AdamSmith

Edward Snowden charged with 3 felonies The Justice Department is believed to be seeking Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong. | AP Photo By JOSH GERSTEIN | 6/21/13 7:48 PM EDT Updated: 6/21/13 8:29 PM EDT politico.com Federal prosecutors secretly charged former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last week with three felonies in connection with recent leaks of classified information about secret U.S. surveillance programs, according to a court complaint unsealed Friday. Snowden was charged with conveying classified information to an unauthorized party, disclosing communications intelligence information, and theft of government property. The charges, which can carry a penalty of up to ten years in prison on each count, were filed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., last Friday. The Justice Department is believed to be seeking Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong, although his precise whereabouts at the moment are not publicly known. (DOCUMENT: Edward Snowden unsealed complaint) The charges were first reported Friday evening by the Washington Post, which said the complaint against Snowden was sealed. It’s not immediately clear whether the charges were unsealed before or after the Post report. A Justice Department official confirmed Friday evening that a complaint was filed in the case, but declined further comment on the matter. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who has called Snowden’s leaks “an act of treason,” praised the move. “I’ve always thought this was a treasonous act. Apparently so does the U.S. Department of Justice,” he said, although the complaint unsealed Friday does not include a treason charge. “I hope Hong Kong’s government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S.” (Also on POLITICO: 10 famous/infamous whistleblowers) A U.S. law enforcement official contacted by POLITICO refused to elaborate on American efforts to have Snowden taken into custody by Hong Kong authorities, but said simply, “The U.S. and Hong Kong have excellent bilateral cooperation on law enforcement matters.” Assuming Snowden is arrested in Hong Kong, the extradition process could take months, and the outcome is far from certain. The extradition treaty with the United States excludes “political” offenses, a phrase which usually includes crimes like espionage. Criminal leaking charges, however, are sufficiently rare that it’s unclear how they would be treated under the treaty. The theft charge could offer a backup of sorts, if Hong Kong authorities balk at extraditing Snowden on charges relating to disclosure of classified information. Only the single cover page of the complaint was unsealed Friday. Based on filings in other cases, it appeared to indicate a single count filed against Snowden on each charge. However, the underlying affidavit which would provide more details on the charges was not released. Normally, prosecutors would be free to recraft and expand the charges when seeking an indictment from a grand jury — something that’s expected to happen in the coming weeks. However, when extradition is sought, the prosecution sometimes has less latitude to reframe the charges or add new ones once the extradition process is underway. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/edward-snowden-charged-nsa-93179.html#ixzz2Wxs4lrw1

As noted here recently: Verbal? Oral? Lingual? Labial? Gutteral? So many choices!

Because the US and UK governments are sharing all this stolen data with each other. Get it?

Conjuring images of what is in those Hanford tanks! As I noted here one time before, one of the Bechtel folk talking about the challenges of waste vitrification, etc. once chillingly remarked to me, "What's in those tanks has gone beyond the bounds of known chemistry."

LOL Why does that make me think of peekytoe crabs? (A seafood, not a pubic-hair infestation. )

Ditto. Having grown up on N.C. State basketball and the fanatical State-Carolina-Duke rivalry, pro games seem so much more machine-made and sterile than college ones.

Oh, all right. By the way, your "red Ginseng" for when your Internet is being censored was hilarious!

I think that post qualifies me for a short snort of cognac. ("Where o where is my Prince Charming?")

Just yukking it up how the right is better at anger than humor. Another exception to that rule:

So has it worked for you?

Every time I look at the news I get more convinced that Chomsky et al. are right that pols, big business and the media are all in cahoots (wittingly or just lemming-like) to keep us in the dark and not disturb the status quo. Latest example is this piddle-shit new leak at the Hanford site in Washington state, where for many decades we cooked up our plutonium stocks: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/us/washington-hanford-leak/index.html?c=homepage-t This report has it like this is a big new development, and that of course by this public reporting and hand-wringing the press, govt, etc. is on it and will take care of it. What horse shit. I know some of the Bechtel people who have been long involved in cleaning up this Superfund site, and they in private are frank that it simply can't be done. There are a dozen or more enormous underground plumes of radioactive very bad stuff leaching from the reactor-waste storage tanks toward the Columbia River, and there is nothing anyone can figure out to do about them. Except to prepare supermarket ad campaigns for two-headed fish.

The general meanness in the world... Please do this instead... http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11290-an-die-freude/?fromsearch=1

See, as discussed here previously, Grelling's Paradox. Alternately termed (cf. great SF author Stanislaw Lem's creation the sentient supercomputer Golem XIV) the "trap of autodescription."

With you all the way. For ten years my Yahoo email has been one thing that stayed the same. I hate change and having to learn new crap that I did not ask for nor will benefit from. Long ago in selling shit, I learned that when you need something from the client/prospect, of course you always start off, "For your convenience..."

P.S. Just came to me the comparison I had been groping to recall: that Justin Wilson, the Cajun Chef, managed to make a genial joke of his "cooking" ability at the same time as doing a good if homely job of showing his audience at least the outlines of an actual regional cuisine. In both respects, a lot more appealing character to me than Paula has ever been. http://www.justinwilson.com/ ...I must consult my shrink on why I dislike La Deen so much. My own copy of White Trash Cooking having more truth in it than her little finger... (Now don't ask how her little finger got in there!)

I think I get that. Long ago I tried a few different "branded" spice mixes -- meat rubs from Whole Foods, and similar stuff I can't now recall. They all to my taste emphasized some one thing or another to an exaggerated degree, just as pre-seasoned meat cuts (yuck) do to a much worse extent.

U.K. even worse than the U.S., says Snowden: http://m.guardiannews.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa

What mean you "secret"? Something identifiable and ersatz (MSG, say?), or otherwise? Afire with curiosity! I wholly agree her food ideas are abominable, lacking not only regional authenticity but in fact any merit as "cuisine" of any kind.

Another couple rare funnies from the Right...

Strategist Out of Closet and Into Fray, This Time for Gay Marriage By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG The New York Times Published: June 19, 2013 As the Supreme Court considers overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, gay people await a ruling that could change their lives. But the case has already transformed one gay man: Ken Mehlman, the once-closeted Republican operative who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election on a platform that included opposition to same-sex marriage. Now Mr. Mehlman, a private equity executive in Manhattan, is waging what could be his final campaign: to convince fellow Republicans that gay marriage is consistent with conservative values and good for their party. His about-face, sparked in part by the lawyer who filed the California lawsuit, has sent him on a personal journey to erase what one new friend in the gay rights movement calls his “incredibly destructive” Bush legacy. He remains controversial, both applauded and vilified. On the left, he is either an unlikely hero or a hypocritical coward. On the right, some Republicans embrace him; others deem him a traitor. Coming out “has been a little bit like the Tom Sawyer funeral, where you show up at your own funeral and you hear what people really think,” Mr. Mehlman said in a recent interview in his office at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, on the 42nd floor of a Midtown skyscraper. “A big part of one’s brain that used to worry about this issue has now been freed to worry about things that are much more productive.” Mr. Mehlman, 46, remains the hyper-intense, guarded strategist he was in his Bush days, with the same habit of looking past people instead of meeting their eyes. He shuns most interviews and still deflects personal questions, as he did back when rumors about his sexuality swirled. “I have a happy life today, and I had a happy life before,” he said. Freed of the burden of secrecy, he lives in the gay-friendly Chelsea neighborhood and summers in the Hamptons. Another friend called him “more and more comfortable in his skin.” He dates, but said he was not ready to marry. He will not talk about any guilt he might feel for serving as the 2004 campaign manager, when Mr. Bush, courting Christian evangelicals, called for a federal ban on same-sex marriage and conservatives marched to the polls. Mr. Mehlman was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, a job he held until 2006. Some who once taunted him now praise him, saying coming out is difficult and anyone can change. “If you’re going to have an epiphany, do it like Mehlman,” said John Aravosis, a gay blogger. Others are still furious. “I doubt Ken Mehlman will ever be anything more than a bitter footnote in the history of our movement,” said another blogger, Joe Jervis. And in Ohio, where Mr. Bush’s re-election coincided with voter approval of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, Mr. Mehlman is persona non grata, said Eric Resnick, a gay journalist who in 2005 confronted the party chairman about his sexuality at a dinner. (Mr. Mehlman ducked the question.) “Ken Mehlman did a lot of damage in Ohio,” Mr. Resnick said. “He has not come back to Ohio and said, ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you.’ ” Despite or perhaps because of this past, Mr. Mehlman has carved a rare niche as a go-to Republican in the overwhelmingly Democratic gay advocacy world. Deploying his vast Rolodex but staying mostly behind the scenes, he has worked with the White House (President Obama was his classmate at Harvard Law School) to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; lobbied lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage in states like New York, Minnesota and New Hampshire; served as an informal adviser to Republicans including Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who backed marriage rights after learning his son is gay; and recruited Republican donors, helping to raise $4.5 million for gay causes, including an antibullying campaign. He also founded a small nonprofit, Project Right Side, to develop polling data to appeal to conservatives. He sits on the board of the group that brought the case challenging Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, and gathered the signatures of more than 100 Republicans on a legal brief supporting the suit. When advocates in Maine, where voters rejected same-sex marriage in 2009, tried again last year, Mr. Mehlman helped retool their advertising. They won. “He brought a totally fresh perspective that nobody else had, and because he was so prominent, people had to take note,” said Matt McTighe, who managed the Maine effort. In articulating a conservative case for gay marriage rights, Mr. Mehlman invokes the term “civil marriage” as a reminder, he said, that he is talking about “marriage under the law, as opposed to marriage as a religious sacrament.” In speeches, he likes to say Republicans should back same-sex marriage “because we are conservative, not in spite of being conservatives.” He uses Republican-friendly words like “freedom” and “‘liberty” as opposed to “equality” — language that Mr. McTighe said resonated with Republicans and conservative Democrats in Maine. But nationally, Mr. Mehlman has an uphill battle. Polls show roughly two-thirds of Republicans oppose same-sex marriage, although support among those under 30 is higher. So reaction to him in his party is mixed. Friends from the Bush days, like Tim Goeglein, an evangelical Christian who works for the advocacy group Focus on the Family, do not broach the topic. “We know where each person stands, so we have not had a fulsome discussion,” Mr. Goeglein said. In the capital, where Mr. Mehlman remains a respected figure, many conservatives simply say they disagree with him. Beyond the insular inside-the-Beltway crowd, some Republicans want to know why a man who worked to unite Republicans is raising an issue that divides them. That was the case in Iowa, where same-sex marriage is legal but opposed by many social conservatives on religious grounds, when Mr. Mehlman went there last year. “People were asking, ‘Why are you coming here to stir the pot?’ ” said Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a political Web site. “It was kind of a head-scratcher.” Mr. Mehlman credited Theodore B. Olson, a solicitor general under Mr. Bush, with providing a spark that set him on his current path. In 2009, Mr. Mehlman, out of politics but still in the closet, invited Mr. Olson — who filed the California suit — to lunch. Mr. Mehlman said he had been thinking for some time that “a strong argument could be made from both the freedom and the family values perspective.” Mr. Olson told him that courts had deemed marriage a “fundamental right.” The next year, Mr. Mehlman told Mr. Olson that he is gay and wanted to help. Critics have called what followed “Ken Mehlman’s apology tour,” a coming-out strategy unveiled in August 2010 with the precision of a political campaign. Mr. Mehlman — who once flatly denied being gay — granted a lone interview to Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, in which he said he regretted not being “where I am today 20 years ago.” He pledged to become an advocate and apologized to gay audiences. Mr. Mehlman’s friends say the apology tour is now over. Since many legal analysts expect the Supreme Court to leave same-sex marriage to the states, he is focused on efforts like Project Right Side, his nonprofit polling organization, which provided data last year to every Republican presidential campaign. How much difference he is making is difficult to determine, though some advocates, like Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, see small signs. They note that Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who is close to Mr. Mehlman, said he could imagine a pro-gay-marriage Republican running for president in 2016. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican, supported an openly gay candidate for a federal judgeship. “This is not just any Republican — this is one of the single greatest successful strategists for Republicans,” Mr. Griffin said of Mr. Mehlman. “And now he’s on our side.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/us/strategist-out-of-closet-and-into-fray-this-time-for-gay-marriage.html?hp&_r=1&