Month: December 2013

A rich news celebrity seems to think she knows what it is to be poor

by digby

So, I was in a waiting room today and happened to read an article about Barbara Walters and her storied life as the daughter of a club owner and an early woman pioneer in news broadcasting.  But I was struck by this:

When Walters first went on the air “they paid me $750 a week, and I was grateful for it,” she says.

That would have been more than 50 years ago.  And Walters apparently feels like she was really scraping by.

Imagine if she had the vaguest idea about how the rest of us live in the here and now:

Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 105.5 million full-time wage and salary workers were $771 in the third quarter of 2013 (not seasonally adjusted), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.  

Highlights from the third-quarter data are:

 Seasonally adjusted median weekly earnings were $777 in the third quarter of 2013, little changed from the previous quarter ($775).

 On a not seasonally adjusted basis, median weekly earnings were $771 in the third quarter of 2013. Women who usually worked full time had median weekly earnings of $698, or 82.4 percent of the $847 median for men.

 The women’s-to-men’s earnings ratio varied by race and ethnicity. White women earned 82.8 percent as much as their male counterparts, compared with black (87.1 percent), Asian (77.4 percent), and Hispanic women (90.8 percent).

 Among the major race and ethnicity groups, median weekly earnings for black men working at full-time jobs were $682 per week, or 78.6 percent of the median for white men ($868). The difference was less among women, as black women’s median earnings ($594) were 82.6 percent of those for white women ($719). Overall, median earnings of Hispanics who worked full time ($587) were lower than those of blacks ($630), whites ($794), and Asians ($922).

 Usual weekly earnings of full-time workers varied by age. Among men, those age 45 to 54 and 55 to 64 had the highest median weekly earnings, $970 and $1,001, respectively. Usual weekly earnings were highest for women age 35 to 64; weekly earnings were $775 for women age 35 to 44, $755 for women age 45 to 54, and $769 for women age 55 to 64. Workers age 16 to 24 had the lowest median weekly earnings, at $430. 

According to Frontline, Walters makes “a base salary range of $4 million with additional fees for her specials that add up to an annual salary in the $7 to $8 million range.”

We shouldn’t be surprised that these people are so completely clueless should we? “Their eyes are full of … money.”

Update:

@digby56 fun fact: $750/wk in 1963 is $5,712/wk adjusted for inflation. I’d be grateful, too.
— uffe (@uhgns)

Some of us aren’t making 8 million dollars a year.  So every little bit helps:

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The death of the American Dream in a single image

by David Atkins

We’ve posted this graph before here at Hullabaloo, but it’s been a while and with the latest media focus on inequality, it bears reposting:

That is the death of the American Dream in a single chart. It is harder for the poor to get into the middle class, and for the middle class to become wealthy, in America than in almost any other industrialized country. Our income distribution is the most unequal of any industrialized country, and at the highest level since 1928.

Simply put, it is harder to be Horatio Alger here in America than in most of Europe or democratic East Asia. The American Dream is dead, and conservative policies designed to benefit the rich killed it.

It’s holiday fundraiser time…

When protest becomes terrorism

by digby

What happens when the government declares “war” on what is basically a violent political tactic, the working definition of which is in the eye of the beholder? When it further turns it into an existential threat so great that only the suspension of the constitution and the dedication of every possible national resource can keep it at bay, is it only a matter of time before normal dissent becomes a manifestation of that tactic and is thus considered a mortal enemy of the people? We’re not there yet. But the seeds are planted in certain dark corners of the country:

It’s not uncommon for environmental protesters to face arrest, but here’s an apparent first: On Friday, Oklahoma City police charged a pair of environmental activists with staging a “terrorism hoax” after they unfurled a pair of banners covered in glitter—a substance local cops considered evidence of a faux biochemical assault.

Stefan Warner and Moriah Stephenson, members of the environmental group Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, were part of a group of about a dozen activists demonstrating at Devon Tower, the headquarters of fossil fuel giant Devon Energy. They activists were protesting the company’s use of fracking, its role in mining of Canada’s tar sands, and its ties to TransCanada, the energy company planning to construct the Keystone XL pipeline. As other activists blocked the building’s revolving door, Warner and Stephenson hung two banners—one a cranberry-colored sheet emblazoned with The Hunger Games “mockingjay” symbol and the words, “The odds are never in our favor,” in gold letters—from the second floor of the Devon Tower’s atrium.

Police who responded to the scene arrested Warner and Stephenson along with two other protesters. But while their fellow activists were arrested for trespassing, Warner and Stephenson were hit with additional charges of staging a fake bioterrorism attack. It’s an unusually harsh charge to levy against nuisance protestors. In Oklahoma, a conviction for a “terrorist hoax” carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Oklahoma City Police spokesman Captain Dexter Nelson tells Mother Jones that Devon Tower security officers worried that the “unknown substance” falling from the two banners might be toxic because of “the covert way [the protesters] presented themselves… A lot were dressed as somewhat transient-looking individuals. Some were wearing all black,” he says. “Inside the banners was a lot of black powder substance, later determined to be glitter.” In their report, Nelson says, police who responded to the scene described it as a “biochemical assault.” “Even the FBI responded,” he adds. A spokesman for Devon Energy declined to comment.

Is this just silly police paranoia? Probably. It’s hard for me to believe these charges will stick. But it is Oklahoma … and the police in the country have been turned into paramilitary forces fighting “terrorism” wherever they might see it.

Eugene Robinson makes some excellent points in this piece about the need to protect our privacy. He says:

The theory is supposed to be that only by assembling a big enough “haystack” of data can the elusive “needles” be found: patterns of calls, movements and connections that signal a potential terrorist strike. In reality, though, what seems to happen is that our intelligence agencies get some tidbit of information through other means, perhaps a name or a phone number, and then sift through the NSA data for evidence of a plot.

This scenario is actually a targeted search for which the spooks should have no trouble obtaining a warrant. Storing all that communications data in-house seems more a convenience than a necessity. It saves the trouble of acquiring specific chunks of data as needed from the phone companies.

As I read the Constitution, though, it’s supposed to be inconvenient for the government to invade our privacy.

That’s exactly correct. Because anyone who knows how power works (and the innate propensity of human beings to use whatever methods they have available to them to obtain their goals) understand that if there’s one thing that needs to be very carefully monitored its the power to imprison. For a country that prides itself to the point of fetishism on the concept of individual liberty, we are awfully cavalier about how we deal with it in practice.

And there is another threat that comes from the “collection” of data on everyone. It means that when they decide to target someone, for whatever reason, they can go back into time and construct a case against them using their movements, associations and communications of the past, regardless of whether or not it pertains to the current suspected crime. Basically what they are doing is assembling a government dossier on every person — just in case. We don’t know what’s in it and we don’t know how they are going to interpret what it contains. For instance, I am two degrees from a major espionage suspect— me to Greenwald to Edward Snowden. Is that meaningful? Probably not. But who knows? If the government wanted to make a case against me, I’d guess they could at least create enough smoke to make me very uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable.

With NSA officials saying stuff like “I have some reforms for the First Amendment” and local cops arresting protesters on terrorism charges, you have to think about these things. It’s not as if our history isn’t full of examples of societies that thought they were free … until they weren’t.

It’s annual fundraising time:

Elizabeth the Stalwart

by digby

… introduces a very useful piece of legislation:

Much of America – hard-working, bill-paying America – has a damaged credit rating.

There are a lot of different reasons, but a lot of people just caught a bad break. They got sick. Their husband left or their wife died. They lost their job.

Problems only got worse after the financial crisis. Shrinking home prices made it impossible to sell or refinance a home. People lost their small businesses. Smaller savings left people without much cushion to ride out the tough times. People missed a payment or went into debt.

Most people recognize that bad credit means they will have trouble borrowing money or they will pay more to borrow. But many don’t realize that a damaged credit rating can also block access to a job.

It was once thought that credit history would provide insight into someone’s character, and many companies routinely require credit reports from job applicants. But research has shown that an individual’s credit rating has little or no correlation with his ability to succeed at work. A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected personal crisis or economic downturn than a reflection of someone’s abilities.

Today, along with Senators Blumenthal, Brown, Leahy, Markey, Shaheen, and Whitehouse, I am introducing a bill to stop employers from requiring prospective employees to disclose their credit history or disqualifying applicants based on a poor credit rating.

Become a citizen co-sponsor of the Equal Employment for All Act.

After a terrible blow like a family death, a divorce, or a life-changing disease, many people scramble to get back to work, pick up a second job, or change jobs so they can get back on their feet financially. But they are knocked back by their damaged credit rating.

Highly qualified applicants with bad credit can be shut out of the job market. That’s wrong.

Let’s be honest: This is one more way the game is rigged against the middle class. A rich person who loses a job or gets divorced or faces a family illness is unlikely to suffer from a drop in his or her credit rating. But for millions of hard-working families, a hard personal blow translates into a hard financial blow that will show up for years in a credit report.

People shouldn’t be denied the chance to compete for jobs because of credit reports that bear no relationship to job performance and that, according to recent reports, are often riddled with inaccuracies. Show your support for my new bill, the Equal Employment for All Act.

It’s been five years since the financial crisis, and it’s time for struggling families to stop paying the price for the recklessness on Wall Street and failed oversight in Washington that tanked our economy.

The Equal Employment for All Act addresses just one small issue, but for many families, it’ll make a world of difference.

Now the fact is that employers may very well find ways to use this information anyway. If you’re a person who’s inclined to think that bad credit automatically disqualifies a job candidate you’re also not likely to ignore the data if it’s obtainable. But it is at the very least a consciousness raising exercise that could affect corporations with big human resources departments that go by the book. This is good stuff.

I’ve been a big Warren fan since long before she decided to enter electoral politics. She’s been making the case for the middle class for a very long time and we’ve been chronicling it here on this blog. During her run for the Senate against Scott Brown, Blue America endorsed her enthusiastically and I had the great honor to host an online chat and fundraiser for her. It remains a highlight of my Netroots activist work:

That viral Youtube may be the most famous American cri de coeur of the new century — a shot heard round the political world announcing that Elizabeth Warren was not just running for the Senate in Massachusetts, but that she was going to do it by redefining the political framework that’s governed this nation for the past 30 years. Warren’s message put fear in the hearts of the big money boyz and the political establishment and they reacted. Strongly. This is not a person they want in the Senate and they are going to do whatever they can to ensure she isn’t elected.

As someone who has been fighting for the middle class for many years as a researcher and advocate, Warren is a rare politician who has knowledge of the way Washington works while not being of Washington. As her recent battles setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showed, the wall of resistance to her ideas is formidable and a lesser person would have done her work and gone back to her secure and happy life as a professor and lecturer. But those battles only made her more determined.

She’s going to be the next Senator from Massachusetts if we have anything to do with it — and if her track record is any indication that ossified institution isn’t going to know what hit it…

Go read the chat transcript to see that she was dead serious:

digby: In your book “The Two Income Trap” you discussed how Hillary Clinton had been instrumental in the Clinton administration’s veto of the bankruptcy bill but later voted for it when she became a Senator. Obviously, you are even more aware today of what a cautionary tale that is.

Elizabeth Warren: Absolutely. My life’s work has been advocating for middle class families – and nothing is going to change that. I’m not running for Senate because I want to play the insider political game. I’m running because the middle class is getting hammered, and we just can’t afford more of the usual politics…

When I went toe-to-toe with what is probably the biggest lobbying force the world has ever seen, we didn’t cave in to the lobbyists. We organized people all around this country, and we got a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will make a real difference for families. So, yes, I’m ready for whatever they throw at me.

And she clearly was!

You can co-sponsor her Equal Employment for All Act at the link provided above.

And if you like the kind of activism I do through this blog by supporting folks like Warren, I could use your help as well:

*This post will stay at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down for new material:

Annual fundraiser featuring Stephen Colbert and Chris Hayes

by digby

Some people go right into the belly of the beast and tell it like it is. Nobody does it better than the Jonathan Swift of our age, Stephen Colbert. He is a national treasure. Others go at it a little bit more earnestly, but with the same level of independence and integrity. I’d says that Chris Hayes personifies that in the broadcast media.

When the Snowden revelations first surfaced back in June, many members of the media reacted with a revealing reversion to authoritarian supplication while other members of the intelligentsia and political establishment obviously held back, calculating the “smart move” before taking a position. But Hayes didn’t hesitate:

Most Americans probably feel pretty far removed from the days of Jay Edgar Hoover spying on Dr. Martin Luther King and with some good reason. If you ask me, in the abstract, do you think it’s okay for the government to be able to access millions of Americans’ phone records and internet activity as long as those tools are just for catching terrorists and they’re never, ever abused, I would be tempted to say, yes, that’s totally okay.

But there’s a pretty major sticking point, and that is the as long as it’s not abused part. Because history tells us that is not actually a thing — a nonabused massive government surveillance apparatus. That is not what Dr. Martin Luther King tells us. Frankly, you don’t even have to look at history. Just look at the news from the fall of 2008 when a pair of NSA whistleblowers came forward to talk about what was being done with the agency’s surveillance tools way back then.

(VIDEO) I would say that after 9/11, particularly with the fact we were listening to satellite phone communications, rather than targeting military entities in the middle east, we were actually listening to a lot of everyday ordinary people who really in many ways had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. …
The times when I was told, hey, check this out, there’s something really some good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny. Go check it out and it would be some colonel making pillow talk .
And you would listen?

It was there, stored the way you look at songs on your Ipod.

That was our post-9/11 anti- terrorist surveillance state at work just a few years ago. examples of big sweeping surveillance programs misfiring are all over the place. just last month, NBC’s Michael Isikoff flagged reports that a special home run security unit was closely monitoring anti-wall street demonstrations including tracking the Facebook pages and websites of the protesters and writing reports on the “potential impact on commercial and financial sector assets in downtown areas” right around the time the U.S. government received the second warning about the radical Islamic ties of alleged Boston marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

When you construct a massive surveillance apparatus, history tells us that it will be brought to bear not just on, quote, “the enemy” but on the people who threaten society’s power structure. On whoever exists at the political margins, whether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. or some Occupy Boston protesters. It’s not some Orwellian abstraction. It’s America’s history — and America’s recent history —and left unchecked I fear for America ‘s future.

That’s a rare thing in broadcast journalism in general, even on the ostensibly “liberal” MSNBC. And, if I do say so myself, I think one of the reasons Hayes is able to do what he does is because the alternative liberal media ecosystem of the blogosphere was there to help support him and his work as he made his way up the ladder of success.

The first post I ever wrote featuring Chris’ work was nearly 10 years ago. I knew he was special from the first time I read his writing — the rare combination of heart and head was obvious. And I’ve been promoting his work in my small way ever since.

All of which is to say that I think that part of what I do here is find those special voices and share them with my readers. And then watch them bloom. Chris is one of many new writers I’ve featured here but he certainly won’t be the last. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of this job.

If brave journalism and commentary that goes against grain and comes from unexpected directions is something you value as much as I do, I hope you’ll consider giving a little something to my annual fundraiser. I try to find those new voices, feature them, write about them and support them as much as I can. By supporting my work, in a small way, you help support their work as well.

If you have a few dollars to spare for a donation or a subscription to this blog, I’d be most grateful if you could hit one of these buttons (Or if you prefer, you can send a donation via snail mail to the address on the sidebar.)

And Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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McConnell in some trouble, Kentuckyians strongly support minimum wage increase

by David Atkins

Don’t look now, but per Public Policy Polling’s latest poll Mitch McConnell is in a dead heat with Democratic challenger Alison Grimes. In Kentucky.

It’s also interesting to note that while the polling sample voted for Romney over Obama by 16 points, they support raising the minimum wage to $10/hour by a whopping 21 points. Like much of the rest of progressive populism, the minimum wage is a killer argument that Democrats should be using from now through November. Watching Stuart Varney go into conniption fits for an entire year would be delicious, and great campaign fodder.

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*This post will stay at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down for newer material — digby

Island in the stream (featuring Lenny Bruce and Glenn Greenwald)

 by digby

It’s that time of year ….

Just before he broke the biggest story of the year, Glenn Greenwald wrote a stirring defense of independent, reader supported journalism and the blogosphere ecosystem that has sustained him through the years:

Ever since I began political writing, I’ve relied on annual reader donations to enable me to do the journalism I want to do: first when I wrote at my own Blogspot page and then at Salon. Far and away, that has been the primary factor enabling me to remain independent – to be unconstrained in what I can say and do – because it means I’m ultimately accountable to my readers, who don’t have an agenda other than demanding that I write what I actually think, that the work I produce be unconstrained by institutional orthodoxies and without fear of negative reaction from anyone… 

For that reason, when I moved my blog from Salon to the Guardian, the Guardian and I agreed that I would continue to rely in part on reader support. Having this be part of the arrangement, rather than exclusively relying on the Guardian paying to publish the column, was vital to me. It’s the model I really I believe in.

It is an indispensable factor in my independence. It enables me to work far more effectively by having the resources I need and to spend my time only on the work which I actually believe can have an impact.   

It keeps my readers invested in the work I do and keeps me accountable to them. And it’s what enables me to know that I’ll be able to continue focusing on the issues and advancing the perspectives which I think are vital regardless of who that might alienate. I’ve spent all of this week extensively traveling and working continuously on what will be a huge story: something made possible by being at the Guardian but also by my ability to devote all of my time and efforts to projects like this one.   

— Glenn Greenwald, June 2013

I don’t pretend to be even remotely in the same league as Glenn — and even feel a little bit silly evoking his words on my own behalf — but I do think that the principle he expressed in that piece is a valuable one. And it’s one this old country blogger believes in too. In fact, I depend on it.

I was reading this interesting piece by Alexis Madrigal called “The Year the Stream Crested” over the week-end, which discusses how the online media model for the past couple of years has been characterized by immediacy, quickness and … nowness. He talks about the rise of “the stream” with twitter, facebook and a myriad other neat new applications all dedicated to warp speed real time connectivity between individuals and communities. It was a natural evolution from the stodgy old blogging of the previous decade — but Madrigal senses something about to shift once again:

Nowadays, I think all kinds of people see and feel the tradeoffs of the stream, when they pull their thumbs down at the top of their screens to receive new updates from their social apps. 

It is too damn hard to keep up. And most of what’s out there is crap.

He lays out the evidence that people are getting overwhelmed by the stream and surmises that they are seeking ways to pause, reflect and perhaps just think for a minute or two:

[L]ook at the huge viral successes of the year, Upworthy, ViralNova, TwentyTwoWords, FaithIt, and all the rest. They take advantage of the structure of the stream and the psychological problems it makes for people. 

These sites traffic in narrative porn. The whole point of their posts is that they are idealized stories with a beginning, middle, and end. They provide closure. They are rocks that you can stand on in the stream, just to catch your breath…

Here, I would humbly suggest, is where I come in.  I’m one of those rocks in the middle of the stream — ancient, solid, dependable. You can always stop here to read a narrative account of various stories of the day, think for a few minutes about our political culture and maybe from time to time get a little information that helps you figure out what’s going on in all this crazy chaos.

This site looks ridiculously anachronistic, almost a joke, I know. But perhaps that familiarity and simplicity is part of what makes it work. And I don’t think that what I and David, Tristero and Dennis write about is anachronistic. We are deeply immersed in the nowness of the modern social media, but we try to bring a structure to the online political/cultural dialog. Every day we dive deeply into the stream, come back with our catches and prepare them for you in small batches. We try to help you sort through what’s out there and give an independent spin on it that you won’t get from the standard Villagers and political professionals who mostly inhabit the rarefied world of New York media and DC politics. We slow it down for you a little bit, give some perspective, provide some institutional memory and historical context from the point of view of the average American.

All of this is to say that the reader supported model of independent blogging still has a place in our media ecosystem, one that people who are looking for voices outside the mainstream can support directly. And I need that support from you to keep doing it.

It’s a great privilege to be able to write every day (and I do mean every day) and to be allowed to say what I want to say in the way I want to say it.  It’s only possible because of the support I receive from my readers, and I thank each and every one of you for your kind generosity through the years.

If you have your wallets out to buy some online Christmas gifts, perhaps you could see your way clear to throwing a few bucks toward keeping this old rock going for another year.

Oh, and Happy Hollandaise, everyone.

*If you’d like to send a little something via snail mail, the address is in the column on the left.

Failing up at CBS

by digby

Apparently, CBS plans to deal with the impending loss of their official National Security state fluffer by inviting their most notorious hoaxter back into the fold having only “suffered” a month’s vacation over the holidays:

Lara Logan and Max McClellan, the ’60 Minutes’ journalists who were put on a leave of absence following their now-retracted report on Benghazi, are set to return to the program early next year, POLITICO has learned.

Logan and her producer, who had unfinished projects in the works when they left in November, have started booking camera crews for news packages, network sources said. Their return could come as early as next month.

CBS says it hasn’t been officially “scheduled” yet which just means the exact dates aren’t decided. Logan’s coming back and will suffer no long term repercussions.

In case you are wondering what Dan Rather is up to these days, you can find him doing interesting long form reporting at AXSTV. He is persona non grata at the Tiffany network. After all, he relied on a bad source about an inconsequential story from 40 years ago, which is unforgivable. Logan will still have the most vaunted news program in history pushing her shallow jigoistic drivel — whether it’s true or not.

One of the less discussed aspects of the work Greenwald and his cohorts are doing (and presumably will continue to do) is their intention to rebel against the conventions and structures of not just the government but of mainstream journalism, in both style and substance. His new venture with Pierre Omidyar is being designed around this new journalism and should be a very interesting experiment. CBS, on the other hand, seems to be intent upon becoming the avatar of everything that’s wrong with it, most especially its overweening supplication to the powerful, both in the private sector and the government. Considering its proud history going all the way back to the 50s it’s a sad denouement.

For a rundown of the “problems” with last night’s 60 Minutes advertisement for NSA secrecy, see this article by Spencer Ackerman.

It’s holiday fundraiser time …

“Reforming” the First Amendment

by digby

Daniel Drezner went on a field trip to visit the NSA. It’s a fascinating look at the secretive agency, but I don’t come away from reading it feeling as if they are really getting the point:

The NSA’s attitude toward the press is, well, disturbing. There were repeated complaints about the ways in which recent reportage of the NSA was warped or lacking context. To be fair, this kind of griping is a staple of officials across the entire federal government. Some of the NSA folks went further, however. One official accused some media outlets of “intentionally misleading the American people,” which is a pretty serious accusation. This official also hoped that the Obama administration would crack down on these reporters, saying, “I have some reforms for the First Amendment.” I honestly do not know whether that last statement was a joke or not. Either way, it’s not funny.

No it certainly is not. But it’s not completely ridiculous from their point of view considering the fact that even the Church Committee “reforms” ended up basically creating a rubber stamp for government spying programs. Certainly, the 2008 FISA bill, the notorious “reform” that gave retroactive immunity to companies that had violated the laws against warrantless wiretapping, was nothing more than a way to shut down any further inquiry through the courts.

When people start talking about “reforming” the laws surrounding the surveillance state, be sure to look at the fine print. The “reform” is often legalization of unconstitutional acts. And once they cut these acts off from the normal judicial process, as they did with the FISA court, it never gets properly adjudicated.

I can easily see why megalomaniacal NSA officials say they want to “reform” the First Amendment. It’s always worked out well for them before.

It’s annual fundraiser time…

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QOTD: building the wrong kind of infrastructure

by digby

Former Ambassador Chas Freeman:

Mr. Snowden has brought home to us that, while we Americans do not yet live in a police state or tyranny, we are well along in building the infrastructure on which either could be instantly erected if our leaders decided to do so. No longer protected by the law, our freedoms now depend on the self-restraint of men and women in authority, many of them in uniform. History protests that if one builds a turnkey totalitarian state, those who hold the keys will eventually turn them.

More about Freeman if you are unfamiliar with him.

He’s not the only one worried about this:

A federal judge has ruled that the “wholesale collection of the phone record metadata” of all U.S. citizens — a program exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — likely violates the 4th Amendment and is unconstitutional.

In the decision, Judge Leon rules that the plaintiffs challenging the bulk collection of U.S. phone records, including legal activist and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman, have “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of succession the merits of their Fourth Amendment claims, and that they will suffer irreparable harm absent preliminary injunctive relief.” The decision describes the technology used by the Government as “almost-Orwellian.”

Judge Leon explains “[P]laintiff’s have a very significant expectation of privacy in an aggregated collection of their telephony metadata covering the last five years.” Judge Leon notes that “the Government does not cite a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection stooped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.” He notes that the “program infringes of ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.” Judge Leon concludes that “the author of our constitution, James Madison…would be aghast.”

Also too:

The fact is, the NSA would have self-corrected without Snowden. Now excuse me, I’m riding my unicorn to the Great Chocolate Waterfall.
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) December 16, 2013

*Annual fundraiser happening right now!