Politics

As States Rush to Restrict Voting Rights, Justice Ginsburg Says I Told You So Elspeth Reeve 19 hours ago In the month since the Supreme Court struck down the pre-clearance formula of the Voting Rights Act, Texas, Florida and North Carolina are working on rules designed to make it harder to vote. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, is not surprised. "I didn't want to be right, but sadly I am," she told the Associated Press' Mark Sherman. When the Shelby verdict was handed down the day after a less-sweeping decision on affirmative action, The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse postulated that Ginsburg, who diss…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVb0pOKEnXk

Silda Spitzer Is Reportedly Sitting Out Eliot's Campaign Because She Wants a Divorce Zach Schonfeld 21 hours ago Silda Spitzer is planning to divorce husband Eliot after his campaign wraps up, reports the New York Post after speaking with anonymous sources close to the couple. The report claims that Silda, who has steered entirely clear of the limelight in recent weeks, "has had enough": One source tells us, “Silda is telling her female friends that she is done with him. She will file for divorce after the [Nov. 5] election.” A second source told The Post’s Sally Goldenberg, “Silda is saying she is going to wait until this is all over. She has been telling …

Young Voters on Climate Deniers: ‘Ignorant, Out of Touch, Crazy’ By Salvatore Cardoni | Takepart.com 17 hours ago Takepart.com Say what you will about us millennials—we’re a wilting bouquet of narcissistic, socialistic, overeducated, underemployed, tatted-up hipsters who still live at home—but, from this day forward, don’t you dare say we’re climate change deniers. A strong majority (66 percent!) of young independent voters, ages 18 to 34, accept as dogma that man and his dirty deeds are causing, and will continue to cause, climate change—this according to a study conducted by a bipartisan pair of political strategy groups for the League of Conservation Voters. …

I just posted this in the N.C. voting rights act thread, but on reflection it deserves a standalone post, I think. Editorial The Decline of North Carolina By THE EDITORIAL BOARD The New York Times Published: July 9, 2013 Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the ou…

The View takes On Homophobic Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Ken Cuccinelli.

Stevens criticizes court's VRA ruling AP Photo By TAL KOPAN | 7/22/13 2:50 PM EDT Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took some of his former colleagues to task for their decision this summer on the Voting Rights Act, criticizing the majority that struck down as unconstitutional the pre-clearance part of the landmark civil rights law. Writing "A Dissent" in The New York Review of Books, Stevens reflected on the book Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracyy, by Gary May, which was released this April. Using May's account of the events in the South that precipitated the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1…

Longtime journalist Helen Thomas dead at 92 By Mariano Castillo and Deb Krajnak, CNN updated 10:25 AM EDT, Sat July 20, 2013 Journalists Ralph Harris, left, Sam Donaldson, Thomas and Bill Plante listen during a press briefing on Libya on March 25, 1986. (CNN) -- Longtime White House journalist Helen Thomas has died at age 92 after a long illness, sources told CNN Saturday. Thomas covered 10 presidents over nearly half a century, and became a legend in the industry. She was a fixture at White House news conferences -- sitting front and center late in her career -- where she frequently exasperated government spokesmen with her pointed questions. Legendary journali…

David Bromwich on the "Disappointment in Obama" Christopher LydonHost of Open Source from Brown University Posted: December 23, 2010 02:48 PM David Bromwich, the Sterling Professor of English at Yale, reads Barack Obama like a book -- as if he were a book, that is. With the novelist Zadie Smith, he often seems to me the only commentator worth reading on Obama, precisely because they bring literary tools and imagination to a man who's himself an almost literary invention. Professor Bromwich takes the study of our president, in effect, out of the White House press room, out of "political science," whatever that is, into English class. The first premise is that langua…

So many have already come to the conclusion that the death penalty should be abandoned if we are to call ourselves a civil society, yet I have been one of those who thought that, in very limited circumstances, it should be kept. I didn't argue that it was a deterrent, as some do, because crimes with the death penalty keep happening anyway. I doubt it's a consideration for most people who kill. But I believe that there are truly evil people who do truly evil things, and know darn well what they do. I think of people like WIlliam Bonin, who put hot rods up the butts of young blond hitchkikers in California some 42 times. Then there's John Wayne Gacy. Lots more in that de…

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Original_PDF/2013/07/17/Menino_to_Rolling_Stone__1374089137_4526.pdf

The top 9,486 ways Jay Carney won’t answer your questions (interactive)Jay Carney doesn’t have an answer for that. He hasn’t discussed that subject with the president. He will refer you to the Department of [insert agency here]. He refuses to speculate on that. He’ll have to get back to you. But he appreciates the question. A Yahoo News analysis of the 444 briefings through June 18 that Carney has held since becoming White House press secretary has identified 13 distinct strains in the way he dodges reporters' question. Since Carney held his first daily briefing with reporters in the White House Brady Press Briefing Room on Feb. 16, 2011, for example, he’s used some var…

Slew of court challenges threaten NSA's relationship with tech firmsUnlikely coalition takes NSA – and the telecoms firms who own much of the web's infrastructure – to court over bulk surveillance Spencer Ackerman guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 July 2013 08.37 EDT An avalanche of legal challenges to the National Security Agency threaten to upend one of the most delicate balances the surveillance agency labors to strike: its critical relationship with telecommunications and internet companies. An unlikely coalition of advocacy groups are taking the NSA to court, claiming the bulk surveillance it conducts on Americans phone records and their online habits is unconstitu…

Rick Perry has announced that he won’t be running for another term as governor of Texas. He will however, be remaining anti-gay, anti-woman, and I can’t remember the other one.

Tiny Utah-based ISP makes a name for itself by rebuffing government snoopsMeet Xmission, the internet service provider embracing transparency as it shields customers from warrantless authorities Rory Carroll in Salt Lake City guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 July 2013 11.49 EDT The new NSA data centre is not far from Pete Ashdown's privacy-centric internet service provider. The irony is not lost on him. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP Silicon Valley's role in US government surveillance has triggered public anxiety about the internet, but it turns out there is at least one tech company you can trust with your data. The only problem: it's a relative minnow in the field, op…

Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism • Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch • Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls • Company says it is legally compelled to comply Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Laura Poitras, Spencer Ackerman and Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 July 2013 13.53 EDT Skype worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video and audio conversations. Photograph: Patrick Sinkel/AP Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications t…

Well it seems more Americans think that he did the wrong thing. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/edward-snowden-poll_n_3542931.html

I realize it is all politics (as is most of everything) but I have personally been annoyed more than once with "cavalier" denials of over flight permissions. I am neither for or against Bolivia and their politics at the moment. Ostensibly, the flight was denied permission to proceed because there was a suspicion that Snowden was on board. So what? If he had managed to obtain Bolivian "help" in his quest for asylum then the "diplomatic" flight of the president's plane should have been unobstructed. How would we as US citizens feel if BO was traveling to Moscow and "suddenly" the Finns or Poles or some country between here and there decided to forbid AF1 from proceedi…

Anyone else have a problem watching this "news" channel? I tried to watch 2 minutes worth a short time ago. Blitzer on Egypt. "Both sides are angry with the US." "No one is calling it a coup." "The democratically elected government of Egypt has been deposed by the military." What is wrong with those statements, at least according to me? 1. No Egyptian is angry with the US, only with BO. 2. The reason BO is not calling it a coup is that it is "illegal" to give "aid" to the government resulting from a military take over. 3. Was this a fair and democratic election? I seriously doubt it. Any opposing opinions or any agreement? Best regards, RA1

So at this moment, when I go to www.guardian.co.uk, I get their error screen "Sorry, we haven't been able to serve the page you asked for." Wonder if something malicious has been done to them? Will look to see how long they take to restore the site, and what they say. I saw this yesterday with a couple of their deeper buried story pages, but not the home page as now.

What idiots these elected officials are. Un-fucking-believable. . . http://tribuneherald.net/2013/06/26/texas-legislature-fails-on-abortion-passes-masturbation-bill/

Dept. of You Must Be Kidding...Clapper: I gave 'erroneous' answer because I forgot about Patriot ActIntelligence chief tries to explain false Senate testimony by saying he 'simply didn't think' of NSA efforts to collect phone data Spencer Ackerman guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 July 2013 15.59 EDT James Clapper said he issued his remarks because he was thinking instead of a different aspect of surveillance. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA The most senior US intelligence official told a Senate oversight panel that he “simply didn’t think” of the National Security Agency’s efforts to collect the phone records of millions of Americans when he testified in March that it…

I want Edward Snowden to be portrayed by someone much cuter than the one in the movie. What about Matt Damon. I think he will be a good fit... http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/01/world/asia/first-movie-about-edward-snowden/index.html

Oh my my... I'm glad that he isn't gay. Otherwise his treatment there is not going to be that great. Isn't it irony that he fled to a country where its people long to come to the US for a better life. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/10137249/Edward-Snowden-flies-to-Moscow.html