and who did have a reporting gig at Wired's Danger Room for years, is Greenwald's editor at the Guardian.  He's not much of an editor, apparently.

Finally, Chris Hayes refused to call Greenwald out after that nonsense.  Doesn't do much for his credibility, either.

As a final note, Greenwald keeps saying the story's not about him, it's about the NSA and our "national security state" but...the story keeps being about him.  Funny how that works.

Big Dog Blows It Up

And Bill Clinton happily sides with John McCain on the opinion that President Obama isn't doing enough to get us into war with Syria.

Bill Clinton told Sen. John McCain he agrees that President Barack Obama should act more forcefully to support anti-Assad rebels in Syria, saying the American public elects presidents and members of Congress “to see down the road” and “to win.”

At another point during a closed-press event Tuesday, Clinton implied that Obama or any president risks looking like “a total fool” if they listen too closely to opinion polls and act too cautiously. He used his own decisions on Kosovo and Bosnia as a point of reference.

The former president also said commanders-in-chief should avoid over-interpreting public opinion polls about whether the United States should get involved in crises overseas.

His remarks came during a question-and-answer session with McCain, who has been among Obama’s harshest critics over what he calls a failure to take “decisive” action in Syria. Obama has come under growing pressure to step up American intervention by sending military and other assistance to the rebels.

“Some people say, ‘Okay, see what a big mess it is? Stay out!’ I think that’s a big mistake. I agree with you about this,” Clinton told McCain during an event for the McCain Institute for International Leadership in Manhattan Tuesday night. “Sometimes it’s just best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t overcommit — like, as long as you don’t make an improvident commitment.”

"What's the big deal?  It's just a Syrian civil war.  Let's arm the rebels and let the next guy worry about the blowback.  It worked for me and Bush!"

And people wonder why I wasn't thrilled about a second Clinton presidency.  Yeesh.

StupidiNews!

• Dr. Regina Benjamin will be stepping down as US Surgeon General next month after four years on the job.
• Wisconsin Republicans have pushed through legislation to force all women getting an abortion to undergo ultrasound procedures.
• Senate Intelligence Committee members grilled NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander over recent revelations about America's intel gathering.
• Royal Bank of Scotland is cutting 2,000 jobs and saying goodbye to CEO Chris Hester as Britain's largest government-backed bank restructures.
• Facebook will now allow hashtags in posts as the social networking giant moves to compete with Twitter and Google+.

Last Call For Fool Fights

In the battle between IRA sympathizer GOP Rep. Peter King of New York and factually challenged egomanic Glenn Greenwald, I'm rooting for that meteor made out of fiery ebola bees.  Greg Sargent:

A number of commentators have already suggested that Edwards Snowden should be prosecuted for leaking explosive details about the NSA programs. But today, for the first time, a member of Congress called for prosecution of Glenn Greenwald over his role in disclosing these details as a journalist, when GOP Rep. Pete King called for legal action to be taken against him:

“Greenwald, not only did he disclose this information, he has said he has names of CIA agents and assets around the world and they’re threatening to disclose that. The last time that was done we saw the murder of a station chief in Greece. No right is absolute. And even the press has certain restrictions. I think it should be very targeted, very selective, and certainly a very rare exception, but in this case, when you have someone who has disclosed secrets like this and threatens to release more, then to me, yes, there has to be, there should be legal action taken against him. This is a very unusual case with life and death implications for Americans.”

Nope, still rooting for the bee-teor.

On Twitter today Greenwald flatly denied that he is threatening to disclose the “names of CIA agents and assets around the world,” as King put it And in a phone interview with me today, he went significantly further in defending himself, arguing that his intentions — and those of his source — are being completely misrepresented.

“We did not want to just go and arbitrarily disclose things for the sake of harming the United States,” he said. “He wanted to trigger a debate and inform people. Given that he has access to incredible amounts of top secret information, if his intent at all were to harm the U.S., he could have disclosed enormous amounts of info that would have endangered all kinds of people. That’s the opposite of his intentions, and his actions prove that.”

Nope, still rooting for the bees.

Pete can suck it.  Snowden would have gone to the press regardless.  He proved that.  Nothing special about Greenwald other than his Koch Brothers connections.  You're picking on the wrong guy.

And Greenwald can suck it, too.  Next time you're defending the intentions of somebody with top secret info, make sure the guy isn't giving interviews about US hacking means and methods to Chinese newspapers, douchebag.

Both of them deserve to lose.

Before He Gets To Zee Germans

Apparently this whole PRISM mess isn't endearing President Obama to one of the countries where he would normally be extremely welcome:  Germany.  And Zee Germans, well, they're a little miffed.

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens.

That's probably not cool, but frankly the Germans lived these tactics in the bad old days of the Iron Curtain not more than 30 years ago.  And the Stasi really were monitoring the hell out of their own citizens.

In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports that the United States could access and track virtually all forms of Internet communication were "deeply disconcerting" and potentially dangerous.

"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she said.

"The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the U.S. administration itself is paramount at this point. All facts must be put on the table."

Markus Ferber, a member of Merkel's Bavarian sister party who sits in the European Parliament, went further, accusing Washington of using "American-style Stasi methods".

This is the real fallout and harm from PRISM:  our allies now know we've been watching their mail and a lot of other things.  "Trust but verify" basically turned into "verify".  No wonder they're mad at us.

If the wingers wanted their "Obama Apology Tour", well it looks like it'll start in Germany.

More Splitting The Difference

The stories designed to sour the Obama Coalition on the President seem to be continuing at a breakneck pace.  Now apparently Al Gore is going after Barack Obama on climate change.

Add Al Gore to the chorus of environmentalists who say it’s time for President Barack Obama to get serious about climate change.

The former vice president used a Google+ plus video chat Tuesday to tell supporters that Obama needs to go beyond his “great words” on the topic, and to lament that the president has yet to assemble a team to spearhead his second-term climate agenda.

Gore echoed the complaints of other green activists who say Obama isn’t moving fast enough — and who are pleading with him not to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada.

“I hope that he’ll get moving on to follow up on the wonderful pledges he made in his inaugural speech earlier this year and then soon after in his State of the Union,” Gore said. “Great words. We need great actions now.”

Sigh.  The strictest EPA regulations on coal isn't enough, but a moot point compared to the energy industry's lobbying of Congress and states over fracking.  Yes, the President has a long way to go on climate change, but look who he's trying to deal with:  Republicans who refuse to even admit it exists.  The problem isn't President Obama's will here, it's GOP politicians in the pocket of Big Energy.


Surely Al remembers that, right?

StupidiNews!

• China has launched three astronauts into orbit, docking with its Tiangong-1 space lab high above the Earth.
• The world's oldest living man, Jiroeman Kimura, has passed at the age of 116.
• The Obama administration has moved to protect chimpanzees, with the US Fish and Wildlife service classifying both wild and captive chimps as endangered.
• More information is coming to light about manipulation of currency rates allowing banks and electronic traders to make instant profit off of customers.
• Nintendo's Wii U may have beaten PS4 and XBox One to market, but games for the console are still scarce, and the bigger franchises won't show up until 2014.

Last Call For James Clapper's Job

Slate's Fred Kaplan won't be the last person calling for President Obama to can Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  For once, Kaplan is correct.

If President Obama really does welcome a debate about the scope of the U.S. surveillance program, a good first step would be to fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Back at an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.” As we all now know, he was lying.

We also now know that Clapper knew he was lying. In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired this past Sunday, Clapper was asked why he answered Wyden the way he did. He replied:

“I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked [a] ‘when are you going to … stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is … not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘No.’ ”

Not good enough, not even friggin' close.  I can understand the debate over whether Clapper lied, but not when Clapper himself admitted lying to Congress and admitted it on national TV.  That's suicidally stupid in a intelligence officer, much less DNI.

Nor was this a spontaneous lie or a lie he regretted making. Wyden revealed in a statement today that he’d given Clapper advance notice that he would ask the question and that, after the hearing, he offered Clapper a chance to revise his answer. Clapper didn’t take the offer.

Nope.  Lying to Congress openly is bad enough.  Lying to Congress openly and not being smart enough to recognize it when you're in charge of the nation's entire intelligence gathering apparatus?  Obama should clean out Clapper's desk himself and hand him the box and a pre-paid cell phone so Clapper can call someone and get a friggin clue.

Sorry James, you gotta go.

Ohio Doesn't Want Obamacare Exchanges To Work

Otherwise, as Luke Brockmeier and the Plunderbund crew point out, they would have gone California's route.

Ohio is establishing a “clearinghouse exchange”, wherein any plan that meets the Obamacare standards will be offered. Since 214 plans were submitted for review, there will be 214 plans on the exchange. This is intended to drive down costs the way that Travelocity does: people will pick the less expensive plans on the list.

There’s not much evidence that this will do anything; after all, similar websites already exist.

California, on the other hand, has an “active purchaser exchange”. In an active purchaser exchange, it’s actually the exchange that’s insuring you, and they bid out administration of your insurance. This drives down costs a few ways.

And because of true competitive bidding, negotiated lower payments through the power of the exchange's mass, and long-term cost reduction through preventative care, Californians will see Obamacare work.

Ohioans, not so much.

In Ohio’s exchange, 17 separate collective bargaining units won’t be able to bargain the way that California’s active purchaser will. California’s payments will probably be in the neighborhood of Medicaid and Medicare rates, which are around 60% of private payments.

Since health insurance is just an aggregate of all health expenditures, a 40% reduction in payments means a 40% reduction in premiums. In fact, a really canny exchange will combine the Medicaid and exchange risk pools and bargaining powers.

But of course, since Ohio is run by Republicans, they can simply make the plan not work and blame Obama.  Much more on Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who is in charge of the exchanges in Ohio, on Plunderbund.

Bobo's Game Of Moans

Bobo has decided in today's column that the only thing he can't stand more than the suspect, anti-colonialist, not-like-us President and his government is the notion that a Millennial Paulbot can cause so much damage to Bobo's status quo.

It’s logical, given this background and mind-set, that Snowden would sacrifice his career to expose data mining procedures of the National Security Agency. Even if he has not been able to point to any specific abuses, he was bound to be horrified by the confidentiality endemic to military and intelligence activities. And, of course, he’s right that the procedures he’s unveiled could lend themselves to abuse in the future. 

But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good. 

This is not a danger Snowden is addressing. In fact, he is making everything worse. 

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things. 

David Brooks complaining about the rise of distrust in government is a bit like Tywin Lannister moaning about the rise of the price of bread in King's Landing with all this war going on.  Bobo's argument would be measured and even on-point if it wasn't for the quibbling little fact that Brooks has spent much of the last four years telling us that we can never completely trust Obama or his government because he's different from us, not like us, etc. etc. blah blah blah.

So now we see Brooks actually can make a salient point when it's convenient to him, that yes, Snowden arrogantly took it upon himself as arbiter of the entire national security apparatus and that he directly betrayed the government he took an oath to serve, circumventing the Constitution's checks and balances.

That of course makes all his other vile drivel all the more hacktastic.