Fox News:

At least 200 members of Sunflower Community Action were bused into Kobach’s Kansas City-area neighborhood on Saturday – to protest his staunch anti-illegal alien views.

“I was just appalled,” Kobach told Fox News. “They have a right to protect at my office or at public places – that’s fine. But they don’t have a right to enter someone’s private property and engage in this kind of intimidation.”

“I have four little girls and they would have been terrified to see 200 protesters shouting at their daddy on megaphones on the front lawn,” he said.

The secretary of state said a large number of the protesters were believed to be illegal aliens. They can be seen on video chanting in Spanish, standing on Kobach’s porch, front yard and driveway and demanding that he come outside.

“Kris Kobach, come on out,” one unidentified protester shouted. “We’ll show you what Kansans are all about.”

Kobach and his family happened to be out-of-town when the demonstrators arrived. Video showed the protesters arriving in four buses – and then marching through the neighborhood. They left behind 20 pairs of shoes at his doorstep – representing illegals who’ve been deported.

Kobach has built a national profile presenting tough policies on illegal immigration issues. He and his family apparently weren’t home during the protest at his home.

“You don’t go to a public official’s home and try to intimidate him because of the positions he’s taken,” he said.

A receptionist at Sunflower Community Action told Fox News they would be releasing a statement to the press later today.

Kobach said he was especially troubled to learn that it took police at least 15 minutes to respond to his house.

“You have a mob of 200 people gathering on someone’s property and it takes the police 15 minutes to get there,” he said. “That doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence either. I shudder to think what would have happened if one of those members of the mob had tried to break into the house.”

He also feared what would have happened had he been home with his wife and four young daughters.

“On a typical Saturday, my four girls would have been riding their bikes and coloring chalk in the driveway,” he said. “That’s where they play. If four buses pulled up and the mob started marching down upon them, they would have been absolutely terrified.”

Not exactly an advertisement for immigration reform.

It’s appalling, of course. We’ve seen these egregious invasions of the private space of politicians, judges, prosecutors, and other public officials many times in recent years. It is incorrect to call this “direct action” or a “protest.” These people aren’t protesting anything. They have one goal and one goal only — to intimidate their political opponents into changing their minds or quitting. These are the tactics of the Chavistas in Venezuela, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or, if you prefer a home-grown variant, the Klu Klux Klan in America.

If these jokers want citizenship, perhaps they should be taught the right way to demonstrate before they take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

And if any of them are citizens, shame on them.

But this USA Today story on the event had one line that jumped out at me:

Snowden did not elaborate on when he would reveal more information, but said, “the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on — it’s all the same.”

SIGINT refers to “Signals Intelligence,” or the collected communciations data.

He said the restrictions to getting such data is “policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time.”

He can’t be any clearer, can he? When the administration or senior management of our intelligence agencies assure us that this kind of private information is unavailable to the government without a FISA warrant, what they’re really saying is that they keep their fingers crossed that the thousands of analysts who have direct access to this data play by the rules. We are supposed to trust the NSA that they haven’t hired someone — or, more likely, a lot of someones — who thumb their nose at the idea of having to get a warrant to go snooping and, for one of a hundred reasons, access our personal information. Perhaps they don’t want to be bothered. Maybe because the FISA court has only turned down 11 requests for warrants out of 39,000 applications since 1979 they didn’t think it would be necessary.

To believe that no violations of our privacy was committed without a rock solid technical firewall between the agency and our information, is not credible. Snowden may, indeed, have been in a position to witness the routine violations by NSA analysts of our privacy rights. At least, that’s what he’s claiming.

He is becoming more credible all the time.

After a week of NSA defenders saying there must be a “tradeoff” between privacy rights and surveillance, the president, through his Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, says that he doesn’t feel he has violated the privacy rights of Americans at all.

Reuters:

The administration has said the top-secret collection of massive amounts of “metadata” from phone calls – raw information that does not identify individual telephone subscribers, was legal and authorized by Congress in the interests of thwarting militant attacks. It has said the agencies did not monitor calls.

Asked whether Obama feels he has violated the privacy of Americans, McDonough said, “He does not.”

While he defended the surveillance, McDonough said “the existence of these programs obviously have unnerved many people.” He said Obama “welcomes a public debate on this question because he does say and he will say in the days ahead that we have to find the right balance, and we will not keep ourselves on a perpetual war footing.”

Revelations of the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone and Internet data has drawn criticism that the Obama administration has extended, or even expanded, the security apparatus the George W. Bush administration built after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“We owe it to the American people to have a fulsome debate in the open about the extent of these programs,” Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat a long-time critic of the surveillance programs, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Describing the surveillance overseen by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Udall said, “I just don’t think this is an American approach to a world in which we have great threats. My number one goal is to protect the American people, but we can do it in a way that also respects our civil liberties.”

McDonough said Congress authorized the programs as a way to thwart plots against Americans and that lawmakers should stay up to date on how they are run. The administration has said the program collected only “metadata” – raw information that does not identify individual telephone subscribers and did not monitor calls.

“The president is not saying ‘trust me.’ The president is saying I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this program, to understand it, to be briefed about it, and to be comfortable with it,” he said.

It should be noted that McDonough said nothing about the internet surveillance program PRISM that did far more than gather “metadata.”

By their very nature, these surveillance programs violate our privacy. We did not give our permission for government to access this data — whether they can access content or not. And regardless of assurances that safeguards are in place that prevent snooping, the awesome potential of this technology to make a hash of our constitutional rights is easily seen. The very existence of these programs is a threat to constitutional liberty, and it is troubling that the president apparently doesn’t understand that.

We are past the point of taking anyone’s word for it. If the programs have to be so secret that no one can confirm our constitutional rights aren’t being violated, then they should be scrapped. Most of us are willing to allow government some leeway in collecting data — but not at the expense of privacy or our rights.

Some of them — including a border security amendment by Senator Cornyn and another by Senator Rand Paul — will probably determine whether the bill passes the Senate. Another amendment offered by Senator Patrick Leahy that would allow partners of same sex couples living overseas to apply for a green card the same way that heterosexual married couples do, would mean that Senator Marco Rubio would probably withdraw his support of the bill if the amendment is passed.

But there are two interesting amendments that will show just how serious Democrats are about immigration reform:

Rubio has offered an amendment that would require immigrants with provisional legal status, who are 16 or older to read, write and speak English. This would require that immigrants speak English before they’d be eligible to apply for a green card rather than taking the English proficiency test right before gaining citizenship.

Some Republicans argued that the Gang of Eight bill was offering undocumented immigrants amnesty because it wasn’t hard enough to start the pathway to citizenship. Rubio’s amendment bumps up the English-language requirement by a few years in the process.

[...]

Earlier this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) warned the Gang of Eight that if his four amendments to the immigration reform bill weren’t included that he wouldn’t support final passage. He said he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t take “stiffing lightly.”

Hatch was one of three Republicans who voted for the bill in committee, but he said his support for final passage was contingent on further changes being made to the legislation.

“As I told my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, my support in committee did not guarantee my support for the bill on the floor unless further changes were made to make this bill better,” Hatch said.

His amendments would ensure people on the pathway to citizenship aren’t granted federal welfare benefits, including ObamaCare, for at least five years after gaining citizenship. He also wants to strengthen language in the bill that calls for immigrants to pay back taxes.

The back taxes issue may yet be a deal killer as there have been several GOP senators who have indicated that some means to collect the back taxes of people who have lived here illegally must be found in order to guarantee their support of the final package. And while the House will be dealing with its own immigration bills, the idea that newly legalized immigrants can access Obamacare and other welfare benefits is not going over well on that side of the Hill.

These amendments represent potential booby traps that one side or the other will use in the political maneuvering to come. Democrats won’t want to budge on border security while the Leahy amendment would, if passed, probably sink the entire package.

The Democrats are going to have to give on border security and resist the temptation to pander to the gay community by passing Leahy’s amemdment. Otherwise, it is probable that the entire bill won’t even get 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and die an ignoble death.

So, typical Obama, he continues to vote “present” and delay making a decision. There is little doubt that the greens will scream bloody murder if the pipeline is approved — as Al Gore made perfectly clear in an interview with the Guardian newspaper:

Al Gore has called on Barack Obama to veto the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, describing it as “an atrocity”.

The former vice-president said in an interview on Friday that he hoped Obama would follow the example of British Columbia, which last week rejected a similar pipeline project, and shut down the Keystone XL.

“I certainly hope that he will veto that now that the Canadians have publicly concluded that it is not safe to take a pipeline across British Columbia to ports on the Pacific,” he told the Guardian. “I really can’t imagine that our country would say: ‘Oh well. Take it right over parts of the Ogallala aquifer’, our largest and most important source of ground water in the US. It’s really a losing proposition.”

Campaigners have cast Keystone XL as the most important decision of Obama’ presidency. The State Department, which has say over the project because it crosses the US-Canadian border, is to announce its decision later this year.

But Gore said an even larger environmental decision loomed for Obama next month. The White House has indicated Obama could offer a long-awaited climate plan, the first concrete proposals since his inauguration in January when the president suggested it was a religious and patriotic duty to deal with the challenge.

“This whole project [Keystone XL] is an atrocity but it is even more important for him to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” Gore said. He urged Obama to use his powers as president to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants – the biggest since source of global warming pollution.

Why use the word “atrocity” to describe a project that no one can make a good argument against based on anything rational? The greens oppose the pipeline because it means more energy at cheaper prices. This is exactly the opposite of what they are agitating for. They want less energy that’s more expensive. They will tell us that it is for our own good, that paying more for energy while reducing the amount of fossil fuels that are available will save the earth. What they won’t say is that it will also severely damage industrialized civilization and the philosophy that drives it; capitalism.

The Keystone Pipeline is an atrocity because it reinforces the notion that capitalism is successful. In a similar vein, the regulation of carbon — especially on power plants that are currently in operation — will destroy the coal industry as we know it, perhaps double consumer electric bills, and severely limit the operations of many factories in many industries.

The result will be lost jobs, a shrinking economy, and a stifling of entrepreneurial energy. No doubt, this will be a boon to those who view capitalism as an atrocity — as Gore and his climate change warriors believe.

Politico:

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions prior to a Russian government warning in March 2011 that said he appeared to be radicalizing, FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Congressional testimony this week.

The earlier references have led some lawmakers to question whether the FBI acted too quickly in closing an assessment of Tsarnaev’s potential ties to terrorism done in response to the Russian request.

In a little-noticed exchange before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, Mueller acknowledged that the Russian alert was not the first time the elder Tsarnaev brother crossed the FBI’s radar.

“His name had come up in two other cases,” Mueller said in response to questions from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). “Those two other cases, the individuals had their cases closed. So, he was one or two person [sic] away.”

When King asked Mueller if it was reasonable to say that the Russian letter “refocused” the FBI on Tsarnaev, Mueller replied, “Absolutely.”

Mueller did not elaborate on the nature of the prior investigations where Tsarnaev’s name had arisen. However, an FBI official told POLITICO they were not related to terrorism. The official, who asked not to be named, also said the agent who conducted an “assessment” of Tsarnaev in response to the Russian warning in 2011 found the previous references and was aware of them.

Former House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) said he believes the prior mentions of Tsarnaev in FBI files should have resulted in greater scrutiny of the Russian-born U.S. resident who allegedly went on to carry out the April 15, 2013 bombing that killed three and an ensuing crime spree that left a police officer dead.

Tamerlan was eventually killed in a shootout with police a few miles away from the bombing scene. His brother, Dzhokhar, survived the shootout. He has been charged with the bombings and is in a federal prison hospital near Boston.

“What are the chances of the Russians reporting on someone who’s pretty obscure and the FBI checks him out and finds out his name has come up twice before?” asked Peter King. “Wouldn’t it have warranted keeping the investigation open longer or at least going to the Boston police and warning them?”

Why didn’t we hear about this earlier? Here we are, nearly two months after the bombing, and Mueller casually lets it drop that they had Tamerlan Tsarnaev on their radar even before the Russians asked the agency to look into any connections to terrorism.

There are many reasons the FBI would have had an interest in Tsarnaev beyond terrorism. The feds may have been investigating whether he lied on his asylum application. If Tsarnaev’s mother can be believed, the FBI was using Tamerlan as an informant. But the fact that he had been under investigation by the FBI previously makes Rep. King’s questions very relevant: why close the investigation?

There is little doubt that the FBI should have been keeping better track of Tsarnaev. At the very least, they should have informed Boston police of the Russian inquiry. But whether anyone could have done anything to stop the bombing will probably remain an unknown.

Not only don’t they need a warrant, says the DoJ, but low-level analysts can make the decision to listen to our phone calls for any reason they want.

CNET:

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler’s disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president.”

There are serious “constitutional problems” with this approach, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated warrantless wiretapping cases. “It epitomizes the problem of secret laws.”

The NSA yesterday declined to comment to CNET. A representative said Nadler was not immediately available. (This is unrelated to last week’s disclosure that the NSA is currently collecting records of the metadata of all domestic Verizon calls, but not the actual contents of the conversations.)

The NSA has between 500,000 and one million numbers on their target list — perhaps more. All electronic communications belonging to these people are recorded.

This isn’t “monitoring.” This isn’t “scanning.” This is eavesdropping — exactly what President Obama denied when he said “nobody is listening to your phone calls.” Oh, yes they are, Barry, and lying about it is about the most egregious breaking of trust with the American people that has occurred in your administration.

The Democrat’s most potent political artillery are coming for a reason; an expected easy victory by Markey is not materializing as polls consistently show the Republican candidate, former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez within a few percentage points of the Democrat.

Markey may be outspending Gomez, but he is not out-hustling him. The Republican has showed up at an astonishing 50 events in the 45 days since April 30.

But Gomez still faces a daunting task; how to overcome the massive registration advantage for Democrats in the state, while raising enough money for a final big push next weekend in advance of the June 25 special election:

The Hill:

Nearly every poll of the race, including two released this week, give Markey just a single-digit lead over Gomez, stoking those fears with hard data.

Tufts University Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Berry said Gomez needs, ultimately, to get independents excited for his bid, because neither candidate has really ignited any passion in their supporters.

“The emphasis in the Gomez campaign has been on character, because the issues favor Democrats,” he said. “Gomez needs to create some excitement about his personal story among independents here.”

Gomez spokesman Will Ritter said the campaign plans to do just that, launching a series of town halls throughout the state to meet voters over the next week.

He said that if the campaign can get out their message, they’re confident they can take the seat.

“We need to be able to make our case for Gabriel Gomez to independent voters in Massachusetts. Ed Markey has decided that he is going to tailor his message to scare independents and excite the far Left,” Ritter said.

“We’re going to have to combat that by portraying Gomez as an outsider, Navy SEAL businessman, going up against an insider, hyper-partisan guy who couldn’t possibly change Washington.”

As Massachusetts GOP strategist Ryan Williams, a former Mitt Romney campaign staffer, explained, the outsider message is one that works in Massachusetts.

“It’s the message that the Republican gubernatorial candidates used over the years. We’ve had people who ran as outsiders versus the insider machine on Beacon Hill. To highlight the contrast between his record as a Navy SEAL and a businessman, and Markey being a career politician, is the right strategy,” he said.

But spreading that message may come down to funding, something Gomez has struggled to obtain throughout his campaign.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee appears to have funneled money to the state GOP to back a sizeable buy for Gomez earlier in the campaign, but thus far only one outside spending group — a mysterious group that bills itself as moderate and was registered with the FEC earlier this month — has gone on air for Gomez.

Republicans are still hopeful they’ll see an influx of outside help, but concede any groups would have to buy this weekend or early next week to make a difference.

But Markey has his own problems:

A Gomez victory would not be unprecedented.

In 2010, Brown was a little known state senator who won a special election race for the long-held Democratic senate seat of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

An averaging of polls by the website RealClearPolitics has Markey leading by 9 percentage points.

Democratic strategist Ben Tulchin argues Markey leads in almost every poll, including one by 11 points, and the poll in which Gomez trails by just 1 percentage point was done by a Republican-leaning firm.

Still, he recognizes the challenges, including the likelihood of a low voter turnout in a special election, particularly this time when people are otherwise occupied in the summer.

“When you have a lower turnout special, Democrats lose their edge quite a bit,” said Tulchin, founder of San Francisco-based Tulchin Research. “And while Massachusetts might be considered a heavily Democratic state, it has a lot of older, white, blue-color workers. It’s never as easy as it looks.”

I don’t exactly know why but it seems there is less interest in Gomez’s candidacy than in Scott Brown’s run. While it’s true neither one could win a Republican primary in most other states, Gomez is one of the most impressive GOP candidates to come out of Massachusetts in a while. It could be that the big outside money is not coming his way because he is given a very small chance of success. It certainly isn’t because he is a lackluster candidate.

The Brown special election was held in the dead of winter with a Democratic candidate who managed to annoy just about everyone in the state. This one will be held during the summer with a state Democratic icon running. While turnout will be unpredictable, Markey is no Martha Coakley and barring a major gaffe, or a last minute surge of cash for Gomez, he should win the special election by a fairly comfortable margin.

It may be a futile effort. Orr will also ask unions to take a cut in their pensions — something the unions have already said is not negotiable. If Orr can’t swing the pension cut, he will have little choice but to declare bankruptcy.

AP:

A team led by a state-appointed emergency manager said Friday that Detroit is defaulting on about $2.5 billion in unsecured debt and is asking creditors to take about 10 cents on the dollar of what the city owes them.

Kevyn Orr spent two hours with about 180 bond insurers, pension trustees, union representatives and other creditors in a move to avoid what bankruptcy experts have said would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Underfunded pension claims likely would get less than the 10 cents on the dollar.

An assessment of the plan’s progress will come in the next 30 days or so.

Orr also announced that Detroit stopped paying on its unsecured debt Friday to “conserve cash” for police, fire and other services in the city of 700,000 people. The debt not being paid includes $39 million owed to a certificate of participation.

“We will not pay that today,” Orr told reporters after the meeting with creditors at a hotel at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus.

His team said the proposal is the one shot to permanently fix fiscal problems that have made the city insolvent.

Orr said everyone involved needs to come to grips with Detroit’s dire financial situation that has been worsened by years of procrastination and denial.

“If people are sincere and look at this data, you would think a rational person will step back and say, `This is not normal … but what choice do we have?’” Orr said.

The city’s budget deficit could top $380 million by July 1. Orr believes long-term debt tops $17 billion.

As Detroit Free Press business writer Nathan Bomey points out, defaulting on the debt and negotiating in good faith with creditors is a prerequisite to declaring bankruptcy:

Orr warned that the city’s bondholders and creditors won’t fare well in bankruptcy court, so they should agree to concessions now.

“It doesn’t get better with time, OK?” he told the Free Press editorial board after the meeting. “It actually gets worse. So the sooner you come in, the better treatment you might get.”

Still, early indications suggest the city’s unions will seek to block Orr’s attempt to reduce pensions, which could lead him to catapult the city into bankruptcy court in a bid to secure the legal authority to slash payments.

Pension holders are already agitating for their unions to fight Orr’s proposal.

Shelby Township resident Andy Oddo, 77, who retired in 1986 after a 32-year career as a Detroit employee, said he isn’t ready to accept cuts to his pension of about $800 per month.

“I’m just looking at my own problem here, just trying to hang on,” Oddo said. “I just want to hopefully have enough for me to pay my bills.”

Orr’s decision to target cuts to retiree pensions signaled to legal experts that he is preparing for a legal battle that will almost certainly unfold as part of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy process.

Some experts say they believe a bankruptcy reorganization would take years, while others say it could just take months if Orr can line up enough support ahead of time.

“Simply because it goes into Chapter 9 doesn’t mean it has to be chaos,” University of Michigan bankruptcy expert John Pottow said.

One of the reasons that legal experts believe a Chapter 9 filing is inevitable is that Orr is aiming for significant cuts to pensions, which can’t happen outside bankruptcy unless the unions agree.

Orr said he’s ready to “pull the trigger if we have to,” but he would prefer to reach agreements outside bankruptcy.

Ken Schneider, a bankruptcy attorney and principal shareholder of Detroit-based Schneider Miller, said it’s not politically palatable for union leaders to agree to major concessions without being able to say “the court forced it onto me.”

For Detroit, it was more than the exorbitant public union pensions and health benefits that laid them low. It was extraordinary mismanagement by city officials, as well as the flight of auto manufacturers that sealed their fate. There was much procrastination in Detroit too. As recently as February of this year, Mayor Bing was predicting that the efforts he was making to cut the budget and pay the bills would improve the situation.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. As a sign of how far Detroit has fallen, the city was ranked 9th in 2000 in population. The most recent census shows the city ranked 18th — and falling. With nearly 12% unemployment and the city being unable to pay for police, firemen, or even street lighting, Detroit will continue to lose population as anyone with the means to leave is abandoning the city. Soon, only those too poor or too old to leave will be left.

The rest of the story is like something out of a tale that might have been told of Ivan the Terrible:

Kraft explained the incident happened while Sandy Weill and other business execs were in St. Petersburg. “I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,’ ” Kraft told the crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala at the Waldorf-Astoria.“I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out.”

Kraft released a statement at the time, “President Putin, a great and knowledgable sports fan, was clearly taken with its uniqueness. I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and [his] leadership.

Amazing. But the story doesn’t end there. Despite his statement, Kraft wanted the ring back and enlisted the aid of the Bush White House in retrieving it:

But Kraft really wanted the 4.94-carat bauble back, he said Thursday, admitting he’d gotten a call from the George W. Bush-run White House, saying, “‘It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present.” (In fact the Soviet Union had collapsed 14 years earlier.)

But, Kraft said, “I really didn’t [want to]. I had an emotional tie to the ring, it has my name on it. I don’t want to see it on eBay. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and the voice repeated, ‘It would really be in the best interest if you meant to give the ring as a present.’ ” The ring is now reportedly kept in the Kremlin library.

One could apply a metaphor about Putin purloining elections to this story but it goes far beyond that. Doing business in Russia basically means doing business with Putin. Corruption is rampant and it is believed that Putin has become fabulously wealthy as a result of kickbacks from foreign businesses. The once penniless former KGB agent has become a billionaire by milking the system for everything he can get.

So it isn’t necessarily surprising that Putin would literally pocket a $25,000 ring. The surprise is that the US government didn’t stand up to him and demand the ring’s return. Such petty thievery should have been very publicly and explicitly rebuked by the Bush administration and the fact that it wasn’t says a lot about how our government deals with this new Czar of all the Russias.

Not hardly.

The “moderate” or “reformist” candidate, Hassan Rohani, appears to be an outright winner in the presidential election and judging by the comments made by foreign policy experts, a new day is dawning between Iran and the West.

Reuters:

Though an establishment figure, Rohani is a former chief nuclear negotiator known for his conciliatory approach. He has pledged to promote a foreign policy of “constructive interaction with the world” and to enact a “civil rights charter” at home.

Rohani’s wide early margin revealed a broad reservoir of pro-reform sentiment with many voters, undaunted by restrictions on candidate choice and campaign rallies, seizing the chance to repudiate the dominant hardline elite over Iran’s economic woes, international isolation and crackdowns on social freedoms.

[...]

With some 27 million votes counted from the 50-million-strong electorate, Rohani had tallied 50.81 percent of all ballots cast, Iran’s interior minister said. That would be enough to avoid a second-round run-off on June 21.

Rohani’s nearest rival was conservative Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a long way behind with less than 16 percent. Other hardline candidates close to Khamenei, including current nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, scored even lower.

British former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who dealt with Rohani during nuclear negotiations between 2003 and 2005, called him a “very experienced diplomat and politician”.

“This is a remarkable and welcome result so far and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no jiggery-pokery with the final result,” Straw told Reuters, alluding to accusations of widespread rigging in the 2009 election.

“What this huge vote of confidence in Doctor Rohani appears to show is a hunger by the Iranian people to break away from the arid and self-defeating approach of the past and for more constructive relations with the West,” he said.

“On a personal level I found him warm and engaging. He is a strong Iranian patriot and he was tough, but fair to deal with and always on top of his brief.”

Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Iran “appears to be on the verge of shocking the world”.

“With Rohani leading the vote, the regime’s calculation now is whether a run-off campaign … is worth the risk. A second round would entail an additional week of the kind of exhilarated campaigning, replete with young Iranians dancing in the streets and an amplified chorus of demands for social and political reforms, and ultimately pose a greater risk to the system.”

Small groups gathering outside Rohani’s campaign headquarters in Tehran were politely asked to disperse by police, witnesses said, indicating authorities’ desire to see no repeat of the crowds that gathered after the 2009 vote, but also more restraint on the part of security forces. The pro-Rohani groups moved on quietly, according to the witnesses.

Isn’t that nice? Police “politely”asked people to disperse. I suppose that’s an improvement from hitting them over the head with a truncheon.

At least Maloney has the wit to wonder if Khamenei is going to risk a run-off campaign, implying vote rigging. In this case, Rohani appears to have benefited from a total rejection of anyone associated with either Supreme Leader Khamenei or President Ahmadinejad. Such sentiment, if nearly universal, would be hard to hide even with massive cheating.

What would an Iranian “moderate” really look like? Let’s ask him. Does Rohani want to wipe Israel off the map? Will his “civil rights charter” include rights previously denied to women? To ethnic minorities in Iran? Does he condemn designating Jews as “dogs” or “pigs” or “apes?” Will he still put people in jail for dissenting from the government?

No Iranian reporter would dare ask any of those questions, nor would any western reporter for that matter. So despite the fact that Rohani would almost certainly not give many “moderate” responses to those questions, we’re going to be stuck with the mainstream press praising him as a “moderate” for the next 4 years.

At a press conference in early May, the president put on his outraged face and threatened to deal with sexual assault criminals by naming specific punishments:

“I expect consequences,” Obama said at a press conference in early May that came just as the Pentagon released a report detailing rising incidences of sexual assaults in 2012. “So I don’t just want more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately folks look the other way. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.”

What sounded great on TV landed with a thud in a military court in Hawaii:

President Obama’s comments condemning military sexual assault and suggesting that those convicted be punished with, among other things, a dishonorable discharge may be backfiring on his efforts to root out the growing problem.

In pretrial hearings in two cases, a Navy judge in Hawaii ruled this week that Obama had exerted “unlawful command influence” as commander-in-chief in outlining the specific “consequences” he saw fit for members of the military convicted of sexual assault.

As a result of Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton’s rulings, the defendants in United States v. Johnson and United States v. Fuentes can’t be punitively discharged, even if they’re convicted of sexual assault. Stars and Stripes first reported on the rulings.

[...]

Fulton wrote in his ruling that Obama’s comments raise “concern” because they “may indicate that a particular result is required of the military justice system.”

As soon as Obama made his off-the-cuff comment, military lawyers began to voice concern that his comments might be detrimental. “I thought of the unlawful command influence issue as soon as he spoke,” said James Mackler, a private attorney and Army reserve lawyer who was involved in sexual assault cases while on active duty.

“The principle behind it is a sound principle, which is that in the military there is a lot of pressure to follow the directives of your commanders, including the president,” he said. “It’s a legitimate problem.”

As a lawyer, Obama knows to be cautious in speaking about specific cases — as he has been for the past week in not speaking out on Edward Snowden — but may not be as familiar with the military justice system, Mackler said, where unlawful command influence creates problems, as it has in these cases and likely many more to come.

The president used the press conference to try and score political points with women’s groups who have been agitating for harsher treatment of sexual assault cases. The disposition of sexual assault cases is not at issue here. This is a question of knowledge and competence. In Obama’s eagerness to show women’s groups how tough he is going to be on military personnel convicted of sexual assault crimes, he stupidly handed defense lawyers a gift — and tied the hands of military judges.

Stars and Stripes lays out the consequences of Obama’s ignorance:

The judge’s pretrial ruling means that if either defendant is found guilty, whether by a jury or a military judge, they cannot receive a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge. Sailors found guilty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s Article 120, which covers several sexual crimes including assault and rape, generally receive punitive discharges.

“A member of the public would not hear the President’s statement to be a simple admonition to hold members accountable,” Fulton stated. “A member of the public would draw the connection between the ‘dishonorable discharge’ required by the President and a punitive discharge approved by the convening authority.

“The strain on the system created by asking a convening authority to disregard [Obama’s] statement in this environment would be too much to sustain public confidence.”

The ruling sets the stage for defense attorneys to use the same arguments in sexual assault cases throughout the military.

Those convicted of serious sexual assault charges will still go to prison. But being unable to dishonorably discharge the felons means it’s possible one could be convicted of sexual assault and still be eligible for veterans’ benefits.

A president more respectful of military traditions would not have made such a stupid gaffe.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. “I don’t want public attention because I don’t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.”

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. “I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me.”

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. “I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in.” He added: “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”

A high school drop-out, Snowden sounds incredibly naive.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” he says. “I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”

If the guy was so shocked at putting a potential asset in a compromising position by getting him drunk, what do you think he would have said about a CIA honey trap?

Regardless, I am of two minds about this fellow, especially after reading this:

Q: When did you decide to leak the documents?

A: “You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process.

“A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama’s promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.”

A whistleblower who times his leaking based on political criteria? That’s a first.

Is this really a whistleblower? Snowden swears he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Well, that’s a bunch of hooey. Breaking the law is wrong. Breaking your oath of secrecy is wrong. Breaking the trust of your employer is wrong. If he really believed he did nothing wrong, he’d come back to the states voluntarily and see if a jury of his peers agreed with him.

They won’t. They’ll throw him in jail for the rest of his life. This is someone who obviously believes the ends justifies the means — a curious position to take since the CIA and NSA make the same claim all the time. We may hate and fear the surveillance programs, but when you get right down to it, they’re legal — at least as far as the law stands now. The correct remedy is to change the law. How could we change the law if we didn’t know the extent of the surveillance?

I’ll get back to you on that.

On August 1 of this year, non-profit employers who object to the so-called “contraception mandate” in Obamacare will be forced to supply contraception and abortion drugs to their employees — even if it violates their religious beliefs.

And enforcing that mandate will be those fair, balanced, and religion-friendly employees at the IRS. You know — the same folks who claim no one targeted conservative and Christian groups who were seeking tax exempt status — except when they did.

As McGuire points out about the mandate, “If the case for repealing this unjust intrusion on the free exercise of religion was always strong, in recent weeks it’s gotten stronger still.”

Oh, yeah.

The administration claims that the conscience of religious people has been taken into account with a compromise that isn’t much of a compromise:

President Obama tried to mollify the latter group’s concerns by offering an accommodation that would let the nonprofits defer the costs and responsibility of contraception coverage to an insurer or third-party administrator who could offer the drugs’ through a separate plan. But the nation’s Catholic bishops and religious groups have largely rejected the compromise, leaving the situation in limbo.

But it is the approximately 60 suits filed in federal court by corporations owned by devout Catholics and other Christians that may determine the fate of the contraception mandate. It is expected that at least one or more of those cases will wind up before the Supreme court.

Meanwhile, we have this to look forward to:

The way the regulation is written, it is the IRS that determines whether an organization qualifies for full exemption from the HHS mandate. To qualify, an organization must be a nonprofit as described in section 6033(a)(1) and section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii) (oh, my!) of the amended Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and therefore exempt from filing Form 990, which most nonprofits must file annually.

Religious entities that do not qualify for the 990 exemption may seek alleged relief from the mandate by certifying to their insurance company that they cannot provide the objectionable services and products. The insurance company is then required to issue to each covered employee a separate policy covering contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients free of charge. So the employer is still in the position of facilitating the flow of objectionable services to his employees.

What’s more, these employers must maintain their “self-certification” in their records for each plan year and make it available for examination upon request by “regulators, issuers, third party administrators, and plan participants and beneficiaries.” The IRS may investigate and challenge any self-certification.

So the very enforcers at the IRS whose own inspector general admits they systematically targeted conservative and religious groups will now get to decide who is entitled to ladle soup into a bowl for a homeless person without violating his or her conscience.

The Catholic Bishops pointed out that the “compromise” is hardly that:

In a statement issued late Feb. 10, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Obama’s decision to retain the contraceptive mandate “is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern.” The conference also said the continued “lack of clear protection for key stakeholders … is unacceptable and must be corrected.”

“The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for (the Department of Health and Human Services) to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services,” it added.

While it exempts dioceses and some other religious organizations, the mandate still applies to Catholic hospitals and religious universities.  HHS is still in discussions with the bishops to try and find a compromise for those entities.

McGuire replays recent history to show why we should be concerned that the IRS has anything to do with determining whether a company or non-profit organization should not obey the mandate:

As details of the IRS scandal continue to emerge, it’s evident that religious values were indeed scrutinized by bureaucrats. A growing number of religious groups and charities are coming forward to report delays in their applications for tax-exempt status, including the Catholics United Education Fund, Christian Voices for Life, and Focus on the Family affiliate Family Talk Action. Others, like Samaritan’s Purse, underwent audits or other IRS scrutiny that seemed out of left field. One targeted group, the Coalition for Life of Iowa, was asked by the IRS about the content of its prayers.

What’s more, Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS’s division on tax-exempt organizations who was placed on administrative leave last month after declining to testify before a House committee, was rewarded with that job after a history of harassing religious people in a previous position as head of enforcement at the Federal Election Commission from 1986 to 2001.

Having lost whatever reputation it had for politically neutral enforcement of the tax code, the IRS, come August 1, will nevertheless gain new authority to determine what constitutes religious activity and which religious employers are entitled to conscience rights under Obamacare.

One can imagine the kinds of questions the IRS will want answered before granting the exemption, including how many times a week you go to church, or perhaps whether your say your bedtime prayers before falling asleep.

President Obama gave this explanation for why objections based on religious beliefs to the contraception mandate should be ignored:

“No women’s health should depend on who she is, who she works for, or how much money she makes,” Obama said. He said the new policy remains faithful to the “core principle” of free preventive care, but also honors the principle of religious freedom, which “as a Christian, I cherish.”

If the IRS uses that statement from the president as a guide, it would seem that few companies run by devout Christians or even Christian non-profits would have much of a chance at an exemption.

The Hill:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday said he would examine ways to block the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs before the Supreme Court.

“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level,” vowed Paul on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I’m going to be asking all the internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington,” he said.

[...]

Paul said he was concerned with the scope of the NSA’s surveillance.

“They are looking at a billion phone calls a day, is what I read in the press and that doesn’t sound to me like a modest invasion of primary, it sounds like an extraordinary invasion of privacy,” said Paul.

Paul said such snooping was “partly what our founding fathers fought the revolution over.”

Asked about reports that the programs had helped thwart a terror attack in New York, Paul said he did not oppose surveillance targeted at a particular individual suspected of wrongdoing.

“I have no problem if you have probably cause and you target people who are terrorists and you go after them and the people they are communicating with… but we are talking about trolling through billions of phone records.

“We aren’t taking about going after a terrorist. I’m all for that,” he said.

Senator Paul does not have to go to all the trouble of starting a class action lawsuit or going to the Supreme Court. He and his colleagues can amend the relevant legislation — Patriot Act, FISA, and perhaps AUMF — to make sure the government can’t engage in these expansive surveillance dragnets.

But when it comes to privacy, Congress talks a good game, but rarely follows through in protecting privacy rights. So perhaps Paul will have better luck in court. The problem is, as far as we know, a FISA court judge signed off on all specific actions taken by the NSA so it’s hard to see where the constitutional challenge would come from. The programs are “legal.” The law has been followed. On what grounds would Paul challenge the government’s authority to conduct these surveillance programs?

The Senator’s proposal has merit, but it’s difficult to see how he would implement it.

Marc Ambinder:

Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said.

Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA’s domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that “domestic collection” does not mean that the target is based in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen; rather, it refers only to the origin of the data.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that U.S. credit card companies had also provided customer information. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies because, they said, doing so would provide U.S. enemies with a list of companies to avoid. They declined to confirm the list of participants in an internet monitoring program revealed by the Washington Post and the Guardian, but both confirmed that the program existed.

“The idea is to create a mosaic. We get a tip. We vet it. Then we mine the data for intelligence,” one of the officials said.

In a statement, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that programs collect communications “pursuant to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, ” and “cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S person, or anyone within the United States.”

He called the leaks “reprehensible” and said the program “is among the most important” sources of “valuable” intelligence information the government takes in.

The program may, indeed, be valuable but at what cost? Nobody I have read is disputing the idea that the kinds of data collection in which the NSA is engaged doesn’t yield vital intelligence that helps keep us safe. But there are still questions about how the surveillance is conducted and how the privacy of Americans is protected.

One of the officials who spoke to me said that because data types are not standardized, the NSA needs several different collection tools, of which PRISM, disclosed today by the Guardian and the Washington Post, is one. PRISM works well because it is able to handle several different types of data streams using different basic encryption methods, the person said. It is a “front end” system, or software, that allows an NSA analyst to search through the data and pull out items of significance, which are then stored in any number of databases. PRISM works with another NSA program to encrypt and remove from the analysts’ screen data that a computer or the analyst deems to be from a U.S. person who is not the subject of the investigation, the person said. A FISA order is required to continue monitoring and analyzing these datasets, although the monitoring can start before an application package is submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

It sounds like reasonable safeguards are in place, but, as with the Bush surveillance program, mistakes can happen and innocent Americans end up being surveiled. And the potential for abuse is frightening. That’s the real problem with these NSA programs. Someone in power with an appetite for gathering information on political enemies, might subvert the whole process. It isn’t likely, but neither were a lot of Nixon’s domestic spying scandals either.

We can’t blame the companies since they have very little room to refuse a request from our intelligence agencies. But perhaps we should raise our expectations that companies involved in this program will resist a little harder when the government comes calling and asking for their data.

Daily Caller:

Carter Hull, the Washington-based IRS lawyer who oversaw targeting of conservative groups beginning in 2010, will retire this summer.

Hull was fingered in interviews with two IRS employees as the overseer of the agency’s improper targeting of conservative groups beginning in 2010.

“I was essentially a front person, because I had no autonomy or no authority to act on [applications] without Carter Hull’s influence or input,” Elizabeth Hofacre, an employee of the IRS’ Cincinnati office, told congressional investigators, according to Hofacre’s interview with congressional investigators.

Hull provided Hofacre a sample letter requesting additional information to send to Tea Party groups in March 2010, after Hofacre appealed to the IRS’ Washington headquarters for help with new applications from Tea Party groups for tax-exempt nonprofit status.

As The Daily Caller reported, Hull signed a letter dated April 21, 2010 to the Albuquerque Tea Party requesting additional information related to its tax-exempt application.

It is unclear at this time whether Hull, an elderly Maryland resident and longtime IRS employee, was planning to retire anyway.

Hull is a sideshow, a non-entity who, as Reynolds suggests, is probably being set up by his superiors to take the fall for this. Hull was simply doing his job. The letter to the Albuquerque Tea Party was SOP — it’s not like the IRS shouldn’t have been asking any questions at all. Hull was confirming that an organization asking for tax exempt status deserved it.

Not so with other, more inappropriate questions, or threats, or harassment. Who sent those? At whose orders? And who thought the whole thing up in the first place?

If Hull feels he’s being set up, he may feel more like talking. I wonder if he’d have anything interesting to say.

How many generations of boys grew up fighting outlaws or indians, or played “soldier” in the backyard?? Were they any more or less violent than this generation? How did it happen all of a sudden that toy guns promote violence, or are somehow bad for kids?

A school in Hayward, CA thinks it’s a grand idea:

Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill maintains that children who play with toy guns may not take real guns seriously.

“Playing with toys guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” Hill said.

Huh? This horse’s ass is a principal? That statement brings to mind the song “Little Known Facts” that Lucy sings to her little brother Linus in the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown:

D’you see this tree?
It is a fir tree.
It’s called a fir tree
Because it gives us fur
For coats
And it also gives us wool
In the winter time

This is an elm tree
It’s very little
But it will grow up
Into a giant tree
an oak!
You can tell how old it is
By counting its leaves

Where’s old Lucy when we need her.

Enter Schroeder, the rationalist. Or, in this case, a gun rights advocate:

A gun rights advocate questioned the idea that playing with toy guns desensitizes children to real weapons.

“Having a group of children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians is a normal part of growing up,” said Yih-Chau Chang, spokesman for Responsible Citizens of California, a group whose goal is to educate the public about the facts behind gun rights.

“While the intentions are obviously good on the part of the school administration, this doesn’t really educate children about guns or gun safety,” he said. “Guns are used in crimes, but they are more often used in defensive ways which prevent violent crime from occurring in the first place.”

Chang also questioned whether toys can look like real weapons.

“Toy manufacturers are forced to paint guns in bright colors, usually orange or yellow, that make it virtually impossible for an officer to mistake it for a real gun,” Chang said.

Not half as sexy as guns “desensitizing” kids so that when they grow up they want to shoot policemen, but it has the virtue of at least being rational.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on the school administration. They’re going to have a gun safety lesson as well as a fire safety lesson in conjunction with the toy gun exchange which is information most kids could use. But it’s attitudes like the one held by that principal — glorying in their own ignorance and being so smug in their supposed moral superiority — that really gets to me.

Surprisingly, according to two respected polling outfits, the answer is no.

Politico:

“The outrage is coming from the people who write, but not the people who vote,” said Democratic pollster Jefrey Pollock, president of Global Strategy Group, adding that the type of surveillance revealed this week is seen as “a necessary evil.”

“People are willing to kind of bite the bullet a little bit if it helps stop terrorist attacks,” said Republican pollster Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group.

A Pew Research survey in 2011 found that only 29 percent favored “the U.S. government monitoring personal telephone calls and emails” in order to curb terrorism. But Pew found in another poll that 47 percent are more concerned government policies “have not gone far enough to adequately protect the country,” while only 32 percent said they were more concerned the government has gone “too far.”

“I wouldn’t want to minimize the concern over privacy at all because it’s definitely there. But at the same time, especially in the wake of Boston and the constant threat people are feeling … protection is foremost,” said Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “In this general tradeoff, when push comes to shove … more people consistently since 9/11 said protecting the country is a greater concern than restricting civil liberties.”

Gallup senior editor Lydia Saad said voters generally support the government as long as it does not cross the line of actually collecting what’s being said in calls and emails.

“You might actually hit a raw nerve with the content element if that emerges as a key difference,” she said.

This helps explain why President Barack Obama bent over backwards in California Friday to stress that “nobody is listening to your telephone calls.”

Indeed, some of the outrage coming from Republicans seems a little forced given the way many in the GOP defended President Bush when his warrantless wiretap program was exposed in the New York Times in 2005.

Republican elder statesman Charlie Black complained about conservatives who defended the practice under Bush, now trashing it under Obama. He said radio host Mark Levin would normally push to go after the terrorists but he caught him decrying it as Big Brother on the drive home from work Thursday.

Black, a confidante of Senate hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, said the re-authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act last year empowered the government to do exactly this sort of surveillance. He wishes the government could be more candid about plots that have been thwarted.

“My guess is, a week or two from now, it’s not going to be a hot issue with the public but I don’t know that for sure,” he said.

The leaks involving national security are coming one after another, exposing the soft underbelly of U.S. intelligence and informing our enemies — and potential enemies — of our plans.

The latest leak comes to us via the Guardian newspaper — the same outfit that broke the NSA phone records story. As with the NSA story, the author is Glenn Greenwald — a guy who appears to have a direct conduit into the deepest, most secretive recessses of the American government.

The potential damage caused by this leak is considerable. It involves the president’s order for our intelligence agencies to come up with targets in a potential cyberwar.

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.

It says the government will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power”.

The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency.

The aim of the document was “to put in place tools and a framework to enable government to make decisions” on cyber actions, a senior administration official told the Guardian.

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America’s offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama’s move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive’s publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

It may be prudent and wise to be proactive about fighting a cyberwar by choosing targets ahead of time. But whom is Obama going to go to war with in the U.S.? I suppose the cybergeeks could come up with a scenario where the federal government would target domestic enemies, but at the moment, the only thing that comes to mind is attacking the computer of a terrorist whose operation is imminent. How plausible is that?

Plausible or not, what safeguards are in place so that the administration can’t go after their political enemies? As with the other programs that have been leaked, it appears that safeguarding our privacy is inadequate.

We’re already involved in a limited cyberwar; Russian and other international mobsters, China, Russia — U.S. systems have been under attack from those groups as well as others.

But a cyberwar between nation states could quickly escalate as each side tries to take out the defenses of the other. Hopefully, Obama’s secret order will allow us to stay a step ahead in any conflict and protect our vital system from disruption or destruction.

So, was the Washington Post incorrect? The short answer is no. And, as this fascinating article in the New York Times points out, both the tech companies and the Post are telling the truth:

When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so.

The negotiations shed a light on how Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people’s personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information — e-mails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries — for intelligence. They illustrate how intricately the government and tech companies work together, and the depth of their behind-the-scenes transactions.

[...]

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

The negotiations have continued in recent months, as Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives including those at Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Intel. Though the official purpose of those meetings was to discuss the future of the Internet, the conversations also touched on how the companies would collaborate with the government in its intelligence-gathering efforts, said a person who attended.

While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so.

Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses.

It is doubtful that the tech companies knew the code name of the program — PRISM — so they could easily deny they were taking part in such an effort.

And, it’s important to remember that the FISA requests are compartmentalized at these companies, with employees dedicated to complying with government requests for information who are outside the chain of command.

Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.

That inability to discuss details of the program extends to the CEO’s whose carefully worded statements nevertheless reveal that they have been complying with requests from the government for information. But their main point — that the government does not have a “back door” access to their servers — is also a fudge on the truth:

In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.

In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies send digitally.

“Real time” transmission of data is also called “monitoring.” The companies implied in their statements that there was no snooping of this sort, but apparently, in some cases, there is. And it sounds like that agent had “direct access” to the server. I don’t know how else you would describe downloading government software directly onto the server and then capturing data.

Either the CEO’s were unaware of these instances of the government getting direct access to company servers and monitoring communications or they couldn’t admit it because of their non-disclosure agreement.

It’s clear that some in the press have misinterpreted the specifics of the internet surveillance program, but the CEO’s haven’t helped matters by issuing statements that skirt the truth and don’t reveal much about their participation in PRISM, even if they were reluctant to do so. That is probably due in part, to rules governing disclosure, but even with that consideration, they appear to have failed the transparency test.

Machen recommended that Jackson spend 48 months in prison following his guilty plea in February for misuse of campaign funds.

ABC News:

Jackson pleaded guilty in February to misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign funds to enrich himself. Among the items that the congressman bought with the money were a $43,350 gold-plated Rolex watch, fur coats and home furniture.

In a statement released by his attorneys in February, Jackson acknowledged making “improper decisions and mistakes.”

“Over the course of my life I have come to realize that none of us are immune from our share of shortcomings and human frailties,” Jackson said. “Still I offer no excuses for my conduct and I fully accept my responsibility for the improper decisions and mistakes I have made. To that end I want to offer my sincerest apologies to my family, my friends, and all of my supporters for my errors in judgment and while my journey is not yet complete, it is my hope that I am remembered for all the things that I did right.”

Jackson resigned from Congress last November only weeks after winning re-election in a landslide. He represented the Second District in Illinois, a district that includes a large part of Chicago’s South Side and southeast suburbs.

The son of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, Jackson Jr. mysteriously left Congress in June of 2012 to seek treatment for exhaustion. After months of medical leave — he missed a whopping 230 votes in Congress — and stints at treatment centers in Arizona and Minnesota, the congressman was ultimately diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Machen is also asking that Jackson’s wife Sandi, a former Chicago city alderman, be sent to prison first and be sentenced to 18 months. This would allow at least one parent to be free in order to take care of the Jackson’s young children while the other serves their sentence.

In a separate filing, prosecutors urged that Sandi Jackson be sentenced to prison for 18 months, pay more than $168,000 in restitution and be placed on supervised release for an additional year.

Attorneys for Jackson Jr. made a lengthy filing of their own today, saying he deserved a lighter sentence in part because his “severe depression and bipolar disorder require intense ongoing treatment.” A long prison term, they said, would be “devastating” on his children.

“His public fall from grace has already made an example of him, warning other politicians and elected officials of the dangers of personal use of campaign funds.”

Portions of the filing were redacted, including an entire section labeled “Health Issues.”

In the filing, the ex-congressman’s lawyers said: “Due to his and his wife’s resignations from public office, Mr. Jackson’s family has lost its only sources of income. The harsh spotlight of the media that has followed him at every step of the investigation, his plea and his sentencing, has already punished Mr. Jackson and his family immeasurably.”

The prosecutor is recommending nearly the minimum sentence. Guidelines call for Jackson to be sentenced from between 46 and 57 months. It is likely that Jackson’s medical condition will allow him to serve his sentence in a prison hospital facility, since his maladies are both physical and psychological.

Will there be a second act for Jackson? The former rising star in the Democratic party may be back in Congress some day. He’s a relatively young man and the district in which he was elected is one of the most Democratic districts in the country. His name recognition alone would make him a serious player.

But a few politicians recently have tried a comeback after serving time and failed — James Traficant perhaps the most prominent example. Traficant, released from prison in 2009, made a go of it in 2010 — and got only 16% of the vote.

The reason programs like these exist and persist isn’t that the government keeps them secret. It’s that our lawmakers tell the public they are necessary to achieve a goal of zero terrorism, which might well be true — and the public considers that a good enough reason.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered this very succinct justification for the phone records dragnet, in which Verizon and apparently all the other major cellular providers hand over all subscribers’ phone records to the government: “It’s called protecting America.”

Both the public and politicians have been clear: The goal of policies on terrorism is not just to reduce terrorism deaths but eliminate them altogether. Lately, we’ve been getting pretty close. Over the last five years, Americans’ annual odds of dying in a terror attack have been just 1 in 20 million.

If we hope to maintain that record, we had better not have any false negatives in our search for potential terrorists. If the government can’t miss any terrorists, how can it not have a massively overbroad surveillance infrastructure that snoops on all of us?

The perverse impact of zero tolerance for terrorism doesn’t just show up in surveillance. It’s the reason we all have to take our shoes off at the airport, that Boston shut down for a day after the Marathon bombings at a likely cost of over $100 million, and that we invaded Iraq.

We don’t think about other social ills this way. Nobody says we should have a goal of zero heart disease deaths or zero auto accident deaths, because that would be nuts. We balance the objective of saving lives against other considerations, like cost and individual rights and the fact that bacon is delicious.

We should apply this cost-benefit approach to terrorism too. This approach would allow us to say that the phone records dragnet can be a bad idea even if it saves lives. But the big resistance to that analysis doesn’t come from Congress; it comes from the American public.

Mr. Barro raises a couple of important issues. Do the American people really want “zero terrorism?” Or do politicians say that’s what we want and use it as an excuse to ratchet up the Surveillance State? What Barro is really talking about is post-terrorist attack blame — who misses out when the music stops and there aren’t enough chairs for everyone. This is what concerns politicians and, just guessing, many bureaucrats in the intelligence community. “Not on my watch” is as much about rear-end covering as it is a desire to prevent a mass casualty terrorist attack. So, there may indeed be a political angle to surveillance overkill. If that sounds cynical, we get that way with experience. So much over the years has been excused because of “national security” that the term itself has lost meaning.

Also, Feinstein was referring to the phone records dragnet. But there is a qualitative — and quantitative — difference between that NSA program and the internet surveillance program. Having your phone records scanned for a less than a millionth of a second by a dumb brute of a supercomputer, and then spit out never to be accessed again offers the potential for abuse but with adequate safeguards, is only mildly threatening.

But the internet surveillance program sounds more like monitoring than data mining. And that should worry everyone, even if the original target is a terrorist suspect who lives overseas.

Washington Post:

Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that “it’s nothing to worry about.”

Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content. That is described as “incidental,” and it is inherent in contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in. Intelligence analysts are typically taught to chain through contacts two “hops” out from their target, which increases “incidental collection” exponentially. The same math explains the aphorism, from the John Guare play, that no one is more than “six degrees of separation” from any other person.

I don’t think even the authors of the Patriot Act envisioned such an intrusive program. And that’s a huge part of the problem — one that the American people aren’t even aware. The ability of government to violate our privacy, to access our private records, and to make use of that information have outstripped our ability to write law that draws clear, unambiguous lines that protect our privacy and our liberty. These awesomely complex technologies, placed in the hands of those not so wedded to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as most of our current leaders, has the potential to make a police state of America. And I don’t think the American people want that.

Barro is right that we don’t need “zero tolerance” for terrorist attacks. And he asks a reasonable question about how much security vs. how much liberty. But are the American people asking the same question? They elected a president who had a clear message about changing the entire concept of the war on terror, de-emphasizing it and overturning much of the security infrastructure that President Bush put in place following 9/11. Of course, that didn’t happen, but Obama’s election makes it appear that we don’t have a public eager to pay any price — including their liberty — to be made safe.

President Obama strolled out to the podium today in San Jose, CA and was immediately at a loss for words. Not only did the President not have teleprompter, his aides forgot his speech.

“My remarks are not sitting here,” the President declared awkwardly. “I’m uhhh….people….oh goodness….uhhhh…folks are sweating back there right now.”

President Obama, who’s often mocked for an over-reliance on scripts, shifted uncomfortably smiling for several moments buying time. An aide sprinted out with a hard copy of the speech, tripping at one point, adding to the drama.

Once Obama got a hold of his speech, he called concern over the surveillance programs “hype,” assuring the American people that the surveillance was overseen by the FISA court to make sure that government couldn’t “abuse” the programs.

But the Washington Post reported that administration lawyers have apparently not been giving the FISA court accurate information on the internet surveillance effort when it comes to Americans being caught up in the information dragnet:

The court-approved program is focused on foreign communications traffic, which often flows through U.S. servers even when sent from one overseas location to another. Between 2004 and 2007, Bush administration lawyers persuaded federal FISA judges to issue surveillance orders in a fundamentally new form. Until then the government had to show probable cause that a particular “target” and “facility” were both connected to terrorism or espionage.

In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as “facilities” and agreed to certify periodically that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of “U.S. persons” data without a warrant.

Do these sound like “reasonable procedures” used to minimize collection of “US persons data without a warrant”?

The Obama administration points to ongoing safeguards in the form of “extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.”

And it is true that the PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.

Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that “it’s nothing to worry about.”

Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content. That is described as “incidental,” and it is inherent in contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in. Intelligence analysts are typically taught to chain through contacts two “hops” out from their target, which increases “incidental collection” exponentially. The same math explains the aphorism, from the John Guare play, that no one is more than “six degrees of separation” from any other person.

Is the FISA court aware of the extent of data collection involving US citizens? Collection that increases “exponentially” under certain circumstances? It sounds like the FISA court has one idea of how much US citizens should be surveiled and the NSA and FBI have another, more expansive view.

Concerns over this program don’t sound like “hype” to me. But the president’s response sure sounds like a whitewash.

CBS DC:

Two Internal Revenue Service agents working in the agency’s Cincinnati office say higher-ups in Washington directed the targeting of conservative political groups when they applied for tax-exempt status, a contention that directly contradicts claims made by the agency since the scandal erupted last month.

The Cincinnati agents didn’t provide proof that senior IRS officials in Washington ordered the targeting. But one of the agents said her work processing the applications was closely supervised by a Washington lawyer in the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, according to a transcript of her interview with congressional investigators.

Her interview suggests a long trail of emails that could support her claim.

The revelation could prove to be significant if investigators are able to show that Washington officials were involved in singling out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny. IRS officials have said repeatedly that the targeting was initiated by front-line agents in the Cincinnati office and was stopped once senior officials in Washington found out.

[...]

The Associated Press viewed transcripts of interviews with two IRS agents working in the Cincinnati office.

Gary Muthert, an IRS agent there, said his local supervisor told him in March 2010 to check the applications for tax-exempt status to see how many were from groups with “tea party” in their names. The supervisor’s name was blacked out in the transcript.

“He told me that Washington, D.C., wanted some cases,” Muthert said of his supervisor.

Muthert said he came up with fewer than 10 applications. But after checking some of the group’s websites, he noticed similar groups with “patriots’ or “9-12 project” in their names, so he started looking for applications that mentioned those terms too.

Over a two-month period, Muthert said he found about 40 applications that mentioned tea party, patriots or 9-12 project — the latter being groups which aspire to reinstill a post-9/11 spirit of unity in the country.

“I used ‘patriots’ because some of the tea partiers wouldn’t, they would shorten their name to TP Patriots,” Muthert said. “I thought, OK, I will use ‘patriot.’”

Muthert said his supervisor told him that someone in Washington wanted to see seven of the applications, so Muthert prepared the files.

Whom did you send them to? An investigator asked.

“I don’t know,” Muthert answered.

Recall, this is 2010 — more than a year before Lois Lerner, head of the tax exempt unit, says she heard of the targeting program.

But another low level IRS agent may have tipped even more senior officials in Washington — inadvertently:

The transcripts show that in July 2010, Elizabeth Hofacre, an IRS official in Cincinnati who was coordinating “emerging issues” for the agency’s tax-exempt unit, was corresponding with Washington-based IRS tax attorney Carter Hull.

In April 2010 Hofacre had been put in charge of handling tax-exempt status applications from conservative groups by her Cincinnati supervisor.

She was asked to summarize her initial findings in a spreadsheet and notify a small group of colleagues, including some staff in the Washington tax-exempt unit. However, she sent her email to a larger number of people in Washington by accident.

“Everybody in DC got it by mistake,” Hofacre said in the transcripts. She later clarified that she did not mean all officials but those in the IRS Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements unit.

The Cincinnati office, where IRS reviews of applications for tax-exempt status were centralized, used a “be-on-the-lookout” (BOLO) list that included the words “Tea Party” and “Patriot” for flagging applications for extra review.

It will be impossible to prove that anyone who received the mistaken email actually read it. But whoever is on that list should be called to testify under oath.

Neither low level IRS employee has been able to shed any light on who ordered the program to begin, but I think investigators are getting closer to the truth. The IRS Washington attorney Carter Hull would seem to be emerging as a key witness. He is a link to both staffers and perhaps others in the Cincinnati office, and the IRS Washington office.

Instead of narrowing, the scandal is still expanding, and there’s no indication it will bottom out anytime soon.

The rest of Europe — especially Germany, France, and the richer northern tier of the EU — have been carrying Greece for years, funding their extravagant public spending and keeping the economy afloat. When asked to cut their budget and raise taxes to help bail themselves out of the mess they made, they balked — went into the streets and rioted like a bunch of two year olds who had their blanket taken away.

Reuters:

Anger was palpable on the streets of Athens, where the EU-IMF austerity recipe that the Washington-based fund says it sharply misjudged has left rows of shuttered stores and many scrounging for scraps of food in trash cans.

“Really? Thanks for letting us know but we can’t forgive you,” said Apostolos Trikalinos, a 59-year old garbage collector and a father of two.

“Let’s not fool ourselves. They’ll never give us anything back. I’m sorry for all the people who killed themselves because of austerity. How are we going to bring them back? How?”

The IMF acknowledged on Wednesday that it underestimated the damage done to Greece’s economy from spending cuts and tax hikes imposed in a bailout, which was accompanied by one of the worst economic collapses ever experienced by a country in peacetime.

A report looking back on the bailout said the Fund veered from its own standards to overestimate how much debt Greece could bear, and should have pushed harder and sooner for private lenders to take a “haircut” to reduce Greece’s debt burden.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told reporters the acknowledgment justified his positions. He had criticized from the outset “what the IMF has called mistakes”.

“And we have been correcting those mistakes over the past year,” Samaras told reporters during a visit to Helsinki.

Greeks have seen their incomes plunge by about a third since the debt crisis erupted in 2009 and prompted Greece to seek two bailouts from the EU and the IMF. The unemployment rate has hit nearly 27 percent and suicide rates have soared. Worst hit have been the youth, nearly 60 percent of whom are unemployed.

“The IMF admits to the crime,” the leftist Avgi newspaper declared on its front page. Top selling newspaper Ta Nea branded it an “admission of failure”.

The Greek Finance Minister was being insufferable:

“The IMF report confirms and records the positions that we have repeatedly presented in public, which formed the basis of our arguments during tough negotiations with the IMF and the other two parties of the troika,” former Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told Reuters.

“There are many choices that we would have never made on our own, but we were obliged to take in order to avoid the worst.”

If left on your own, you wouldn’t have cut squat and would have continued on as before, spending the rest of Europe’s money — and your children’s money, and your children’s children money. Who are you trying to kid?

I’ve been following this soap opera for 3 years and I know that the Greek people never accepted the idea that they had to endure any pain for their profligate ways. They screamed bloody murder when the government tried to cut the bloated government workforce — 20% of the country worked for the government at one time. Tax avoidance is an art form and not just for the rich. Everybody had an angle to try and wangle more and more from the government.

So yes, as the IMF admits, they miscalculated. But this is hardly vindication for a people and a government who have shamed themselves in this crisis by trying everything to avoid responsibility for their irresponsible spending that led them to the precipice. The rest of Europe didn’t “miscalculate” when they agreed to bail out Greek banks and the government after the national debt had reached 126% of its GDP in 2010. Nobody was forcing anything down their throat when they were spending wildly. In fact, with the help of Goldman Sachs, the Greek government knowingly fudged their deficit numbers, making it appear that they were in much better shape than they actually were.

And now we’re supposed to feel sorry for them?

After this kind of response by the people and government, the EU should refuse to disperse the remaining cash in the bail out and let the government swim home by themselves.

But now, with revelations about the NSA acquiring the communications records of millions of Americans, the Bush and Obama administrations are officially joined at the hip — to the detriment of civil liberties, according to National Journal’s Ron Fournier:

If the story is accurate, the action appears to be legal. The order was signed by a judge from a secret court that oversees domestic surveillance. It may also be necessary; U.S. intelligence needs every advantage it can get over the nation’s enemies.

But for several reasons the news is chilling.

Verizon probably isn’t the only company coughing up its documents. Odds are incredibly strong that the government is prying into your telephone records today.

Issued in April, the NSA order “could represent the broadest surveillance order known to have been issued,” according to The Washington Post. “It also would confirm long-standing suspicions of civil liberties advocates about the sweeping nature of U.S. surveillance through commercial carries under laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

This appears to be a “rubber stamp,” order, reissued every few months since 2001. As is the case with all government programs, the systematic snooping into your telephone records is unlikely to ever expire without public outcry.

Congress is full of hypocrites. Liberals who criticized Bush are less incensed with Obama. Republicans who bowed to Bush are now blasting Obama. The next time your congressional representative criticizes Obama for curbing civil liberties, ask if he or she would vote to repeal the Patriot Act, the post-911 law that handed unfettered power to the intelligence and military bureaucracies. Most won’t.

The Bush-Obama White House hates transparency. President George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, were justifiably criticized by Democrats (none more successfully so than Obama himself) for their penchant for secrecy. Obama promised that he would run history’s most transparent administration. By almost any measure, on domestic and well as foreign policies, Obama has broken that promise.

It is the lack of transparency that is most galling about the security versus civil liberties debate under Obama, because it shows his lack of faith in the public. Americans know a high level of secrecy and dirty work is needed to keep them safe. Most trust their president. Many approve of his job performance.

Still, they expect and deserve an open discussion about how to fight terrorism without undermining the Constitution.

Obama started that conversation with a recent address on the drone program, media leaks and the need to move American off a constant war footing. It was a compelling and well-considered argument for the balance he is claiming to strike.

But he made the speech under pressure, and reluctantly.

When a dyed-in-the-wool liberal like Fournier starts talking about the “Bush-Obama White House,” you have to think some invisible line has been crossed by the president that marks a change in how at least some of the Washington press corps will report on him.

Why? Here’s Fornier’s parting shot:

One thing we’ve learned about the Bush-Obama White House is that words don’t matter. Watch what they do.

You’ve heard of the Bilderbergs. They’re a shadow world government bent on controlling your life. They are so secretive, they don’t even have a website. No membership list is known to exist. No minutes from their meetings, or press updates, or press conferences, or any on-the-record briefing has ever been given.

Their defenders say that any notion the 140 world leaders who attend the annual conference form the basis for a one world government is absurd. There are those who think otherwise:

In a 1994 report Right Woos Left, published by the Political Research Associates, investigative journalist Chip Berlet argued that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about the Bilderberg group date back as early as 1964 and can be found in Schlafly’s self-published book A Choice, Not an Echo,[35] which promoted a conspiracy theory in which the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger group, whose internationalist policies would pave the way for world communism.[36] Paradoxically, in August 2010 former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote a controversial article for the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma in which he cited Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club,[37] which, as quoted by Castro, describes “sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists” manipulating the public “to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self.”[32]

Castro’s conspiracy theory sounds a lot like Castro’s government.

It doesn’t matter. Those are only two of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Bilderberg — and those are the more rational ones. My favorite is the UFO angle, where the Bilderbergs are in the process of preparing humankind for the knowledge that aliens are among us on earth.

Of course, what the Bilderbergs are really about is a little R&R for the super powerful and super wealthy at very rich, very exclusive venues with a few meetings thrown in where they all get to hob-nob with each other — and plot the overthrow of the free world. Or is it install a communist world government?

The Telegraph:

The Bilderberg was founded in 1954 to bring the leaders of Western Europe and the United States closer as the Soviet Union cemented its control of the Eastern bloc. They met first at the Bilderberg Hotel, near Arnhem, at the instigation of Joseph Retinger, a Polish polio victim who had fought the Nazis during the war. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was the chair. In that first meeting, the participants – including bankers, economists, and the future Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell – debated the Communist threat and the prospect of European integration.

Publicly, the group says it is still merely a debating society – a forum for leaders to “listen, reflect and gather insights” unbound by official policy positions.

But while they rankle at the conspiracy theorists, former leaders of the Bilderberg confences says they were the most important events they ever went to, and the freedom of speaking away from the ears of Whitehall officials meant the discussions that took place decisively shaped modern Europe.

It is above all a club for life’s winners. George Osborne, Ed Balls and Ken Clarke, the Cabinet Minister who also serves on the group’s steering committee, will arrive this afternoon, as will Mr Mandelson. They will be joined by Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission; Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF; Francois Fillon, the former French Prime Minister; Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner, the former secretaries to the US Treasury; and serving prime ministers, foreign ministers and finance ministers from across north west Europe.

The chairmen and chief executives of some of the world’s biggest businesses will attend, with a combined wealth running into hundreds of millions of pounds – from Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Amazon, Google, Shell, HSBC, Lazard, Prudential and Alcoa. Henri de Castries, the chairman of the Bilderberg, is the head of AXA, the insurance giant. Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal, is also on the guest list. Goldman Sachs and BP have in recent years been donors to the British committee organising this week’s gathering.

According to Drudge headlines, “Armed checkpoints ring ‘exclusion zone’…Locals must show passports to enter own driveways…Delegates arrive in blacked-out cars…” And that’s what got me to thinking that the Bilderberg group have done the absolute worst PR job in history? All this secrecy has only fueled conspiracy mongering and resentment among the rest of us. Are they trying to tell us that they can’t let us know who is attending? Or a few more details on what they’re going to discuss?

They should hire David Axelrod and his shop. Look what he did for Obama — a nothing state senator became president in 4 years! The Bilderberg’s would hardly be a challenge for Ax.

They better do something. The conspiracy minded among us might decide one day that protesting isn’t enough and break out the tar and feathers. Not that some of those guys wouldn’t look better with a feather coat, but it’s summer and it would probably get a little hot.

“Europe’s Last Stand?  Debt, Demography, and the Abandonment of National Sovereignty” will examine how “Europe reached its current predicament, where it will go from here and how it might rebuild hope for arresting any continuing decline.”

Since AFA’s first two conferences on the future of Europe in 2007 and 2008, much has happened to suggest that time may not be on the continent’s side. The rise of debtor nations within the European Union has threatened the stability and ultimate survival of the continent’s currency; the emergence of restive Muslim communities has stirred fears of internecine civil strife while a troubling demographic gap (deaths not being replaced by births) all contribute to a sense that Europe is veering dangerously off course.

But even these fundamental economic and demographic concerns may pale next to the more serious collapse of self confidence, the muddying of political integrity, the evaporation of religious life and the failure to commit to the Enlightenment values and ideals upon which Europe’s civilization was built.

Featured speakers included Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders, Daniel Pipes, and George Gilder.

The two day event has drawn speakers from around the world. You can register by going here.

The Hill:

An administration official defended the collection of data as a “critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States.”

“It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” the official added.

The news that the administration has been conducting secret surveillance on millions of ordinary citizens comes amid intensifying scrutiny over the DOJ’s spying on Associated Press and Fox News reporters, delivering another blow to President Obama’s already bruised reputation on civil liberties.

The news was first reported by the Guardian newspaper, which on Wednesday published the court order which required Verizon to provide the security agency with information on all customers’ phone calls, including those not suspected of wrongdoing.

The order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court covered all Verizon calls from April 25 to July 19.

The administration official defending the NSA’s actions emphasized that the court order did not allow the government to listen in on calls, but only to monitor the length of calls and to whom they were made.

“The order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls,” the administration official said Thursday.

“The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call.”

Nice to know that we’re winding down the “War on Terror.”

It isn’t relevant whether the government can “listen in” on conversations. The program is set up to look for patterns of calls that may denote a terror cell or an individual with overseas connections to terrorism.

The problem is that sometimes these computers — or their human operators — make mistakes and innocent Americans are caught up in the dragnet. That was the problem with the program as it was originally conducted under the Bush administration and it’s hard to see how they could have fixed that aspect of the sweep.

Should it concern us that our phone records may be subject to examination for a millionth of a second by some dumb brute of a supercomputer who then spits it out, never to look at it again? Not on the surface. But the potential for abuse — accidental or otherwise — may be too great to have this program continue without stricter oversight by Congress.

I was wrong:

The father of a middle schooler in Calvert County, Md. says his 11-year-old son was suspended for 10 days for merely talking about guns on the bus ride home.

Bruce Henkelman of Huntingtown says his son, a sixth grader at Northern Middle School in Owings, was talking with friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when the bus driver hauled him back to school to be questioned by the principal, Darrel Prioleau.

“The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word ‘gun’ in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days,” Henkelman said in an interview with WMAL.com.

So what did the boy say? According to his father, he neither threatened nor bullied anyone.

“He said, I wish I had a gun to protect everyone. He wanted to defeat the bad guys. That’s the context of what he said,” Henkelman said. “He wanted to be the hero.”

The boy was questioned by the principal and a sheriff’s deputy, who also wanted to search the family home without a warrant, Henkelman said. “He started asking me questions about if I have firearms, and [the deputy said] he’s going to have to search my house. Search my house? I just wanted to know what happened.”

No search was performed, and the deputy left Henkelman’s home after the father answered questions in a four-page questionnaire issued by the Sheriff’s Office.

Principal Darrel Prioleau did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. Robin Welsh, the deputy superintendent of Calvert County Schools, said federal privacy rules prohibited her from commenting on a specific case, but she said students are not suspended without cause.

“There has to be some violation within the code of conduct that would trigger some type of consequence or intervention,” said Welsh, who said the county school system does not have a zero tolerance policy.

Based on information about Henkelman’s case provided by WMAL.com, the ACLU of Maryland said the suspension, later reduced to one day, was a poor choice by school administrators.

We can all appreciate the heightened sensitivity to the possibility of tragedy following incidents like Sandy Hook. But this is nuts.

The family of the boy got a twofer; a clear violation of the boy’s free speech rights and a threatened search without a warrant. What’s next, a trip to Gitmo?

When are citizens going to start taking action against school authorities who abuse their position to bully little kids? If you live in Owings, Maryland, you might consider attending the next meeting of the school board and ask them what they’re drinking or smoking that makes them act like insane hysterics when it comes to guns.

ABC News:

Bipartisan meetings in the House of Representatives on a comprehensive immigration reform bill have failed, and the congressmen will meet for the last time today without reaching an agreement on a House bill, ABC News has learned.

The stumbling block is GOP insistence that newly legalized workers now working in the shadows have no access to government-sponsored health care during their 15-year pathway to citizenship, according to two sources with access to the secret house “Gang of 8″ meetings.

Democrats say that since these newly legalized immigrants would be paying taxes they should be eligible for benefits.

The stalemate is not expected to be solved and any immigration legislation from the House would likely proceed in piecemeal fashion.

This latest development represents a huge blow to immigration reform advocates because the House is likely to pass several smaller bills that address immigration reform, but would not include a pathway to citizenship. It creates a much longer and arduous legislative road to a bill President Obama would be willing to sign.

A comprehensive approach to immigration reform never had much chance in the House — too many poison pills for Republicans and the Democrats were unwilling to accede to GOP demands on almost everything.

If Obama is smart, he’ll take what he can get on immigration reform. This would probably be a generous guest worker program, border security provisions, mandatory use of e-verify, a visa simplification process, and perhaps, some kind of a “path to legality” for illegal aliens already here. It won’t be in comprehensive form, but rather a series of stand alone bills that may — or may not — be taken up serially.

Once again, the president has failed to lead on an issue that he considers of vital importance to the nation. He handed the ball to the “Gang of Eight” in the House and Senate and told them to have at it. He has made pretty speeches to adoring fans but when it comes to doing the scut work and getting in the trenches to fight for what he believes, he comes up short.

A pathetic excuse for a president.

Going over Niagara Falls in a leaky barrel might fit, but then, some people have survived that stunt.

Skydiving without a parachute? Again, there have been instances of people landing on a bale of hay or something and walking away.

I’m having a hard time coming up with something that would express the absolute futility as well as the bat guano crazy idea that there is anything at all to “embrace” about Obamacare and that Democrats haven’t completely lost it.

Politico:

Scarred by years of Republican attacks over Obamacare, with more in store next year, Democrats have settled on an unlikely strategy for the 2014 midterms: Bring it on.

Party strategists believe that embracing the polarizing law — especially its more popular elements — is smarter politics than fleeing from it in the House elections. The new tack is a marked shift from 2010, when Republicans pointed to Obamacare as Exhibit A of Big Government run amok on their way to seizing the House from Democrats.

But the Democratic bear hug, reflecting a calculation it’s probably impossible to shed their association with the law even if they wanted to, is still a high-wire public relations act. The White House has consistently struggled with messaging on Obamacare, hoping the public would gain an appreciation for the health care makeover as its benefits became apparent. That never really happened, but Democrats seem to be banking that it finally will.

The strategy will be put to the test as the law kicks in next year and is implemented in the months leading up to the election — with the inevitable snafus and critical media coverage as the public gets its first up-close view of the massive undertaking.

California Rep. Scott Peters, a freshman Democrat who narrowly won election last year, said he doesn’t agree with every part of the law. But he said he’s not afraid of addressing health care — far from it.

“I don’t have any problem talking about it,” Peters, who hails from a San Diego-area swing district, said in an interview. “I think it’s a big issue. I think it’s going to be talked about more than immigration or guns.”

One early sign of the shift: After House Republicans brought a health care repeal measure to the floor last month — the 37th time they’ve tried — Peters joined a cast of other Democratic incumbents from competitive districts to criticize the GOP for the maneuver.

In 2010, Democratic congressional candidates in tough races actively promoted their opposition to the just-passed law, in some cases running ads blasting it. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee privately instructed members and candidates to change the subject if they were asked about the health care law in town hall meetings or on the campaign trail.

Maybe they think running away from Obamacare in 2010 didn’t work so they’ll try the 180 degree opposite tack and embrace it as the greatest government program ever. More expensive than Social Security! More intrusive than Medicare! More useless than No Child Left Behind! Coming soon — OBAMACARE!

One 15 second political ad will lead to a GOP victory. The ad opens with President Obama addressing Congress:

“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

Perhaps a laugh track could be added for effect at the end of that statement.

Democrats have been trying to convince themselves that everything is going to be alright, that the rollout for Obamacare won’t be so bad, that premiums won’t rise that much, that millions won’t get thrown off their insurance plans and forced to buy higher priced policies, and that Americans will accept the whole kit and kaboodle without a whimper.

If they really believe that. embracing Obamacare is a no-brainer.

Edward Klein’s The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House has now come out in paperback and the author wrote an op-ed in the New York Post that contains the explosive allegation:

Bill Clinton’s animosity toward Obama is legendary. A year before the last election, he was urging Hillary to challenge the sitting president for the nomination — a move she rejected.

According to two people who attended that meeting in Chappaqua, Bill Clinton then went on a rant against Obama.

“I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama,” my sources quoted Clinton as saying. “I have no relationship with the president — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be president. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s an amateur!”

For his part, Obama wasn’t interested in Bill Clinton upstaging him during the presidential campaign. He resisted giving him any role at the convention.

But as last summer wore on, and Democrat enthusiasm waned, chief political strategist David Axelrod convinced the president that he needed Bill Clinton’s mojo.

A deal was struck: Clinton would give the key nominating speech at the convention, and a full-throated endorsement of Obama. In exchange, Obama would endorse Hillary Clinton as his successor.

Clinton’s speech was as promised; columnists pointed out the surprising enthusiasm in which he described the president. It also lived up to Obama’s fears, as more people talked about Clinton’s speech in the weeks following than his own.

But after his re-election, Obama began to have second thoughts. He would prefer to stay neutral in the next election, as is traditional of outgoing presidents.

Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened retaliation. Obama backed down. He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes,” and offered an unprecedented “farewell interview” with departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The result was a slobbering televised love-in — and an embarrassment to all concerned.

Bill Clinton has never forgiven Obama for what he believes was an Obama-backed campaign to tar him as a racist in the lead-up to the South Carolina Democratic primary in 2008. After all, he was America’s first black president — a piece of flattery he embraced.

But it seems a little incredible that Clinton, a seasoned politician, would allow himself a rant against Obama in that fashion in front of anyone except his closest and most trusted aides. Also, both Clintons are political animals, and it is doubtful either of them ever seriously entertained challenging Obama for the nomination. Sitting presidents don’t lose — even Carter beat back a challenge by Kennedy. And that was with an economy worse than what Obama was running on. Hillary would have had to repudiate her own support for Obama and try to tear the Democratic Party apart to get the nomination — a very long shot at best. Do the Clintons strike you as people who would enter a political campaign that had little chance of success?

What I’m saying is that Klein’s tale is possible, but not likely. I would only note that he is playing directly into the conservative narrative about Obama, Hillary, and Bill Clinton — convenient to sell books but impossible to prove.

It’s fun to read, though, isn’t it?

So the IRS spending $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012 only sounds outrageous. It’s really a bargain when you consider what they’ve accomplished over those two years, what with intimidating tea party groups and harassing Republican donors.

Besides, who are we to begrudge bureaucrats a little fun in the sun?

Associated Press:

A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, according to a House committee.

That total included $4 million for an August 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about “leadership through art,” the House committee said.

The report by Treasury Department’s inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to extra scrutiny.

In case you’ve forgotten, Anaheim is the home of the original Disneyland and if they got baseball tickets, you have to wonder if they didn’t get some kind of deal on admission to the theme park.

And, of course, what’s an IRS conference without a parody of Star Trek?

According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general’s office, the IRS also did not formally seek competitive bids for the city where the agency’s 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who assisted the agency, or for the speakers.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.

“So they end up with free drinks, they ended up with tickets to games, basically kickbacks,” Issa said on CNN.

Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference. In one, agency employees did a parody of “Star Trek” while dressed like the TV show’s characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers dancing on a stage. The two cost the agency more than $50,000 to make, aides said.

The lecturer who spoke about art through leadership produced six paintings while speaking with subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.

When you think about it, tax collection is a lot like art. Designing forms to be as incomprehensible and complex as possible brings to mind the arrogance of modern artists who vie with each other to see just how obtuse they can be. And if IRS managers can find “art through leadership,” the agency might want to consider hiring the curator of the Museum of Modern Art as commissioner. He certainly can’t do any worse than the the jamokes they’ve had leading the agency lately.

Current IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel wants you to “take comfort that a conference like this would not take place today.” Wow. Funny, but I don’t feel comforted. Outraged, maybe. Incensed, for sure. Sorry, Danny, but “comfort” is pretty far down the list.

You hope that the IRS has learned its lesson, but Rep. Issa isn’t so sure: “Understand that some of the things that they’re saying, `Well, this wouldn’t happen again,’ they would still happen again,” Issa said.

Of course they will. The anger will eventually subside. The world will go back to its normal business. The focus on the IRS will return to what the hell they were doing targeting conservative groups.

And five years from now, the IG will issue another report condemning the agency for wasting taxpayer’s money on conferences, or whatever else the bureaucrats can come up with to give themselves those little perks and privileges they think the country owes them for their “service.”