Sen. Lindsey “Butters” Graham (R-SC) suddenly seems to realize that Marco Rubio (R-FL), his fellow “Gang of Eight” member on immigration reform, is walking running away from the very reform he helped draft, leaving Graham twisting in the wind.
Poor Butters says he’s puzzled. Um, here’s a clue for you, Butters — 2016.
Edward Snowden says it’s an “honor” to be called a traitor by Dick Cheney. He’s got that right.
By a 7-2 vote (Alito and Thomas dissenting), the Supreme Court struck down Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in a federal election. They held that the 1993 National Voter Registration Act trumps the more restrictive state law. The federal law requires that you show I. D. like a driver’s license and sign a statement that you are a citizen.
The ruling will strike down similar laws in Georgia, Alabama, and Kansas.
The NSA has four data collection programs. Two collect “metadata,” and they are MAINWAY for phones and MARINA for the Internet. The other two collect content, and they are NUCLEON for phone calls and PRISM for the Internet.
For more, see “U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata,” Barton Gellman, WaPo
The misguided GOP focus on deficits and austerity in the U. S. is messing up the whole world’s economy. From the NYT*:
“The Europeans lately have slightly eased their austerity policies, after four years of deep spending cuts and rising taxes that many economists blame for keeping the Continent in recession long after America’s ended.
“And the Obama administration, after years of pressing Europe to adopt American-style stimulus measures, is now presiding — if reluctantly — over European -style austerity that is measurably slowing its recovery. …
“The new reality in the Unites States reduces the president’s already limited leverage in his fiscal debate with Europeans…even as Europe’s woes continue to act as a drag on its trading partners, including the United States.”
I would force every Republican member of Congress to write “Keynes was right” on the blackboard 1,000 times.
* “Lines Blur in U.S.-Europe Debate on Austerity,” Jackie Calmes
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is walking back his contention made in a public hearing with FBI Director Robert Mueller that he was told in a classified briefing that the NSA listens in on our phone conversations without a warrant from the FISA Court.
In the exchange, Nadler asks Mueller if they can listen in without a warrant, and Mueller says no. Nadler asks if that is classified information, and Mueller says no. Nadler then says that if Mueller’s answer isn’t classified, Nadler can then say that he was told the opposite in a classified briefing. I’m not sure that’s correct. Mueller may have been lying because he was put on the spot in a public hearing when asked by a Congressman who had opposite, classified information, just as happened to DNI James Clapper when questioned by Sen. Ron Wyden. I think they think it’s okay to lie under those circumstances because if they told the truth, they’d be revealing classified info. So they think they’re lying for national security reasons.
Nadler may have been told to back off or face getting into trouble for revealing classified info at a public hearing. Note that he did something different from Wyden. Nadler explicitly stated that he’d been told the opposite at a classified briefing. Wyden simply asked the question if the government was collecting data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. He didn’t argue with Clapper when Clapper denied it, but Clapper knew that Wyden knew the truth from his classified briefings. Clapper knew that Wyden set him up to either lie or reveal classified information.
So now there’s an effort to discredit the CNET story about Nadler and warrantless eavesdropping, but I’m not convinced the story is wrong. I’m more convinced pressure has been applied to Nadler to STFU.
It seems Edward Snowden wasn’t exaggerating when he said he could access the contents of anybody’s communications.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) says he learned during a classified briefing that the NSA isn’t getting warrants to listen to our phone calls, and by extension to reading our emails and texts. He was told that low-level analysts can make that decision.
For more, see “NSA admits listening to U. S. phone calls without warrants,” Declan McCullagh, CNET News.
Note that Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo is questioning the accuracy of this story. But Marshall seems to be relying on an unclassified briefing (he uses video from C-Span), whereas Nadler is referring to a classified briefing.
Only 47 senators attended the classified briefing on NSA surveillance conducted by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper this past Thursday afternoon.
More than half our senators didn’t have a single question about this that they wanted to ask?
It’s been quite a week for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He went from signing a bill to defend Christmas in Texas’ public schools to vetoing one that would have defended women’s right to equal pay, a state version of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Act.
Forty-two other states have these equal-pay laws.
So Perry chose to address an imaginary problem and ignore a very real one. Is he still on those pain meds for his back?
Today’s lie of the day comes from Congressman Paul Ryan in his address to the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
He said that Obamacare forces churches to offer employee health care that covers abortion-inducing drugs.
Not true.
