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Month: May 2015

What’s law got to do with it? by @BloggersRUs

What’s law got to do with it?
by Tom Sullivan

Just because the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday ruled the NSA’s bulk collection of phone data illegal is no reason not to reauthorize it. Or so believe leading Senate Republicans:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday delivered a forceful defense of the National Security Agency’s mass-surveillance powers, a salvo that came just hours after a federal appeals court ruled the agency’s bulk collection of U.S. call records illegal.

McConnell criticized bipartisan legislation that would reform several aspects of NSA spying and effectively end the call-records program, and indicated he won’t budge from his position advocating a clean reauthorization of expiring surveillance authorities of the Patriot Act.

“[T]he wolves are at the door,” said freshman senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. A-rab Mooslims with long, curved knives, one supposes.

Not to be out-blustered, one of my senators dismissed privacy concerns:

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested that a discount card for a grocery store could be a greater threat to privacy than the NSA’s program.

“The NSA doesn’t sell data, your grocery story does,” he said. “But I don’t hear anyone complaining about the grocery store’s discount card, because you get a discount.”

Did Richard Burr just suggest we’d stop whining about being spied on if we just got another tax break?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid returned fire:

Reid, meantime, called for an immediate vote on the USA Freedom Act, a surveillance reform bill advancing in the House that would end the telephone metadata program.

“Instead of bringing the bipartisan NSA reform bill up for a vote, Sen. McConnell is trying to force the Senate to extend the bulk data collection practices that were ruled illegal today,” he said. “It would be the height of irresponsibility to extend these illegal spying powers when we could pass bipartisan reform into law instead.”

Not that Reid’s bipartisan I Can’t Believe It’s Not Freedom Act would likely stop all domestic spying. Especially not since, as Dan Froomkin revealed, spy agencies have got a nifty, new gizmo for turning your phone conversations into searchable text. What’s not cool about that?

Except it’s the uncool actions the 2nd Circuit ruled illegal (but did not enjoin). As several people pointed out, you can’t really re-authorize a practice that was never authorized in the first place.

Take a look in the mirror

Take a look in the mirror

by digby

Laura Ingraham surprisingly takes on Pam Geller. Good for her:

“There are a lot of things that we can say, that we have a right to say, that we shouldn’t say,”Ingraham told O’Reilly on Tuesday night’s episode of the “The O’Reilly Factor.” “We shouldn’t unnecessarily insult people, personal attacks.”

You know, that’s so true. But maybe Ingraham should take her own advice once in a while:

Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham mocked undocumented immigrant children and teenagers from Central America on her radio show Tuesday, using a slogan from Taco Bell ads to poke fun at them for refusing food they said made them sick.

The consul of Honduras is saying that the illegal immigrant children are complaining to the consulate of Honduras that the burritos and eggs they are being given in their holding areas are making them sick. So they’re complaining about the food. I bet there are a lot of American kids who would like free food before they go to bed at night.

Her counterintuitive portrayal of impoverished Central American migrants as spoiled for refusing food that allegedly made them ill were immediately followed by a recording of the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign slogan from the 1990s.

Also too, this:

What was unusually vicious, even for the often nasty radio host, was that she decided to interrupt an audio clip of the heroic Rep. John Lewis, the youngest person to speak at the march 50 years ago, speaking on Saturday, with the sound of a crackling gunshot.

A gunshot. After the assassinations of Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King, after the gunning down of so many civil rights workers over the years, Ingraham thought it was funny, or clever, or provocative, to “symbolically” cut off Lewis’ speech with the sound of a gun. The civil rights hero, who had his skull fractured on the first 1965 Selma march, falls silent in mid-sentence, as though he’d been hit by a sniper while addressing the crowd. (Listen to it on Media Matters; it’s more disturbing than you can imagine just reading about it.)

Lewis is in mid-speech, talking about the unfinished business of civil rights in America. “We must say to the Congress: fix the Voting Rights Act. We must say to the Congress: Pass comprehensive immigration reform. It doesn’t make sense that millions of our people …”

And then a shot rings out. Ingraham picks up what Lewis was saying…

Or these:

November 21, 2013

Ingraham Repeatedly Mocked An Immigration Protestor For Speaking English With An Accent. In November 2013, Ingraham repeatedly mocked a woman who was protesting the Obama administration’s record number of deportations, saying, “Wait, what did she say at the end? I can’t — I need a translator. I speak Spanish too. I’d rather have her just speak Spanish, at least I’d understand that.” She then went on to affect the woman’s accent, stating, “No want more amnesty. No want more lies. No want more phony promises. No want more people coming into the country, filling up our schools and our emergency rooms, having anchor babies and then blaming us for it. No want more that.“

January 28,2014:

The Associated Press reported that if Snyder’s plan is approved, “Detroit would be allocated 5,000 visas in the first year, 10,000 each of the next three years and 15,000 in the fifth year.” Immigrants would be allowed to live and work in the city for five years, but could apply for a green card after that time.

On her Tuesday radio show, Ingraham said the idea was “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. The people of this country, they’re smart enough to know that they don’t want to go anywhere near Detroit. Right?” she explained. “But we need to get these people from other countries to live and work in Detroit to save us because we can then wall off Detroit, apparently, so they can’t then move to other parts of the country.”

“Is that what Rick Snyder is gonna do?” Ingraham asked. “Is there gonna be, you know, is there gonna be finally a border enforced in our country? Except it’s going to be around Detroit.”

May 10, 2013

Ingraham used a May 2013 hearing on immigration reform to claim that immigration from Mexico would create a “hellhole” and a “mini-Mexico,” saying, “I think a lot of you look around at this culture of ours, and some of it is our own fault, but we see America disappearing. I’m not even talking about demographics, I’m talking about our culture.”

A few days before that:

Ingraham’s attacks against pro-immigration reform Republican politicians were accompanied by numerous smears against immigrants and Latinos, including referring to the American children of undocumented immigrants as “anchor fetuses” during a discussion about Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “embrace of the path to citizenship” in May 2013.

As you can imagine, Ingraham isn’t one of those squishy conservatives who thinks that calling illegal immigration “an act of love” will bring some Latinos over to their side. She doesn’t want them:

“If the reaction to the election is let’s dig into our core principles and try to remake them, I think the GOP will lose even more seats in 2014,” Ingraham told Fox News host Chris Wallace. “If it becomes a bidding war with Republicans in either this group or that group — whether it’s Latinos or women — we’re going to give you more stuff or we’re going to do amnesty plus… it’s not going to work.”

“The Republicans have to take a lesson from — and I hate to bring up Reagan again — when Goldwater got shellacked in ’64, Bill Buckley and Brent Bozell Sr. and all these conservatives got together and they said, we’re going to figure out how to sell this idea of economic conservatism and the conservative framework to new voters. And they went into the South and they transformed Mississippi and Alabama, all these places where people had never voted Republican before.”

She insults Hispanics, Geller insults Muslims. I guess she figures what she does is ok because Hispanics aren’t violently reacting. But she’s wrong about that.

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American Idol for really boring people who can’t sing

American Idol for really boring people who can’t sing

by digby

I don’t have anything against a little fun with the campaign season. Chris Hayes has an ongoing comedy segment called the Fantasy Campaign Draft that’s thoroughly enjoyable.

But this makes me cringe:

Bloomberg is planning a “parody sports-style game show” with reporters on the campaign trail as the contestants, the On Media blog has learned.

Matt Negrin, a writer for Bloomberg Politics, has been emailing reporters who will be at the South Carolina Freedom Summit this weekend, asking them to be part of a segment called “ScrumZone.”

“It’s a parody sports-style game show that stars the reporters who cover candidates. The idea is that we’ll interview reporters before they go into the post-speech media scrum, and then afterward, like ESPN would interview athletes before and after a game. And of course during the scrum, we’ll go all in with our fancy schmancy cameras,” Negrin wrote in an email to one reporter and shared with the On Media blog.

There’s even a “semi-arbitrary point system,” 10 points for every 10 seconds in the “core” of the scrum, and 50 points for getting a quote from a candidate.

I know the campaign trail is boring. But at presidential debates these people are earnestly trying to do a serious thing. It’s not right to treat that like a game and treat them like props in the reporters’ little story about themselves. There’s enough of that crap in our culture already.

Sheesh, everybody want to win American Idol…

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They are going to spend 4 billion dollars on this campaign, most of which is evidently going to go into the pockets of high paid consultants and media companies. This is what they’re going to spend the windfall on. We are so screwed.

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Money isn’t everything

Money isn’t everything

by digby

Good lord:

I’m glad the judge made it clear that this was an improper criteria. But sheesh.

* Upon reflection, maybe someone was arguing for life instead of death because they know the death penalty actually costs huge sums of money — which it does. But I doubt it. I’m guessing someone in there was saying they should save the government money by killing him.

God, humans are awful #nokidding #malevolentspecies

God, humans are awful

by digby

Sick, sick, sick:

More than a dozen sea lion [pups] were injured after someone deliberately contaminated the water supply at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California.

It happened overnight, a couple of weeks ago, after someone deliberately poured chlorine into the pool in which the sea lions were swimming.

17 of them, who were already at the center being treated, became ill.

I don’t even know what to say about this.

I wrote before about the sea lion crisis here in Southern California and how some assholes thought it would be fun to kidnap one off the beach when it’s mother was off foraging for food. This takes the cake. It makes me want to scream.

If there is a God why in the world did she decide to put the human species as the guardians of planet? What a mistake. And here I thought she was omnipotent.

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“A drastic expansion of the word ‘relevant'”

“A drastic expansion of the word ‘relevant'”

by digby

So, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decided today that Section 215, which the NSA uses as one of the main the statutory foundations for its vast collection of American communication data, doesn’t pass the smell test. The part they found unconvincing was the idea that everything is “relevant.”

A federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency program to collect information on billions of telephone calls made or received by Americans is illegal.

In an opinion issued Thursday, a three-judge panel from the New York-based 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a law Congress passed allowing collection of information relevant to terrorism investigations does not authorize the so-called “bulk collection” of phone records on the scale of the NSA program. The judges did not address whether the program violated the Constitution.

Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge Gerard Lynch said allowing the government to gather data in a blanket fashion was not consistent with the statute used to carry out the program: Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

“The interpretation urged by the government would require a drastic expansion of the term ‘relevance,’ not only with respect to § 215, but also as that term is construed for purposes of subpoenas, and of a number of national security-related statutes, to sweep further than those statutes have ever been thought to reach,” Lynch wrote in an opinion joined by Judges Robert Sack and Vernon Broderick.

“The interpretation that the government asks us to adopt defies any limiting principle. The same rationale that it proffers for the ‘relevance’ of telephone metadata cannot be cabined to such data, and applies equally well to other sets of records,” Lynch added. “If the government is correct, it could use § 215 to collect and store in bulk any other existing metadata available anywhere in the private sector, including metadata associated with financial records, medical records, and electronic communications (including email and social media information) relating to all Americans.”

The 2nd Circuit, which acted on a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first appeals court to rule on the legality of the telephone metadata program that came to light after leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The program was repeatedly authorized by a special intelligence court in Washington. Two other federal appeals courts are currently considering similar challenges.

That sounds right. Huzzah.

Meanwhile, everyone in DC is doing high fives over the possible passage of the new revamped USA Freedom Act, which will extend certain aspects of the PATRIOT Act while reforming some pieces of it. This is a compromise bill between those who would like to see the Patriot act extended indefinitely and those who want it thrown entirely on the scrapheap of history. The president says he’ll sign it. The ACLU says that it does include some reforms so it isn’t all bad. The mood seems to be that this is altogether terrific.

I sure hope so. Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel has reservations as I’m sure many people who actually follow the ins and outs of these surveillance programs do (certainly those who follow the ins and outs of the history of national security reforms should.) Let’s just say it’s unlikely that this is anything more than a superficial fix. If it isn’t, it would be a first.

Here’s just one little piece of the bad news. If you’re thinking that the 2nd Circuit opinion means anything — that is that the practice of using “a drastic expansion of the word relevant” is illegal, don’t get your hopes up. The USA Freedom ACT moots all the pending court challenges to the dragnet. Emptywheel:

Passage of USA F-ReDux would also likely moot at least the challenges to the phone dragnet (there are cases before the 2nd, 9th, and DC Circuits right now, as well as a slightly different challenge from EFF in Northern California). That’s important because these challenges — particularly as argued in the 2nd Circuit — might get to the underlying “relevant to” decision issued by the FISC back in 2004 [it did … d], as well as the abuse of the 3rd party doctrine that both bulk and bulky collection rely on. That’s important because USA F-ReDux not only does nothing about that “relevant to” decision, it relies on the language anew in the new chaining provision.

The bill would probably also moot a challenge to National Security Letter gag orders EFF has.

This problem of government surveillance is not going to be solved by a congress that is both frightened and corrupt and an executive branch which has no incentive to give back any power it
has accrued for itself. It never has before anyway.

After months of persistent digging, Hersh had unearthed a new case of the imperial presidency’s abuse of secrecy and power: a “massive” domestic spying program by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Hersh, the CIA had violated its charter and broken the law by launching a spying program of Orwellian dimensions against American dissidents during the Vietnam War. The Times called it “son of Watergate.”

These revelations produced a dramatic response from the newly energized post-Watergate Congress and press. Both houses of Congress mounted extensive, year-long investigations of the intelligence community. These highly publicized inquiries, headed by experienced investigators Senator Frank Church and Congressman Otis Pike, produced shocking accusations of murder plots and poison caches, of FBI corruption and CIA incompetence. In addition to the congressional inquiries, the press, seemingly at the height of its power after Watergate, launched investigations of its own. The New York Times continued to crusade against CIA abuses; the Washington Post exposed abuses and illegalities committed by the FBI; and CBS’s Daniel Schorr shocked the nation by revealing that there might be “literal” skeletons in the CIA closet as a result of its assassination plots.

In this charged atmosphere, editorial writers, columnists, political scientists, historians, and even former officials of the CIA weighed in with various suggestions for reforming an agency that many agreed had become a ”monster.” Several policymakers, including presidential candidates Fred Harris and Morris Udall, called for massive restructuring or abolition of the CIA. Media and political pundits suggested banning CIA covert operations; transferring most CIA functions to the Pentagon or the State Department; or, at the very least, devising a new, strict charter for all members of the intelligence community.

Few barriers seemed to stand in the way of such reforms. The liberal, post-Watergate Congress faced an appointed president who did not appear to have the strength to resist this “tidal shift in attitude,” as Senator Church called it. Change seemed so likely in early 1975 that a writer for The Nation declared “the heyday of the National Security State’, to be over, at least temporarily.

But a year and a half later, when the Pike and Church committees finally finished their work, the passion for reform had cooled. The House overwhelmingly rejected the work of the Pike committee and voted to suppress its final report. It even refused to set up a standing intelligence committee. The Senate dealt more favorably with the Church committee, but it too came close to rejecting all of the committee’s recommendations. Only last-minute parliamentary maneuvering enabled Church to salvage one reform, the creation of a new standing committee on intelligence. The proposed charter for the intelligence community, though its various components continued to be hotly debated for several years, never came to pass.

The investigations failed to promote the careers of those who had inspired and led them. Daniel Schorr, the CBS reporter who had advanced the CIA story at several important points and eventually had become part of the story himself, was investigated by Congress, threatened with jail, and fired by CBS for his role in leaking the suppressed Pike report. Seymour Hersh’s exposes were dismissed by his peers as “overwritten, over-played, under-researched and underproven.” Otis Pike, despite the many accomplishments of his committee, found his name linked with congressional sensationalism, leaks, and poor administration. Frank Church’s role in the investigation failed to boost his presidential campaign, forced him to delay his entry into the race, and, he thought, might have cost him the vice presidency.

The targets of the investigation had the last laugh on the investigators. ‘When all is said and done, what did it achieve?’ asked Richard Helms, the former director of the CIA who was at the heart of many of the scandals unearthed by Congress and the media. ‘Where is the legislation, the great piece of legislation, that was going to come out of the Church committee hearings ? I haven’t seen it.’ Hersh, the reporter who prompted the inquiries, was also unimpressed by the investigators’ accomplishments. ‘They generated a lot of new information, but ultimately they didn’t come up with much,’ he said.”

I remain a skeptic.

The Chief crosses the thin blue line

The Chief crosses the thin blue line

by digby

There was a police shooting of an unarmed mentally ill man not far from where I live the other day. And the the Chief of the LAPD spoke out in a way that’s unusual:

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck on Wednesday addressed the death of an unarmed homeless man fatally shot by an officer following a confrontation near the historic Venice sign, saying the shooting concerned him and an investigation was underway.

Brendon Glenn, 29, was the individual killed by police late Tuesday night, according to a man who runs the Teen Project’s drop-in center for homeless youth in Venice.

Beck said in a Wednesday afternoon news conference that he had reviewed video of the shooting and he did not see evidence that indicated extreme circumstances that could prompt an officer to open fire.

“Any time an unarmed person is shot by a Los Angeles police officer, it takes extraordinary circumstances to justify that, and I have not seen those extraordinary circumstances at this point,” Beck said.

Both the male officer who opened fire and the man killed were black, the chief noted.

“Even if race is a small part of this, which I don’t think it is, they’re certainly outweighed by the mental health issues, the homeless issues, the alcohol issues,” Beck said. “All of those things … have nothing to do with a person’s race.”

The incident:

The man, described as a transient, had been involved in an altercation with a bouncer at a nearby bar prior to police being called, LAPD Detective Meghan Aguilar initially said Wednesday morning. Police were called with a report of a man “disturbing the peace” and “harassing passersby,” she said.

Officers spoke with the man, who then walked away toward the boardwalk, Beck said. Soon after, officers saw the man approach an individual and start a fight, the chief said.

“The officers attempted to detain the suspect, and an altercation occurred between the two officers and the suspect. During that physical altercation, an officer-involved shooting occurred,” Beck said.

Officers called for a rescue ambulance and began to perform CPR; city firefighters responded and took the man to a hospital, where he died, according to the chief.

A friend who knew Glenn said he didn’t deserve his fate.

“Whatever reason that they had to shoot him, I don’t think it was justified because he wasn’t a confrontational human being by any means,” local resident Henry Geller said. “He was definitely like a peacemaker.”

Another friend, Shane Brigham, described Glenn as “a really big hugger,” who always checked to make sure everyone around him was alright.

Glenn was a regular the Teen Project’s the P.A.D., a Venice support center for homeless youth, according to Timothy Pardue, who runs the center. Glenn, who had recently moved to the area from New York, had come to a support group meeting on Tuesday night, Pardue said.

“He was crying and he was even saying he wanted his mom, and he just said his mom didn’t want him back home,” Pardue said. “He struggled with a lot of things.”

As of Wednesday evening, the coroner’s office had not confirmed the fatally shot man’s identity. Beck said the man’s identity was not being released pending family notification.

During the struggle that led to the shooting, one of the LAPD officers was injured and later treated for a hurt knee, Aguilar said.

The injured officer, who was the one who opened fire, was on medication and had not been questioned because the medication could interfere with a “fair” interview, Beck said. He noted that the delay was unusual.

“I know there are public concerns about this particular officer-involved shooting, as there are any time an unarmed individual is shot by a police officer. I am also very concerned about this shooting,” Beck said. “We will expend all resources to find out the truth of what happened last night on Windward Avenue.”

As the investigation into the incident continued, the intersection of Pacific and Windward was cordoned off and closed to motorists. Investigators were trying to obtain surveillance video from businesses, police said.

It’s unusual for a chief to speak out with an opinion like this. Normally the cops close ranks. And it’s certainly possible that when the investigation is complete the officer will have acted appropriately. But for the chief to speak out early saying that he has concerns is to put the department on notice that he, at least, will not reflexively defend killing unarmed citizens. This is important.

Naturally:

“It is completely irresponsible for anyone, much less the chief of police, to render a judgement on an incident that is in early stages of investigation,” said Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, in a written statement. “As the final trier of fact in the use-of-force investigation and disciplinary process, the premature decision by the chief essentially renders the investigation process void.”

It’s important that the department change the culture that automatically defends the police. The thin blue line has unduly influenced investigations for decades.  This is a step in the right direction.

And yes, race does enter into many of these incidents, obviously. But it’s also true that the mentally ill are often victims of police violence as well. And it’s just wrong. This man was, by all reports, unarmed. It’s very hard to see why a groups of cops couldn’t have made a better decision even if he was acting out. There’s no excuse for lethal force when there is no lethal threat.

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The culture war ain’t over til it’s over #never

The culture war ain’t over til it’s over

by digby

That would be never. From my Salon piece today on this subject:

One of the more predictable tropes on the left side of America’s political dial is the notion that the culture wars are over, that Christian conservatives are in retreat, and that the far right is breaking up due to its irrelevance. This happens periodically, whether Democrats have recently won or lost an election, and it happens especially when liberals and progressives win a victory on policy. For some reason there is a great propensity for liberals to declare that they’ve vanquished the right for all time, only to get sucker punched by a conservative in mid-high five.

It’s a lovely fantasy but the culture war isn’t some little skirmish that happened sometime in the 1990s and became irrelevant in the modern world, like pagers or AOL. It’s always been with us — the ying and yang of American life. It’s not to say that progress is never made. It obviously is. But it’s almost always a case of two steps forward one step back, and sometimes that step back is a doozy.

Governor Mike Huckabee’s entrance into the presidential contest sparked more than a little derisive laughter among progressives, many of whom agreed with the premise of this article, which said he cannot win because, of course, the culture war is over. For all his populist rhetoric about economic security, defending certain government programs and raining hellfire on free trade, it’s assumed that his right wing hawkishness and social conservatism are relics of the past, rendering him an anachronism. This is wrong. Contrary to popular wisdom, conservatives are not a majority of the country, and never have been, but they do represent a majority of the Republican Party. (Indeed, finding a moderate in the Republican Party these days is like trying to find a non-millionaire in the US Senate. They’re there, but there aren’t very many of them.) And Huckabee isn’t saying anything on the culture war issues they don’t like hearing. Quite the opposite.

I went on to discuss a number of the culture war battles still being fought. I didn’t have 20,000 words so I only hit the highlights.

Nice try by @BloggersRUs

Nice try
by Tom Sullivan

Former CIA deputy director, Michael Morell, believes that the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks “played a role in the rise of ISIS”:

U.S. intelligence officials have long argued that Snowden’s disclosures provided valuable insights to terrorist groups and nation-state adversaries, including China and Russia, about how the U.S. monitors communications around the world. But in his new memoir, to be published next week, Morell raises the stakes of that debate by directly implicating Snowden in the expansion of ISIS, which broke away from al Qaeda and has conquered large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Nice try. But for that matter, Ronald Reagan’s proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan played a role in creating al Qaeda. And the Bush/Cheney administration played a role in bringing al Qaeda to Iraq. Morell’s point is?

“Within weeks of the leaks, terrorist organizations around the world were already starting to modify their actions in light of what Snowden disclosed. Communications sources dried up, tactics were changed,” Morell writes. Among the most damaging leaks, he adds, was one that described a program that collects foreigners’ emails as they move through equipment in the United States.

As if that information hadn’t been out there since 2006. As if al Qaeda wasn’t already working well below the radar in the post-9/11, pre-Snowden era. That’s why it took until 2011 to find and kill him.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Elton Simpson had been investigated previously by the FBI and sentenced on a single count of making a false statement before he obtained a weapon and attacked a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas days ago. It seems the FBI played a role in his avoiding detection:

In retrospect, Mr. Simpson’s lawyer in the earlier case, Kristina Sitton, believes that the prosecution did have an effect on him — just not the one the authorities intended. “He learned that they were following him,” Ms. Sitton said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “He learned how not to attract suspicion. He learned how to be a better criminal.”

Whaddya gonna do? Snowden’s fault!

Nah, we don’t torture

Nah, we don’t torture

by digby

“Solitary”:

What’s emerged from the reports and testimonies reads like a mix of medieval cruelty and sci-fi dystopia. For 23 hours or more per day, in what’s euphemistically called “administrative segregation” or “special housing,” prisoners are kept in bathroom-sized cells, under fluorescent lights that never shut off. Video surveillance is constant. Social contact is restricted to rare glimpses of other prisoners, encounters with guards, and brief video conferences with friends or family.

For stimulation, prisoners might have a few books; often they don’t have television, or even a radio. In 2011, another hunger strike among California’s prisoners secured such amenities as wool hats in cold weather and wall calendars. The enforced solitude can last for years, even decades.

These horrors are best understood by listening to people who’ve endured them. As one Florida teenager described in a report on solitary confinement in juvenile prisoners, “The only thing left to do is go crazy.”

By the way:

[I]n maximum security prisons, individuals in solitary are held on average for five years, and there are thousands of cases of prisoners who have been held in solitary confinement for decades. Some countries, including the United States, employ the use of Super Maximum Security Prisons, or “Supermax Prisons,” in which solitary confinement is framed as a normal, rather than exceptional, practice for inmates.

I think I’ll call it a night and retire for a long bath, a shot of tequila and my dog-eared copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.

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