Month: June 2013

Chris Hayes on the leak double standard

by digby

Chris Hayes was on the same wavelength as both David and I were today, but turned his comments on the press which, considering where he works, is really aggressive. And admirable:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Right on Chris Hayes. Barbara Starr and David Gregory can spout all the classified information they choose without fear of being arrested. But then they only disseminate the classified info that makes the government look good so it’s just fine.

*The whole show was really good, actually. Worth spending some time to watch if you missed it.
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Number ‘O the Day

by digby

By now you’ve heard all about Rick Perry’s stirring defense of “life” this morning in which he righteously proclaimed “the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.” He’s a very spiritual, Christian man, you see:

Wednesday’s execution of Kimberly McCarthy, 52, for the 1997 stabbing death of her neighbor will mark Texas’ 500th execution since 1976 and the 261st during Gov. Rick Perry’s tenure. Those statistics represent the largest number of executions in any state and the largest under any recent governor in the United States. Perry has rarely used his power to grant clemency, granting 31 death row commutations, most of them — 28 — the result of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning capital punishment for minors.

He has 261 kills under his belt. I’m sure Jesus would be very impressed.

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Treating all leaks equally is kind of important to the whole “rule of law” thing

by David Atkins

In all the manufactured outrage against Snowden for leaking and Greenwald for doing his job as a journalist, there have been two main strains of thought. The first is that whatever the government does in the name of “national security” should be accepted without question, that if one is sworn to secrecy one should never reveal secrets under any circumstance, and that journalistic freedom of speech itself should be called into question if it interferes in any way with whatever government officials say they’re doing in the name of “national security.”

That is a fascist argument that has no place in civil American society, and that should embarrass anyone who uses it.

The second argument is about equal application of rule of law, and it carries a little more moral weight. That argument centers around balance of powers and the notion that it should not be up to random individuals to determine what secrets should remain secrets based on their own moral compass. It’s based around notions of universal rule of law, and is not a fascist one but an institutionalist one. It’s the argument that animates much of the anti-Snowden left.

But for anyone to argue that point with credibility, one must also oppose the rampant leaks coming from inside the government apparatus as well. Senator Mark Udall’s quote bears repeating here:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am concerned to see news reports about the CIA’s response to the Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program before the information was provided to the committee. Committee members have not yet seen this response, which we have been expecting for nearly six months.

The American people’s trust in intelligence agencies requires transparency and strong congressional oversight. This latest leak–the latest incident in a long string of leaks from unnamed intelligence officials who purport to be familiar with the Committee’s Study and the CIA’s official response to it–is wholly unacceptable. Even as these reports emerged today and over the past several months, the CIA and the White House have repeatedly rejected requests to discuss the Committee’s report with Members or Committee staff.

The continual leaks of inaccurate information from unnamed intelligence officials are embarrassing to the agency and have only hardened my resolve to declassify the full Committee Study, which is based on a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, comprises more than 6,000 pages in length and includes more than 35,000 footnotes. The report is based on CIA records including internal memoranda, cables, emails, as well as transcripts of interviews and Intelligence Committee hearings. The Study is fact-based, and I believe, indisputable.

The U.S. intelligence apparatus is selectively leaking material that it finds “appropriate,” using secret judgments none of the rest of us are privy to, while condemning leaks from outside the system. That makes a mockery of the universal rule of the law. Either all leaks are OK, or none are. There’s a debate to be had about that question, but intellectual consistency demands taking one side or the other. One simply cannot support these government-sanctioned leaks while opposing Snowden’s without falling back on plainly totalitarian logic that justifies whatever the government does in the name of national security. There’s no space here between the Peter King right and the pro-Administration pseudo-left if one does not roundly denounce the government’s selective leaks.

If someone denounces Snowden and Greenwald but claims to be to the left of Peter King, they must also denounce the government’s selective leaks and demand prosecution of those involved, or lose all credibility and claims to intellectual consistency. To selectively defend or extol lawbreaking behavior depending on who is in office and what issue is being defended, is the worst sort of political hackery and hypocrisy.

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Is Senator Mark Udall a radical nut too?

by digby

With all the hoopla over Edward Snowden’s narcissism and Glenn Greenwald’s student loan debt, (as well as lots of handwringing about whether we are good citizens if we question the government’s policies on matters pertaining to national security and surveillance of its own citizens) I cannot help but wonder why people who think that a grave injustice has been done to our country by these radicals “with an agenda” don’t turn their wrath on this fellow: Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who has been raising hell about such things for years.

He’s responding here to the fact that the government is not only refusing to allow the Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA Detention and Interrogation program to be released to the public, they are self-servingly leaking like a sieve about it:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am concerned to see news reports about the CIA’s response to the Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program before the information was provided to the committee. Committee members have not yet seen this response, which we have been expecting for nearly six months.

The American people’s trust in intelligence agencies requires transparency and strong congressional oversight. This latest leak–the latest incident in a long string of leaks from unnamed intelligence officials who purport to be familiar with the Committee’s Study and the CIA’s official response to it–is wholly unacceptable. Even as these reports emerged today and over the past several months, the CIA and the White House have repeatedly rejected requests to discuss the Committee’s report with Members or Committee staff.

The continual leaks of inaccurate information from unnamed intelligence officials are embarrassing to the agency and have only hardened my resolve to declassify the full Committee Study, which is based on a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, comprises more than 6,000 pages in length and includes more than 35,000 footnotes. The report is based on CIA records including internal memoranda, cables, emails, as well as transcripts of interviews and Intelligence Committee hearings. The Study is fact-based, and I believe, indisputable.

I am confident the American people will agree once they have the opportunity to read the Study, as well as the CIA’s official response, that this program was a failure and a tragic moment in America’s history. The only way to correct the inaccurate information in the public record on this program is through the sunlight of declassification.

Mark Udall is not some lowly blogger or nutty computer geek. He’s a US Senator and he’s he’s saying outright that your government is lying to you. Worse, it is lying to your face through ongoing leaks, even as it has declared war on anyone who leaks in ways that are unflattering.

There have to be a few Americans out there who otherwise trust government institutions in these matters, but who are at least somewhat concerned that the government is not just keeping secrets, it is going out of its way to mislead them into believing things that are not true. How can anyone think that’s ok? Doesn’t the fact that a respected US Senator is saying this stuff alter the view of even those who are predisposed to believe the government is doing the right thing?

I suppose it’s always possible that they do believe that  Mark Udall is some kind of radical freak right along with that alleged fanatic Greenwald and looney-tunes Snowden. In fact, you pretty much have to believe that if you are willing to discount what he is saying here.

What we are dealing with is the fact that government believes leaks are just fine as long as they show the government in a good light. And that is what is otherwise known as propaganda:  people in this country should know only what the government wants it to know. And it is ruthlessly punishing anyone who deviates from prescribed authorized leaking. Is that really necessary to keep the nation secure from terrorists?

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Bill Kristol laid down the law and John Boehner dutifully followed it.


by digby

Here’s what he said:

Sean Trende asks, in a thoughtful and data-heavy piece, whether the GOP has to pass immigration reform to be competitive in the future at the presidential level. The answer is no.

Meanwhile, with respect to the 2014 congressional elections, it’s increasingly clear that allowing any form or permutation of the Senate bill to become law would divide and demoralize potential Republican voters. So if Republicans want to win House and Senate seats in 2014, John Boehner should kill the Senate bill—first refusing to take it up in the House, and also by making clear the House will refuse to go to conference with it. The House can still pass specific bills to address particular immigration issues this session (which presumably the Senate won’t take up—but let Harry Reid explain his refusal to do so). But the key is for Boehner to kill “comprehensive” immigration “reform” in this session of Congress.

The primary and indeed sufficient reason to do this is of course because the Senate legislation is such bad public policy. But it may be reassuring to elected officials that doing the right thing won’t hurt politically in 2014 or most likely 2016. And it’s also the case that Republican presidential candidates can set forth whatever proposals they think right in 2015 and 2016, so they’re not just saying no. But the House GOP, for the sake of party and country, should say no: No Capitulation, No “Comprehensive” Bill, No Conference.

Shocking, I know, from the man who single-handedly destroyed the health care proposals of 1994 with exactly the same advice — and consigned millions of Americans to years of suffering.

I do hope the Democrats pass this piece around to the Latino community so they’ll know — and will tell their grandchildren — that immigration reform was blocked because allowing current immigrants to live and work in this country without fear of deportation is “bad public policy”  — and that allowing it “to become law would divide and demoralize potential Republican voters.”

In other words, Republican voters will have a fit if immigrants they don’t like can become official Americans. That’s the sad truth.  (Also too: he said pretty clearly that the GOP presidential candidate in 2015 will be lying his ass off to get votes from people who care about this. Good to know.)

Latinos should know about this so that they can vote with that in mind. Everybody should know about this so they can vote with that in mind. I really don’t think it’s a majority no matter what kind of “thoughtful, data heavy” wishful thinking they’re using to sooth themselves.

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“The louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.”

by digby

What a piece of garbage:

TEXAS GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: “In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of as single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters.”

It really takes some brass for this privileged jackass to not only tell women what they can do with their own bodies but also lecture them on the lessons they should take from their own life experience. We’re not even allowed to have that, I guess.

But that’s not even the worst of it:

During his remarks, the Texas governor also described Davis’ filibuster as “hijacking of the Democratic process” and said of the pro-choice movement, “the louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.”

Meanwhile, back in Ohio:

On Tuesday, anti-abortion Republicans in the state added yet another budget provision related to reproductive health. The new amendment would require doctors to look for a fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion, presumably with an unnecessary ultrasound procedure, and then “notify the woman about the presence of the heartbeat.” Abortion doctors would also be required to tell women about the fetus’ likelihood of “surviving to full term.”
[…]
They’ve found their chance with this budget amendment, which actually seeks to redefine the medical terms of pregnancy under Ohio law. The new provision defines a fetus as “human offspring developing during pregnancy from the moment of conception and includes the embryonic stage of development” and ultimately declares that pregnancy begins at fertilization. The commonly accepted scientific definition of pregnancy, however, is the point at which a fertilized egg becomes implanted in the uterine lining.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, changing those scientific definitions goes against decades of precedent in federal law — and could ultimately impact some forms of contraception, like the morning after pill. Emergency contraception is not actually an abortion because it doesn’t prevent implementation and has no effect on women who are already pregnant. But Ohio’s state law may soon define it that way anyway.

Ohio’s budget bill passed out of committee on Tuesday night, and now heads to full votes in the House and Senate on Thursday. Both chambers are expected to approve it. At this point, Gov. John Kasich (R) is the only lawmaker who will be able to edit the budget bill — and, if he chooses, remove some of the abortion-related provisions. But so far, he hasn’t indicated that he’s willing to make any changes once the legislation lands on his desk.

“I think the legislature has a right to stick things in budgets and put policy in budgets… There’s nothing out of the ordinary here in the way in which they’ve decided this,” Kasich said on Wednesday when asked about the fetal heartbeat provision. He said he would make a decision about the bill when it gets closer to the July 1 deadline for its passage. “I’ll look at the language, keeping in mind that I’m pro-life,” the governor added.

The right to abortion has been acknowledged for 40 years now. That they are still pulling this crap a full generation later proves that no matter how much you think your rights are secured, these people will be trying to roll them back. After all, just this week the US Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act at a time of systematic vote suppression.

It’s good to celebrate our progress. But nobody should be complacent.

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We’re number 27!

by digby

I don’t know about you, but this makes me proud as punch:


Country                        Median Wealth
                                     Per Adult


1. Australia                   $193,653
2. Luxembourg              $153,967
3. Japan                        $141,410
4. Italy                          $123,710
5. Belgium                    $119,937
6. United Kingdom         $115,245
7. Iceland                      $ 95,685
8. Singapore                  $ 95,542 (non-OECD)
9. Switzerland                $ 87,137
10. Denmark                  $ 87,121
11. Austria                     $ 81,649
12. Canada                    $ 81,610
13. France                     $ 81,274
14. Norway                    $ 79,376
15. Finland                    $ 73,487
16. New Zealand            $ 63,000
17. Netherlands              $ 61,880
18. Ireland                      $ 60,953
19. Qatar                       $ 57,027 (non-OECD)
20. Spain                      $ 53,292
21. United Arab Emir.     $ 47,998 (non-OECD)
22. Taiwan                     $ 45,451 (non-OECD)
23. Germany                 $ 42,222
24. Sweden                   $ 41,367
25. Cyprus                     $ 40,535 (non-OECD)
26. Kuwait                     $ 40,346 (non-OECD)
27. United States           $ 38,786

But never fear, we’re still number one where it counts:

According to the Forbes report released in March 2013, there are currently 1,426 U.S. dollar billionaires worldwide, boasting a combined total net worth of $5.4 trillion. The United States has the largest number of billionaires of any country, with 442 as of 2013, while Russia and China were home to 96 and 95 billionaires respectively in 2012. Among U.S. billionaires, the average age is 66 years

So, you know, it’s not like everybody in America is a loser.

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“The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights”

by digby

Hey, if it doesn’t explicitly mention the First Amendment in the statute, then it doesn’t apply. Everyone knows that.

Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.

In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children’s chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south.

The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard’s motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States’ fundamental First Amendment rights.

“The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights,” ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday.

Upon exiting the courtroom Olson seemed to be in disbelief.

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

I’m not sure what it takes to become a judge these days, but apparently it doesn’t take much.

Remember, they are spending the taxpayer’s money to try a man for writing something in water-soluble chalk on a sidewalk. All it took was a quick hosing and it was gone. I’m hard-pressed to see how that is even vandalism.

But I think we know it isn’t about the vandalism, don’t we?

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As Angelenos prepare to roast…

by David Atkins

Just another record heat wave:

Officials in Los Angeles County announced Wednesday that cooling centers would be opening as the National Weather Service predicted “record-setting” and “life-threatening” temperatures across Southern California.

The excessive heat is expected to last from Friday morning through Monday night with triple-digit temperatures across inland and mountain areas, the Weather Service said.

The agency issued excessive heat warnings or watches from San Luis Obispo to San Diego counties.

Temperatures in Antelope Valley could top out at 115 degrees, according to the Weather Service. Highs could reach the 80s along the coast and be near 90 in downtown Los Angeles.

This sort of thing is becoming increasingly commonplace, and record heat waves like this will continue to increase over the years and decades ahead. And keep in mind that many homes and apartments in Los Angeles don’t have air conditioning because the climate has generally been too mild to require it. I lived for years in an apartment without air conditioning in the middle of L.A., and it was often miserable in summer even back then.

Climate change is going to end up killing more people than terrorism could ever dream of by many orders of magnitude. If only even a portion of the money being sunk into our growing surveillance state would go into solutions for fixing our climate change problems, we’d not only have a greater variety and number of good jobs, but a more reasoned approach to national security that actually saves move lives. And we’d have a safer, more beautiful environment to boot.

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Get ready for round two: Rick Perry is calling for a second special session

by digby

He’s very determined:

Gov. Rick Perry is calling for the Texas Legislature to meet in a second special session to pass restrictions on abortion.

The first such effort died following a filibuster and rollicking late Tuesday night protest.

The announcement gives Republicans another crack at passing sweeping anti-abortion rules that would close nearly all clinics performing the procedure in the country’s second-largest state.

It passed the House, but died after Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis led a more than 12-hour filibuster effort. Hundreds of protesters then cheered, disrupting Senate proceedings as the session closed at midnight.

Perry can call as many 30-day extra sessions as he likes, but lawmakers can only take up those issues he assigns.

But he’s only doing it because forcing women to go through childbirth against their will is what ensures Real Americans’ freedom and liberty:

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