Politics

Lavabit's closure marks the death of secure cloud computing in the USOnce Edward Snowden's use of the email service was public, it was perhaps a given that Lavabit would be targeted by the US Alex Hern theguardian.com, Saturday 10 August 2013 05.00 EDT On Thursday afternoon, Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of Lavabit, an email service that prides itself on privacy and security, abruptly closed his website, posting a short message to his former users. "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit," he wrote. "After significant so…

This looks good. Dan Balz pens searing indictment of 2012By ROGER SIMON | 8/6/13 5:01 AM EDT politico.com Here is Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, explaining to Dan Balz how he intends to run the 2012 campaign: “My favorite political philosopher is Mike Tyson,” Messina says. “Mike Tyson once said everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don’t have a plan anymore. [The Republicans] may have a plan to beat my guy. My job is to punch them in the face.” Here is Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney’s son, telling Balz that his father was not quite fired up and ready to go less than three weeks before he announced his candidacy. “He was hoping for…

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone callsExclusive: Spy agency has secret backdoor permission to search databases for individual Americans' communications James Ball and Spencer Ackerman The Guardian, Friday 9 August 2013 12.08 EDT Detail of Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets. The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edwar…

The unraveling of Anthony Weiner Critics say the question at this point is just how delusional Weiner will get. | AP Photo By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE and MAGGIE HABERMAN | 7/30/13 5:13 PM EDT Updated: 7/31/13 1:49 PM EDT politico.com Anthony Weiner has lost his mind. At least, that’s the conclusion most Democrats have come to. There’s really no other way they can explain how he’s handled the revelations of his post-resignation sexts and his combative encounters with voters over the weekend looking for him to quit the mayor’s race. But Monday night’s needlessly dismissive brush off of the Clintons — the first family of Democratic politics who consider his wife a sec…

Revealed: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'• XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data • NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches • Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history Glenn Greenwald theguardian.com, Wednesday 31 July 2013 08.56 EDT One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the internet' A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents …

You don't have to like Bill Clinton to appreciate this article. But these 5 qualities are critical for anyone's success. I found this to be absolutely true and I try to follow this all the time in my life both professionally and privately. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/bill-clinton_n_3718956.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

She thought it was fun to be lawyer to the terroists, even using jail house visits to aid and abet the enemy. Now 73, attorney Lynne Stewart, long known as a tigress of the court room, is meekly pleading for release from her lastest sentence on the theory that she has cancer. Well, don't we all! She was convicted of smuggling messages from the imprisoned sheik Omar Rahman to his violent followers in Egypt, and was sentenced in 2010 to 10 years in prison. No one knows how many died because of her treachery and abuse of her postion as a member of the state bar, No one knows how many of them got their sentences cut after just three years. She's not claiming that she wants …

How useful! Article is about Australia but the slogan generator works quite well for U.S. pols too. Three-word slogan generator: create your own political catchphraseSlogans are coming thick and fast from both parties in this election. Now you can create your own with our slogan generator Nick Evershed theguardian.com, Monday 5 August 2013 03.52 EDT A new way. A stronger Australia. Stop the boats. When prime minister Kevin Rudd announced the election on Sunday, he said: "Three-word slogans won't solve complex problems. They never have. And they never will." He claimed Australia faces a "choice between a new way for the future – with positive plans for managing t…

Just when you think the GOP can't get any more hilariously loony-tunes... RNC threatens boycott of CNN and NBC over Hillary Clinton showsReince Priebus told networks RNC will not partner with them for 2016 primary debates unless Hillary Clinton films are canceled Adam Gabbatt in New York theguardian.com, Monday 5 August 2013 15.01 EDT Priebus also accused the networks of 'thinly-veiled attempts at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election'. Photograph: Getty Images The Republican National Committee has threatened a boycott of CNN and NBC in the runup to the next presidential election unless the networks cancel films they have planned o…

Members of Congress denied access to basic information about NSA Documents provided by two House members demonstrate how they are blocked from exercising any oversight over domestic surveillance Glenn Greenwald theguardian.com, Sunday 4 August 2013 08.26 EDT Members of Congress have been repeatedly thwarted when attempting to learn basic information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the secret FISA court which authorizes its activities, documents provided by two House members demonstrate. From the beginning of the NSA controversy, the agency's defenders have insisted that Congress is aware of the disclosed programs and exercises robust supervision over t…

In one's obsessive reading about the bomb, it was surprising to learn that Eisenhower, MacArthur, Nitze, even the wretched Lewis Strauss (nemesis of Oppenheimer) thought -- at the time, not just in hindsight -- that it should not have been used on Japan. Not the view we usually get from the predigested history lessons. DWIGHT EISENHOWER "...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb …

This idea blows my mind. How can someone who has only worked as a neighborhood co-ordinator and then "elected" senator and President complain about "working the system"? He has written books and gained enormous wealth, courtesy of his various public offices. He spends millions of US tax dollars on vacations. How in the world can he mention what anyone else has done? Obviously the US system of gaining wealth through public "confidence" is alive and well. He should at least acknowledge this and not make fun of it or denigrate it. Oh, well, politics as usual. Best regards, RA1

I think he will be fine except he will be away from his family. Maybe his family can visit him once he settles down. I bet there is going to be a movie about him in the future. I want someone cute to play his role. He is so dreamy... I bet Russian girls will be all over him. I'm not sure why my Obama is not so lenient toward him. He could offer him immunity and brought him back. http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-gets-job-offer-russias-facebook-164057487.html

Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds Philip Bump 10:09 AM ET The Atlantic Wire Michele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which prompts the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling? Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit. [T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where…

From the White House tapes, Nixon complaining that 'All in the Family' glorifies homosexuality, and ranting about how homosexuality drags down nations: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/07/24/our-nixon-homosexuality.cnn.html

The Time Hillary Was Right About Obama in 2008 Elspeth Reeve 11:01 AM ET The Atlantic Wire Some people wondered why Hillary Clinton failed to inspired voters in the 2008 presidential campaign with an explicitly cynical message. Mocking then-Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton said, "I could stand up here and say: let’s just get everybody together, let’s get unified… The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing, and the world would be perfect." Get real, she said. She'd lived through the 90s. "Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this will be. Yo…

For a Split GOP, 2016 Can't Come Soon Enough Philip Bump 9:26 AM ET The Atlantic Wire The irony of the Republican Party's success in blocking the Democratic Senate and Democratic president is that the party itself is being blocked in the same way: a committed, uncompromising minority stands in its way. But it's not always the same minority. The Republican Party is in an increasingly obvious struggle over its identity — one with its roots in the voters that comprise it. The most public split was the very public tiff between New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. If you missed it, last week Christie bashed those in his party who critique the…

The inner demons that drove Nixon By David Gergen, CNN Senior Political Analyst updated 4:30 PM EDT, Tue July 30, 2013 'A political problem to the president'Video at http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/30/opinion/gergen-nixon-demons/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 Three of President Richard Nixon's top aides documented their experiences at the White House with home movie cameras. Now, that footage seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation is presented in a new documentary along with other rare footage and interviews. CNN Films' "Our Nixon" presents a new look at the Nixon presidency at 9 p.m. ET Thursday, August 1. David Gergen is a senior political analyst for CNN a…

I appreciate what Glenn Greenwald tries to do but he obviously can't simply write balanced articles. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/willardfoxton2/100009225/the-problem-with-glenn-greenwald-and-the-creepy-cult-that-surrounds-him/

Well at least he avoided the most serious charge. http://news.yahoo.com/bradley-manning-acquitted-aiding-enemy-171853159.html

Whenever will he have his stroke? July 22, 2013, 12:43 pm Scalia’s Latest Outburst By JULIET LAPIDOS Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Justice Antonin Scalia posed for a photo during the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 27, 2013 in Washington, DC. An impartial observer, one just calling balls and strikes, might deem Justice Antonin Scalia a fair-weather fan of judicial restraint. On June 25, he helped strike down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. On June 26, he railed against the majority’s decision to strike down section 3 of DOMA, arguing that the Supreme Court has “no power under the Constitution to inval…

Tomorrow, so they say, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat will begin peace talks in Washington, the first in three years. I sure didn't see this one coming, and it's a triumph for Secretary of State John Kerry, who's been working diligently for months to get it to happen. He got the Israeli's to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, and he got the Palestinians to drop their demands for a prior Israeli commitment to stop new settlements and to return to pre-1967 borders. Not sure how he did it, but he did it. I won't begin to guess the outcome or how long the talks will last, but I'm sure glad to see them start. Anyone car…

Excellent Atlantic article by Clive Crook on mad prosecutorial overreach turned on Swartz: http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-death-of-aaron-swartz/267224/

A lady asked Dr. Franklin "Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy." "A republic" replied the Doctor "if you can keep it." Researchers uncover little-known internment camp NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS 4 hours ago Kooskia, Idaho Deep in the mountains of northern Idaho, miles from the nearest town, lies evidence of a little-known portion of a shameful chapter of American history. There are no buildings, signs or markers to indicate what happened at the site 70 years ago, but researchers sifting through the dirt have found broken porcelain, old medicine bottles and lost artwork identifying the location of the first internment camp where the U.S. governme…

Democratic establishment unmasked: prime defenders of NSA bulk spying NYT: "The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership" Glenn Greenwald guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 July 2013 05.09 EDT One of the most vocal supporters of the Obama White House's position on yesterday's NSA debate: GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images One of the worst myths Democratic partisans love to tell themselves - and everyone else - is that the GOP refuses to support President Obama no matter what he does. Like its close cousin - the massively deceitful inside-DC grievance that the two parties refuse to coo…