Rand Paul's Aide: A Dunce on the Confederacy

By Conor Friedersdorf

This week, Alana Goodman, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, broke a story about Senator Rand Paul's 39-year-old social-media director, Jack Hunter, who "spent years working as a pro-secessionist radio pundit and neo-Confederate activist" under the name "Southern Avenger." "He has weighed in on issues such as racial pride and Hispanic immigration, and stated his support for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln," Goodman reported. "During public appearances, Hunter often wore a mask on which was printed a Confederate flag."

In a follow-up article, Goodman reported that "controversial radio-pundit-turned-Senate-aide Jack Hunter's work caught the eye of the Paul family years before he was hired as Sen. Rand Paul's (R., Ky.) social media director," and that "it remains unclear whether Rand Paul was familiar with Hunter's inflammatory radio punditry when he hired him." Interviewed by the Free Beacon, "Hunter renounced most of his comments," and his article archive at The American Conservative, which dates back to July 2008, suggests that his thinking changed prior to this controversy. I wish every neo-Confederate would read these lines in his April 1, 2013 column:

The 20-something me would consider the 30-something me a bleeding-heart liberal. Though I still hate political correctness, I no longer find it valuable to attack PC by charging off in the opposite direction, making insensitive remarks that even if right in fact were so wrong in form. I'm not the first political pundit to use excessive hyperbole. I might be one of the few to admit being embarrassed about it. This embarrassment is particularly true concerning my own region, the South, where slavery, segregation, and institutional racism left a heavy mark. 

I still detest those on the left and right who exploit racial tension for their own purposes. But I detest even more the inhumanity suffered by African-Americans in our early and later history. T.S. Eliot said, "humankind cannot bear too much reality," and it is impossible for those of us living in the new millennium to comprehend that absolute horror of being treated like chattel by your fellow man, or being terrorized by your neighbors, because of the color of your skin. Books, memorials, and museums will never be able to adequately convey such tragedy, at least not in any manner remotely comparable to the pain of those who lived it.

A bit farther back in his archive at The American Conservative, however, he displays all the cluelessness of nostalgists for the Confederacy, writing, "My entire adult life I have defended the Old South and the Southern cause in America's bloodiest war. Not because I support slavery or racism, but despite it. The positive parallels between what the Confederacy was fighting for in 1861 and what the American colonists fought for in 1776 are many and obvious -- republican democracy, political and economic freedom, national independence, defense of one's homeland."

He has yet to renounce his secessionism.

In an effort to understand his views as fully as possible, I read all his columns from The American Conservative, bearing in mind Daniel McCarthy's claim that "anyone who reads them, while finding plenty to disagree with -- he's an independent thinker -- will not find hate. Naïveté, yes, and a certain obtuseness about minorities that's long been characteristic of the right."

That characterization is accurate. An April 14, 2011, column best captures the maddening way he thinks about secession:

If a liberal like Maddow's primary reason for denouncing nullification or secession is these concepts' popular association with the Old South and slavery, would Maddow have respected the Fugitive Slave Act -- or nullified it? Would the liberal host have agreed with Lincoln that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters? Would Maddow have opposed abolitionists' Northern secession? If she is opposed to nullification and secession in each and every instance -- as her rhetoric heavily implies -- would liberals like Maddow have occasionally found themselves in the strange position of supporting slavery?

What about today, where a de facto nullification remains in effect in California which continues to openly flout federal drug laws? Does Maddow believe residents in that state who are stricken with cancer or glaucoma deserve to be arrested for alleviating their pain with medicinal marijuana? Or does Maddow support nullification? Liberals do not want to be confronted with these uncomfortable philosophical contradictions concerning centralization vs. decentralization -- the debate that raged in 1776, 1861 and still rages today -- because any such intellectual exploration toward this end threatens the very heart of the Left's collectivist historical narrative. For progressives, the ever-increasing power of the federal government represents human liberation and political liberalization--period.

This has been the Left's clarion call from FDR to Barack Obama, and any talk of devolving centralized power -- even in the name of what would typically be considered liberal causes -- is heresy.

Hunter gets one thing right: Secession and nullification aren't inherently wrong. The judges who tried to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act were doing God's work. If the federal government started rounding up all Muslim Americans, and liberal California tried to secede and offer them safe harbor, I'd proudly fly the banner of the Bear Flag Republic. And I believe that state governments are the rightful deciders when it comes to issues like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and assisted suicide. Want to nullify the War on Drugs by refusing to cooperate with federal efforts to prosecute marijuana? Go for it, Colorado! Cite the Tenth Amendment. I'll back you.

What the author fails to realize is that secession and nullification have bad names because, historically, in practice rather than theory, their use has overwhelmingly led to the subjugation of minorities and diminished liberty; and because, a few Vermonters aside, the maneuvers are almost always paired -- as Hunter pairs them! -- with a myopic Confederate nostalgia that poisons intellectual consideration of the concepts more than any central government-loving liberal.

Centralization is often bad for liberty. Prohibition and the federal government's War on Drugs are examples. But the Union's victory in the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 14th Amendment, and the incorporation doctrine were huge advances for liberty that every American ought to celebrate.

And the form of government favored by Jefferson Davis' Confederacy? I'd like to associate myself with almost every characterization of it made by the Cato Institute's Jason Kuznicki:

Whatever others may say on the subject, I can't understand how anyone might admire the Confederacy and also call themselves a libertarian. Any affinity for the Confederacy marks one very clearly as an enemy of liberty.*

The Confederate Constitution says all that needs to be said on the subject, and it answers all possible arguments to the contrary. Yes, the antebellum U.S. Constitution was clearly quite soft on slavery, and this is not at all to its credit. The best that can be said for it was that it was embarrassed about being quite soft on slavery -- amid all the other liberties it granted and all the other progress it made. Products of committees, do note, can be as schizophrenic as the committees that draft them. Our first attempt at a constitutional order was one such schizophrenic product, and in this respect, the antebellum U.S. Constitution was terrible.

But the Confederate Constitution was vastly worse. What it lacked in schizophrenia, it more than made up for in pure, unadulterated, wholly consistent evil. Consider the following passages:

No law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due.

The Confederate States may acquire new territory... In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

It would be a sick joke to stop merely at calling these provisions unlibertarian -- as if all but the exceptionally punctilious members of my little tribe might maybe tolerate them after all.

These provisions are unlibertarian, but they are far worse than that. There is only one legal term that seems quite to do them justice. That term is hostis humani generis: The founders of Confederacy were the enemies of all mankind, as admiralty law holds slave-takers to be. War against slave-takers is always permitted, by anyone, without pretext or need for justification. The practice of slavery is to be crushed, so that mere humanity might live. Anyone who cares about human liberty -- to whatever degree -- ought to despise the Confederacy, ought to mock and desecrate its symbols, and ought never to let Confederate apologists pass unchallenged.

Want to go even deeper in the weeds? See Jonathan Blanks. "Because Confederate-secession defenders will not typically make arguments in favor of chattel slavery, they rely instead on the assumption that secession is an unbounded right and thus a state may leave a country for whatever reason it chooses," he writes. "To accept this premise, one has to bypass moral judgment on the cause of secession, yet affirmatively assign a morality to secession as a matter of preferred political procedure -- in common parlance as 'states' rights.' This turns the assumption of individual rights on its head, if the federalist procedure is to supersede the right of exit of any group or individual within that state, as the Confederacy's slave economy unquestionably did."

Perhaps this critique has already persuaded, or will one day persuade, Hunter to renounce more of his past positions. "In radio, sometimes you're encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory," he told the Free Beacon. "I've been guilty of both, and am embarrassed by some of the comments I made precisely because they do not represent me today. I was embarrassed by some of them even then." It is a discredit to his character that he said things he didn't believe on the radio; just as I do not excuse Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh for spewing false, provocative nonsense for the sake of ego and/or lucre, I don't regard I misrepresented my opinions because I was in a dishonest medium to be any kind of excuse.

I do respect Hunter's renunciations and rethinking, and the increased empathy that preceded this controversy. Within the world of commentary, I am disinclined to shun anyone earnestly seeking redemption from a past of talk-radio hackery -- talk about getting the incentives all wrong.

That doesn't change the fact that Hunter should resign his post immediately, because his continued presence can only undermine the effectiveness of his employer. Paul shouldn't have ever hired him, because even if -- to be overly charitable -- Paul wasn't aware of his objectionable views, or disagreed with all of them but didn't regard them as pertinent to the job, a Senate staffer's role is to help his boss govern, and any fool should've been able to see that having an avowed secessionist and Confederate nostalgist on staff would end in distraction, controversy, and many assuming (whether rightly or wrongly) an antagonism to blacks -- just as many Americans assumed, during the Jeremiah Wright scandal, that Obama harbored antagonism toward America. The political best practice "don't hire extremist former talk-radio hosts who spewed years of nonsense even they won't defend" didn't guide Paul's hiring when Hunter joined.

Why? Dave Weigel has thoughts. Lots of them. Other hypotheses:

1. Paul sympathizes with Confederate nostalgia and secessionism.
2. Just as it made sense for Obama to associate himself with Jeremiah Wright to win over a certain sort of liberal Chicago voter, and made sense for him to disassociate himself with Wright to win over Americans generally, Rand Paul is constantly trying, on one hand, to retain the base of his father, and on the other, to increase his appeal to Americans generally. Insofar as he associates with secessionists and Confederate nostalgists, it is calculated, a bone he throws to the fringe of America that is disproportionately likely to bankroll money bombs; but the fringe stuff doesn't reflect his actual beliefs or governing agenda.
3. He just liked the good things about Jack Hunter, has a higher tolerance than most for fringe beliefs, and a distaste for shunning people just because they have views that are offensive to many.
4. Paul, like many pols, is strangely blind to the dumbest excesses or mistakes within his own ideology.

My bet would be on No. 2, which is neither the most nor least charitable explanation. But since I'm betting and not asserting, be assured that this is a question Paul will need to address directly. Perhaps not now, or ever, if he just wants to remain in the Senate; but sometime, if he runs for president in 2016.

This whole episode is vexing to me. This week as much as last, I believe that Paul, like Ron Wyden, is one of several indispensable members of his chamber, where one voice can make a significant difference in policy.

Paul is constantly speaking out against needless American involvement in foreign wars, most recently in Syria; so long as a vote on Iran could conceivably be the difference between a catastrophic war that could "haunt us for generations," as Robert Gates put it, every non-interventionist is indispensable. He favors reforming mandatory minimum sentencing and forcing transparency on the surveillance state, and he's critical of a secretive drone campaign that has killed so many innocents. If Paul left the Senate tomorrow, it is vanishingly unlikely that anyone in Kentucky or anywhere else would start taking these and other stands, many of which speak directly to some of the most illiberal, unjust actions America carries out. In all these fights, Paul faces long odds.

Every association with neo-Confederates, or bit of evidence that he hasn't learned the lessons of his father's poisonous newsletters, doesn't just corrode his standing as a champion of liberty; nor is it just destructive of any presidential ambitions he harbors. It undermines his ability to achieve vital reforms, to avert foreign wars, to protect civil liberties or critique the War on Terror in any way. It strengthens the hands of his opponents on those issues, however illogically.

And for what? What is gained by these associations?

Paul is perhaps thinking, as he's expressed before, that he wants to be judged on his actions in the Senate -- on the votes that he takes and the questions that he raises. He may say that his aide's opinions are irrelevant, given that neither he nor even the aide himself share most of them. He may argue, as I have done, that there is a double-standard in the way that Republicans, especially libertarian-leaning ones, are treated on the issue: that Paul is called a racist based on newsletters written by his father and talk-radio monologues delivered by his aide, while Michael Bloomberg remains unscathed, even as he himself presides over and defends racially profiling and secretly spying on innocent New York-area Muslim Americans, as well as the deeply-racist-in-practice Stop and Frisk. But even granting all of that, every word I've written above stands.

So what should we think about Paul now?

Chris Hayes says that he very much likes some of the positions that Paul has taken, but that "in the final analysis, there are certain things, certain views, that just put you outside of the boundaries that get you listened to on anything. I'd say white supremacy is one of those. And association with people who hold those views, they render you unfit." ** I predict that if Paul makes a cogent point on drone policy, or surveillance policy, or a particularly compelling anti-war argument, Hayes will, in fact, listen to him, and even broadcast his words to others.

I sure will.

And while there are many differences between the Obama-Wright controversy (which did not at all dissuade me from supporting Obama in 2008) and the current controversy over Hunter's remarks, there is this similarity: Both deal with how we ought to react to indefensible remarks made by someone a prominent politician chose to associate with, even after the remarks.

In that instance, Hayes had this reaction:

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to "particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media" who were members of the list. The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, "It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country." Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. "All this hand wringing about just how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going."

"Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians -- men, women, children, the infirmed -- on its hands. You'll forgive me if I just can't quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama's pastor," Hayes wrote. "I'm not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don't think he's worthy of defense, don't defend him! What I'm saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable."

He later clarified, "My argument was that Wright's views and Obama's relationship to him simply weren't at all predictive of how Obama would govern or fundamentally revealing about the kind of president he would make."

He was certainly right about that.

As a whole, his take has many parallels to today's unapologetic Paul defenders: They say this is a distraction dredged up by neo-cons to maintain control of the Republican Party, that the hand-wringing just keeps the hustle going, and that considering the horrific policies that the U.S. implements and Paul opposes, being outraged about an associate's offensive comments is bizarre.

What do I say?

• Paul deserves much of the criticism he's getting, including what I've heaped on him above. If he can't see how this undermines his goals he should ask Will Wilkinson to explain it to him.

• Judging from Paul's time in the Senate, nothing about Hunter's controversial views have been at all predictive of how Paul has governed, and there is no credible case that they ever will be predictive.

• If you'd never vote for Paul because he employs an aide who said lots of offensive stuff on talk radio but you did vote to reelect George W. Bush or Obama, who've both retained aides at the highest levels who were complicit in torturing other human beings, perhaps you should rethink what it is that you make into a litmus test -- more on that point here.

Consider all that a tentative take, pending new facts and further reflection.
__
* Here's the one line I want to parse: "Any affinity for the Confederacy marks one very clearly as an enemy of liberty." That feels true to me. It would be true, if people were rational creatures. But I've encountered a lot of people whose affinity for the Confederacy is characterized by staggering historical ignorance, stubborn, irrational, myopic tribalism, pathological, selective over-intellectualization, and cognitive dissonance. Their commitments don't make any kind of sense when juxtaposed, which doesn't mean they don't believe them. It's a lot like the college students who have hammer-and-sickle flags on their wall, Che tees on their bodies, and ready defenses of Fidel Castro, but who also champion civil liberties and like capitalism.

Weirdly, they exist.

** Hayes goes on:

Even if you take the most charitable view possible, that, say, you get three white supremacist strikes, Rand Paul is in trouble. Strike one was in 2009 when Rand Paul's Senate campaign spokesperson was forced to resign over a horribly racist comment and historical image of a lynching -- I am not making that up -- posted by a friend on his MySpace wall on Martin Luther King Weekend. It had been allowed to remain for almost two years. Rand Paul then went on the Rachel Maddow show, saying he didn't much like the Civil Rights Act, that was strike two. And now this, the Southern Avenger on the Senator's staff. That's three racist strikes. You're out.

Seriously? Assigning Rand Paul a "white supremacist strike" because he employed a spokesman whose friend posted something offensive on the spokesman's MySpace page? And really, a "white supremacist strike" for taking the position that the Civil Rights Act did a lot of good things, but that he had some principled objections to the private business provision? I've criticized Paul's answer as wrongheaded, but it certainly isn't a white supremacist position.

I wonder how many strikes would result if Hayes applied these same standards to, say, Bill Clinton. Who was it that he cited as his mentor? Ah, yes, a former segregationist. Strike one? We'd do well to reserve white supremacist strikes for people who actually believe in or advocate white supremacy.

Why Senate reform is needed

By Jonathan Bernstein

Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell engaged in a long argument on the Senate floor this morning over Republican obstruction and Democratic plans to do something about it.

In practical terms, there’s really just a game of chicken here. Republicans — remember, the minority in the Senate — want to block as many presidential nominees as possible. The rules allow that. The only real weapon Democrats have is to threaten to change Senate rules so that simple majorities can confirm those nominations, but it’s a weapon that Democrats are reluctant to use. That means that the line at which Democrats will act (because there is too much obstruction) is going to remain unclear.

And so Republicans will keep pushing right up to where they think the line is, while Democrats are going to threaten that they’ll go nuclear any minute now.

That’s what’s happening, and that’s okay, as far as it goes.

But on the merits, look, McConnell gave away the game twice during the debate. At one point he referred to a “60-vote hurdle” and at another point he talked about how few nominees are “likely to have problems getting cloture” (both my transcriptions from C-SPAN2, so I may have the wording slightly wrong).

That’s the problem, right there. McConnell, ever since January 2009, has treated filibusters as routine and universal. That’s brand new. There have been filibusters of executive branch nominees before, but only in rare cases. Almost all the time, under all previous presidents, the Senate had a simple majority hurdle, not a 60 vote hurdle, for executive branch appointments. Nominees didn’t have to get cloture; they only needed to get a simple majority.

Which is how it should be. There are reasonable justifications, agree with them or not, for super majority requirements on at least some legislation and on at least some lifetime-appointment judges. There are no reasonable justifications for needing 60 for executive branch positions. Really, I’m not aware of any good arguments for needing 60 on any exec branch nominations, let alone having it as the standard for all of those selections. For years, everyone has always believed that presidents should basically be entitled to the personnel they want, and that the confirmation process was basically an opportunity for senators to have some leverage over what happens in the departments and agencies, after which nominees would normally be confirmed. It’s a system that  worked reasonably well, and there’s no reason at all it shouldn’t be the system now, even if Democrats have to change the formal rules in order to restore how things used to work.

Again: this isn’t really going to be settled on the merits; it’s simply about how far Democrats are willing to go to accommodate what is absolutely unprecedented obstruction of executive branch nominations without invoking their right to impose a rules change.

On the merits, however, McConnell is dead wrong. He talked about whether Reid would ruin the Senate by going nuclear; the ones who are actually threatening to ruin the Senate are Republicans who insist on a 60-vote Senate, and more generally Republicans who constantly defy Senate norms in order to gain short-term advantage. That’s the real story here, and it’s a real disgrace.

Smithfield CEO Tells Lawmakers Shuanghui Deal Won’t Impact Food Safety

By Helena Bottemiller

American consumers will not be impacted and the safety of pork products will not diminish if Smithfield Foods is acquired by Shuanghui International, Smithfield’s CEO Larry Pope told the Senate Agriculture Committee at a hearing Wednesday.

The assurances come as the proposed $4.7 billion sale, which would be the largest ever Chinese acquisition of an American company, is facing an interagency government review and increased scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Fielding tough questions from lawmakers about the potential downsides of the deal, Pope, who will remain CEO, was upbeat about the acquisition. He said the deal would deliver more American jobs and increase exports.

“It will be the same old Smithfield, only better,” he said, noting that pork producers and industry groups are supportive. “There should be no noticeable impact in how we do business operationally in America…except we plan to do more of it.”

Pope’s view was backed up by the testimony of Matthew Slaughter, an associate dean at the Tuck School of Business who served on the Council of Economic Advisors to President Bush. Slaughter said the investment and the increased trade with China is exactly what the sluggish economic needs, adding that a smooth transaction would signal that the U.S. is ripe for foreign investment.

On the whole, however, the hearing was extremely divided. Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) raised concerns about the Chinese meat company gaining access to valuable pork industry technologies that were heavily supported by taxpayer-funded research and seriously questioned the federal government’s process for reviewing such acquisitions.

Stabenow and more than a dozen senators from the committee recently asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), headed by the Treasury Department, to include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in its review of the proposed deal because of the potential threats to food security and public health, but it’s not clear whether that will happen. In a letter to the committee this week, the Treasury did not respond to that request, but noted that its review process is confidential.

During the hearing, lawmakers echoed the concerns many consumers have: that the deal will ultimately result in the U.S. importing more food from China in the wake of multiple unsavory and dangerous food scandals.

Pope told the committee that the acquisition “will not result in any imports of food into the U.S. from China” and said specifically that China has “no plans” and “no applications in place” seeking permission from the USDA to sell its meat products to U.S. consumers. He also reminded the committee that regardless of who owns the company, it will be under strict scrutiny by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which oversees the safety of all meat, poultry, and processed egg products in the U.S.

“We’re going to protect these brands and products and if we don’t the U.S. government will,” he said. “You know how tight those inspection processes are.”

Daniel Slane, Commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told the committee he thinks the long-term implications of the deal are wholly negative.

“This is all about control,” said Slane, who argued that giving Shuangui access to technology and intellectual property could end up disadvantaging American producers. Eventually, he said, China can use that knowledge to achieve the same efficiency in their production and undercut U.S. pork exports to the Pacific Rim. “Their endgame is to dominate our markets.”

Dr. Usha Haley, a professor for the Robbins Center for Global Business and Strategy at West Virginia Univeristy, was equally critical in her testimony before the committee.

“I don’t think shanghai is buying Smithfield for its pork,” said Haley. She believes the deal is about Shuanghui’s access to intellectual property and technology and assuaging local consumers’ food safety concerns by using an American brand. Even if China gobbled up Smithfield’s entire production, she said, it would only account for about 3 percent of the country’s total pork consumption.

“China is not seeing this as one acquisition,” she said. “China sees this as a foot in the door.”

Haley said she also believes the deal will ultimately impact food safety. In June, she penned an Op-Ed for USA Today arguing against the Smithfield sale.

“Shuanghui’s culture exudes outrageous food-safety violations and a history of food adulteration. For example, the company finally shut down a plant after numerous reports that it fed pigs a chemical that sickened humans but enhanced leanness in pork,” she wrote. “Over the past five years, U.S. pork purchases in China rose 155%, one of the few areas in which a trade surplus with China exists. China’s history of forced technology transfer to access markets indicates that other Chinese demands will follow.”

Stabenow said she remains concerned about the adequacy of the government’s review process.

“I really believe this is a precedent-setting case,” she said. “We need to be thoughtful on behalf of consumers and producers and the broader economy.”

How Romney Finally Got Black People To Like Him

By Elisabeth Parker

Mitt Romney’s supporters may not be able to send President Barack Obama “back to” Kenya, but left-over Romney T-shirts from the 2012 campaign are fair game. Benny Johnson from BuzzFeed gleefully reports that “the Romney campaign is still strong in Africa,” thanks to a serendipitous donation to the Orbit Village project, an orphanage and K-12 school located in Nairobi, Kenya. The Founder of the Tennessee-based charity, Cyndy Waters, told BuzzFeed that the T-shirts came from her nephew, who served as a county director for Romney’s presidential campaign. She then added:

“A T-shirt might seem a small thing to an American teen with a drawer full of many T-shirts, but we work all year collecting clothing, school supplies, and gifts for our students. The gift of several hundred T-shirts and hats from the Romney campaign was a real blessing to us.”

Photo from Orbit Village Project, a Baptist-run orphanage, K-12 school, and evangelical church in Nairobi, Kenya: “Send a child to school, lead a child to Christ.”

This is probably the largest group of young black people we’ll ever see wearing Romney T-shirts and smiling while doing it. Unfortunately for the GOP, these kids are in Africa. It remains highly unlikely that Romney will ever enjoy wide appeal to blacks in the good old US of A,. After all, his Republican party promotes policies that hurt people of color, and his Mormon church only recently granted equal status to black people. Although the gushing BuzzFeed article insists that Waters “will accept any donation of any campaign swag,” we can make a fairly educated guess as to where her political sympathies lie … and not just based on her nephew’s occupation. A quick visit to the Orbit Village Project’s web site reveals that the charity is affiliated with an evangelical Christian group that has “planted” a Baptist church on the site. It is no secret that American evangelical Christian groups have taken hold in Africa, spreading their vile message of ignorance, homophobia, and hate.

 

Waters burbles about how the kids love America:

“Kenyan students love to talk about politics and very much admire the way Americans handle elections [...] We thought it would be a great way to celebrate the 4th of July and the political system by giving the shirts out on that day.”

But of course she doesn’t mention how Romney’s party has been manipulating our elections and doing everything possible to keep American blacks and other people of color from voting.

Waters then snidely works in a dig against Obama:

“President Obama was not on the best of terms with many Kenyans for choosing to visit Tanzania instead of Kenya in his recent visit to Africa, and that made many of the kids even more excited to receive the shirts.”

So … let’s send her a few hundred Obama, Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren T-shirts and see what happens. Their mailing address is:

The Orbit Village Project
118 Cedar Hills Road
Sevierville, TN 37862-3809

And in case you’re curious about what these kids are learning in this orphanage/school/church, here’s the video:



Ironically, while these kids are enjoying this bonanza, it turns out that Romney’s supporters in Virginia couldn’t seem to get their hands on any Romney T-shirts or lawn signs during the 2012 election, according to Christopher Bedford’s disgusted post-mortem in his “What the hell is the point of the Virginia GOP?” op-ed piece for the Daily Caller.

Author: Elisabeth Parker Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.

Government Makes $51 Billion A Year Off Student Loan Interest

Author: Occupy Democrats  

July 11, 2013 5:06 P.M.

 

Texas woman pulled off Senate floor after fiery testimony against abortion bill

By Evan Puschak

Sarah Slamen left her home in central Texas at 5:30 a.m. Monday to testify at the Austin Senate against the state’s controversial abortion bill. She didn’t get to speak until 11:00 pm that night, after listening to hours of what she described as a “parade of anti-choice zealots and misogynists.” By the time she was called, Slamen had scrapped her prepared speech about Gov. Rick Perry’s sister’s ties to surgical centers and doctor-owned hospitals that would benefit from the bill’s passage, and went for the senators themselves.

“Thank you for being you, Texas legislature,” Slamen said. “You have radicalized hundreds of thousands of us, and no matter what you do for the next 22 days, women and their allies are coming for you. Let’s start down the line. Senator Campbell, you’re an ophthalmologist. So I won’t be making you the expert on reproductive health. We can give you all the children with chlamydia and herpes in their eyes, since we don’t have Sex Ed in this state.”

Before she could finish her one-by-one excoriation of the Senate committee, Slamen was forcibly escorted from the chamber. When asked why she was removed in an interview with the Daily Kos, Slamen said, “There was no explanation. Senator Jane Nelson tried to say I was being disrespectful but how would she know? I barely got to give the complete performance review of every member on the committee.”

The Texas bill–SB1/HB2–which limits where and when women can get an abortion in the state, passed the state House on Tuesday, and is expected to be voted on by the Senate early next week.
Outside the committee chamber, Slamen was greeted by dozens of sympathizers cheering and applauding her testimony.

The chicanery of corporate food manufacturers

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

Mothers the world over have told their children a zillion times: "Stop playing with your food!" I now share their frustration and would like to yell at the conglomerate packagers of America's victuals:

"Stop playing with our food!"

Actually, they're playing with our heads, using dishonest packaging tactics to raise their prices without us noticing it. A 16-ounce carton of something – shhhh – quietly slips to 14 ounces, but does not drop in price. Then there's the dimple trick. A jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise, for example, has had its contents shrunk, yet the new jar looks as big as the old one unless you turn in on its end. There you'll find a big indention in the bottom – a hidden way to shrink the capacity of the jar and give you less for your money.

David Segal, who writes "The Haggler" column in the New York Times, recently reported on his Adventures-In-Kraft-Foods-Land. He talked to a PR lady there about the corporation's unpublicized (but rather dramatic) change in its Baker's brand of cooking chocolate. Instead of an eight-ounce package selling for $3.89, suddenly a box of Baker's contained only four ounces of chocolate, which sells for $2.89. Wow – that's nearly a 50-percent price hike per ounce! What gives, Segal asked the Kraft spokeswoman? "The change was consumer-driven," she craftily replied. "Our consumers have told us that they prefer this [smaller] size."

Uh, sure, said Segal, but what about that slippery price? She was as slippery as the price, declaring that the product "is competitively priced." That wasn't the question, but her whole game is to avoid giving the honest answer: "We're gouging our customers."

Conglomerate food packagers not only feel free to dupe us consumers, but also consider such corporate chicanery to be a legitimate business practice.

"Halving the Portion, But Not the Price," The New York Times, June 23, 2013.

"Sneaky packages," Consumer Reports, June 2013.

A Moment Of Clarity

Marijuana's march toward the mainstream confounds feds

By Alicia A. Caldwell of Associated Press

AP Photo: Damian Dovarganes

In just a few short years, public opinion has shifted dramatically toward pragmatic acceptance of marijuana.

 

WASHINGTON — It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of "Reefer Madness" to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of "Just Say No."

 

The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously "didn't inhale," to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.

Now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug — for medical use and just for fun.
It is a moment in the United States that is rife with contradictions:

• People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug's potential dangers, particularly for young people.
• States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.
• Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.

Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.

Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more laissez-faire approach without full deliberation.

"It's a remarkable story historically," he says. "But as a matter of public policy, it's a little worrisome."

More than a little worrisome to those in the anti-drug movement.

"We're on this hundred-mile-an-hour freight train to legalizing a third addictive substance," says Kevin Sabet, a former drug policy adviser in the Obama administration, lumping marijuana with tobacco and alcohol.

Legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, likes the direction the marijuana smoke is wafting. But he knows his side has considerable work yet to do.

"I'm constantly reminding my allies that marijuana is not going to legalize itself," he says.

BY THE NUMBERS

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since California voters made the first move in 1996. Voters in Colorado and Washington state took the next step last year and approved pot for recreational use. Alaska is likely to vote on the same question in 2014, and a few other states are expected to put recreational use on the ballot in 2016.

Nearly half of adults have tried marijuana, 12 percent of them in the past year, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

Fifty-two percent of adults favor legalizing marijuana, up 11 percentage points just since 2010, according to Pew.

Sixty percent think Washington shouldn't enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have approved its use.

STICKY ISSUES

Where California led the charge on medical marijuana, the next chapter in this story is being written in Colorado and Washington state.

Policymakers there are grappling with all sorts of sticky issues revolving around one central question:
How do you legally regulate the production, distribution, sale and use of marijuana for recreational purposes when federal law bans all of the above?

The Justice Department began reviewing the matter after November's election. But seven months later, states still are on their own.

Both sides in the debate paid close attention when Obama said in December that "it does not make sense, from a prioritization point of view, for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal."

Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat who favors legalization, predicts Washington will take a hands-off approach, based on Obama's comments. But he's quick to add, "We would like to see that in writing."

The federal government already has taken a similar approach toward users in states that have approved marijuana for medical use.

It doesn't go after pot-smoking cancer patients or grandmas with glaucoma. But it also has made clear that people who are in the business of growing, selling and distributing marijuana on a large scale are subject to potential prosecution for violations of the Controlled Substances Act — even in states that have legalized medical use.

"A REGULATED SYSTEM"

There's a political calculus for the president, or any other politician, in all of this.

Younger people, who tend to vote more Democratic, are more supportive of legalizing marijuana, as are people in the West, where the libertarian streak runs strong.

Despite increasing public acceptance of marijuana overall, politicians know there are complications that could come with commercializing an addictive substance. Opponents of pot are particularly worried that legalization will result in increased use by young people.

Sabet frames the conundrum for Obama: "Do you want to be the President that stops a popular cause, especially a cause that's popular within your own party? Or do you want to be the president that enables youth drug use that will have ramifications down the road?"

Marijuana legalization advocates offer politicians a rosier scenario, in which legitimate pot businesses eager to keep their operating licenses make sure not to sell to minors.

"Having a regulated system is the only way to ensure that we're not ceding control of this popular substance to the criminal market and to black marketeers," says Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group for legal pot businesses in the United States.

COURSE CORRECTION

While the federal government hunkers down, Colorado and Washington state are moving forward on their own with regulations covering everything from how plants will be grown to how many stores will be allowed.

Tim Lynch, director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, predicts "the next few years are going to be messy" as states work to bring a black-market industry into the sunshine.

California's experience with medical marijuana offers a window into potential pitfalls that can come with wider availability of pot.

Dispensaries for medical marijuana have proliferated in the state, and regulation has been lax, prompting a number of cities around the state to ban dispensaries.

In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that cities and counties can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. A few weeks later, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure that limits the number of pot shops in the city to 135, down from an estimated high of about 1,000.

This isn't full-scale buyer's remorse, but more a course correction before the inevitable next push for full-on legalization in the state.

"A NEW INDUSTRY"

Growing support for legalization doesn't mean everybody wants to light up: Barely one in 10 Americans used pot in the past year.

Those who do want to see marijuana legalized range from libertarians who oppose much government intervention to people who want to see an activist government aggressively regulate marijuana production and sales.

For some, money talks: Why let drug cartels rake in untaxed profits when a cut could go into government coffers?

There are other threads in the growing acceptance of pot.

People think it's not as dangerous as once believed. They worry about high school youths getting an arrest record. They see racial inequity in the way marijuana laws are enforced. They're weary of the "war on drugs."

Opponents counter with a 2012 study finding that regular use of marijuana during teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ, and another study indicating marijuana use can induce and exacerbate psychotic illness in susceptible people. They question the notion that regulating pot will bring in big money, saying revenue estimates are grossly exaggerated.

They reject the claim that prisons are bulging with people convicted of simple possession by citing federal statistics showing only a small percentage of federal and state inmates are behind bars for that alone.

They warn that baby boomers who draw on their own innocuous experiences with pot are overlooking the much higher potency of today's marijuana.

In 2009, concentrations of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot, averaged close to 10 percent in marijuana, compared with about 4 percent in the 1980s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"If marijuana legalization was about my old buddies at Berkeley smoking in People's Park once a week, I don't think many of us would care that much," says Sabet, who helped to found Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization. "It's really about creating a new industry that's going to target kids and target minorities and our vulnerable populations just like our legal industries do today."

WHAT'S NEXT?

So how bad, or good, is pot?

J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, set out to sort through more than 100 sometimes conflicting studies after his teenage son became addicted to pot, and turned his findings into a 22-page article for Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2012.

For all the talk that smoking pot is no big deal, Bostwick says, he determined that "it was a very big deal. There were addiction issues. There were psychosis issues.

"But there was also this very large body of literature suggesting that it could potentially have very valuable pharmaceutical applications, but the research was stymied" by federal barriers.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse says research is ongoing.

Dr. Nora Volkow, the institute's director, worries that legalizing pot will result in increased use of marijuana by young people and impair their brain development.

"Think about it: Do you want a nation where your young people are stoned?" she asks.

Partisans on both sides think people in other states will keep a close eye on Colorado and Washington as they decide what happens next.

But past predictions on pot have been wildly off base.

"Reefer Madness," the 1936 propaganda movie that pot fans turned into a cult classic in the 1970's, spins a tale of dire consequences "ending often in incurable insanity."

Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Gene Johnson in Seattle, Lauran Neergaard in Washington, D.C., and AP researcher Monika Mathur in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Van Jones Gives Serial Adulterer Newt Gingrich a Pass During 'Crossfire' Preview

By Heather



I have no idea why CNN thinks this is a good idea, or why it might help their ratings, but apparently they're going to bring Crossfire back to the network this fall, and they're going to have Newt Gingrich, S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter and Van Jones host the debate program.

The good news is, anyone who regularly watches MSNBC in the afternoons won't have S.E. Cupp dumbing down the airways come this fall. The bad news is, CNN actually believes that she and Newt Gingrich deserve a spot on their payroll.

I'm not sure how this show is going to differ all that much from what we're treated to on cable news day in and day out already and I don't have any objections to the format being something they'd like to try bringing back. I just don't understand what they think the draw will be with Cupp and Gingrich.

They're both nothing but a couple of right-wing flame throwers, with Cupp perpetually uninformed and Gingrich, the direct mail scam artist and race baiter who is smart enough to con the rubes who actually believed he ever wanted to be President into buying his books or sending off for one of his very special "awards."

And if the preview on Piers Morgan's show this Wednesday night was any indication, they're off to a really bad start already, where Van Jones gave serial adulterer Newt Gingrich a complete pass when it comes to the pure hypocrisy of someone who has been married and divorced as many times and under the conditions that he has, being allowed to be spouting off about gay couples somehow causing harm to "traditional marriages," which Newt has been allowed to enjoy so many of.

JONES: Well, first of all, I just want to say, as a Christian, if you're concerned about traditional marriage, Kim Kardashian has done more harm to traditional marriage than any gay person. The institution of marriage has been falling apart on heterosexual has been screwing it up. We're the ones getting divorced. We're the ones cheating. We're the ones who were -- were shacking up.

The people who brought the dignity and the honor back in the institution are the lesbian and gay community. And the problem that we have now is, just because you put something on the ballot, if you put it on the ballot in the civil rights of 1950, we wouldn't have them. The court has a job to do to protect people. I'm glad they did the job.

Sorry Van, but that hypocrite who is doing harm to "traditional marriage" is your new "co-host" who is right there on the air with you, and he's the one who should have been called out, not Kim Kardashian.

My prediction on this show is that it's going to be a bust. I think you could have made the format interesting and informative and entertaining with the right group of people hosting the show, but there are a lot of other people I would have considered first before any of these four.

Full transcript below the fold:

MORGAN: From 1990 that's "Crossfire" with a younger Rush Limbaugh, making his case as a guest. Tonight the great news is that he's not back on "Crossfire." He's too old and too boring. Instead CNN is bringing back the "Crossfire" format with four incredible new co- hosts, and we have it all together here for the first time. Van Jones, Stephanie Cutter, Newt Gingrich, and S.E. Cupp.
Welcome to you all. And for the first time, may I say, welcome "Crossfire." This should be very lively. We're going to have a little taste from it tonight. Let's get straight into this.
Newt Gingrich, you must be absolutely thrilled about the Supreme Court's decisions today.
NEWT GINGRICH, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, I was thrilled that you're missing the core point that eight million Californians voted a particular way. Their governor and their attorney general refused to defend them, and as a result, the court didn't actually decide the substance of the case. David Boise was quite clear. The court said there is nobody here who is standing to defend the case, therefore the case is remitted because of that or amended because of that.
It strikes me that the -- the eight million people in California have a pretty good reason to be a little more alienated from Washington than they were yesterday.
MORGAN: Let me ask you just very quickly before we go to the rest of the panel, why are you so opposed to gay people having the same rights to get married as you? I mean, why?
(CROSSTALK)
GINGRICH: First of all, I'm not opposed to gay people having the right to have a relationship.
MORGAN: But to get married, I said.
GINGRICH: Much like Cardinal Dolan who you were dissing. I actually do believe as a Christian that marriage is between a man and a woman.
MORGAN: Well, Cardinal Dolan described it as a tragedy for America.
GINGRICH: And it's a --
MORGAN: A tragedy?
GINGRICH: Well --
MORGAN: A tragedy that two loving people of the same sex can't get married like you and me? That's a tragedy for America?
GINGRICH: I think if you want to reject the right of the Catholic bishop's collectively, not just Dolan, to actually stand up for their values and you want to say that's -- and you want to trivialize it, that's your right, but in fact, I do believe states are making arrangements. What I object to in this case is very clear cut. You had a 5-4 decision to reject eight million Californians on the grounds that eight million people have no standing before the Supreme Court.
MORGAN: OK. OK.
GINGRICH: That's a huge mistake.
MORGAN: No, I hear that. I hear that. Let's go to Van Jones. It seems like you want to get in there.
Is this a tragedy for America, Van?
VAN JONES, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, first of all, I just want to say, as a Christian, if you're concerned about traditional marriage, Kim Kardashian has done more harm to traditional marriage than any gay person. The institution of marriage has been falling apart on heterosexual has been screwing it up. We're the ones getting divorced. We're the ones cheating. We're the ones who were -- were shacking up.
The people who brought the dignity and the honor back in the institution are the lesbian and gay community. And the problem that we have now is, just because you put something on the ballot, if you put it on the ballot in the civil rights of 1950, we wouldn't have them. The court has a job to do to protect people. I'm glad they did the job.
MORGAN: OK. S.E. Cupp, this is quite startling. I think you're going to agree with Van Jones.
S.E. CUP, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Well, when it comes to Prop 8 I agree with Newt. It's a rejection of the voices of the people and that is -- that's a shame. I am a conservative who happens to support gay rights. I'm a conservative who supports marriage. I'm a conservative who supports gay marriage. So on DOMA I think there was a victory, but to me the significant ruling in DOMA wasn't just that the federal government has to acknowledge the right of gay people to marry but that the federal government has to acknowledge the right of the states.
As a small government conservative who supports federalism, I think this was a huge victory for federalism. And if you believe in small government --
MORGAN: OK.
CUPP: -- and conservatism with a C, then you have to see that as at least a silver lining.
MORGAN: OK. Stephanie Cutter, you're putting a face like you've either eaten a very, very, very bad onion or you don't agree with that.
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANIE CUTTER, CO-HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": No, not an onion. I was just waiting to speak. You know, I don't think it's a surprise where I stand. I am very happy about the Supreme Court's decision today on DOMA. A lot of us have been against DOMA for a long time, has been fighting to overturn it.
In terms of the decision on California, you know, yes, eight million people voted for a ballot initiative. But as Van said, people have voted before and they've been wrong. That's why we have checks and balances in our government. We have three branches of government and the courts performed a check on the people and vice versa.
And I think that today, you know, there was a check on ensuring that people have equality in California. And I think that's why --
MORGAN: OK, well, I --
CUTTER: You know, what we saw in the background of Ted and David was a huge celebration. People in California are embracing this.
MORGAN: Yes. No, you got a lot of happy Americans on this tragic day for America.

And just for good measure, any time the subject of Crossfire comes up, it's always nice to remind everyone of the drubbing Jon Stewart gave the show years ago when Carlson and Begala were hosting it.

Why the MIT Blackjack Team Became Entrepreneurs

The MIT Blackjack Team, made famous by the book 'Bringing Down the House' and the movie '21,' learned important lessons about running a business when they were beating casinos in the '80s and '90s. Key members of the team went on to start influential tech companies like SolidWorks and Stanza and invest in startups. Why did they do that instead of becoming, say, hedge fund managers?

MIT entrepreneurship leader Bill Aulet moderated a team reunion panel in Boston, and he writes that the themes that carry over from blackjack to startups include staying disciplined, playing for the long term, and not taking unnecessary risks. And, of course, disrupting the powers that be.

Obama has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught

June 27, 2013

The Criminal N.S.A.

By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN

THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”

It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.

This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.

The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn.

Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contract employee and whistle-blower, has provided evidence that the government has phone record metadata on all Verizon customers, and probably on every American, going back seven years. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious affiliations and political activities are, and so on.

The law under which the government collected this data, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, allows the F.B.I. to obtain court orders demanding that a person or company produce “tangible things,” upon showing reasonable grounds that the things sought are “relevant” to an authorized foreign intelligence investigation. The F.B.I. does not need to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed, or any connection to terrorism.

Even in the fearful time when the Patriot Act was enacted, in October 2001, lawmakers never contemplated that Section 215 would be used for phone metadata, or for mass surveillance of any sort. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and one of the architects of the Patriot Act, and a man not known as a civil libertarian, has said that “Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations.” The N.S.A.’s demand for information about every American’s phone calls isn’t “targeted” at all — it’s a dragnet. 

“How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?” Mr. Sensenbrenner has asked. The answer is simple: It’s not.

The government claims that under Section 215 it may seize all of our phone call information now because it might conceivably be relevant to an investigation at some later date, even if there is no particular reason to believe that any but a tiny fraction of the data collected might possibly be suspicious. That is a shockingly flimsy argument — any data might be “relevant” to an investigation eventually, if by “eventually” you mean “sometime before the end of time.” If all data is “relevant,” it makes a mockery of the already shaky concept of relevance.

Let’s turn to Prism: the streamlined, electronic seizure of communications from Internet companies. In combination with what we have already learned about the N.S.A.’s access to telecommunications and Internet infrastructure, Prism is further proof that the agency is collecting vast amounts of e-mails and other messages — including communications to, from and between Americans.

The government justifies Prism under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 1881a of the act gave the president broad authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. If the attorney general and the director of national intelligence certify that the purpose of the monitoring is to collect foreign intelligence information about any non­American individual or entity not known to be in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can require companies to provide access to Americans’ international communications. The court does not approve the target or the facilities to be monitored, nor does it assess whether the government is doing enough to minimize the intrusion, correct for collection mistakes and protect privacy. Once the court issues a surveillance order, the government can issue top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook to turn over calls, e-mails, video and voice chats, photos, voice­over IP calls (like Skype) and social networking information.

Like the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments Act gives the government very broad surveillance authority. And yet the Prism program appears to outstrip that authority. In particular, the government “may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States.”

The government knows that it regularly obtains Americans’ protected communications. The Washington Post reported that Prism is designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness” — as John Oliver of “The Daily Show” put it, “a coin flip plus 1 percent.” By turning a blind eye to the fact that 49-plus percent of the communications might be purely among Americans, the N.S.A. has intentionally acquired information it is not allowed to have, even under the terrifyingly broad auspices of the FISA Amendments Act.

How could vacuuming up Americans’ communications conform with this legal limitation? Well, as James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC, the N.S.A. uses the word “acquire” only when it pulls information out of its gigantic database of communications and not when it first intercepts and stores the information.

If there’s a law against torturing the English language, James Clapper is in real trouble.

The administration hides the extent of its “incidental” surveillance of Americans behind fuzzy language. When Congress reauthorized the law at the end of 2012, legislators said Americans had nothing to worry about because the surveillance could not “target” American citizens or permanent residents. Mr. Clapper offered the same assurances. Based on these statements, an ordinary citizen might think the N.S.A. cannot read Americans’ e-mails or online chats under the F.A.A. But that is a government ­fed misunderstanding.

A “target” under the act is a person or entity the government wants information on — not the people the government is trying to listen to. It’s actually O.K. under the act to grab Americans’ messages so long as they are communicating with the target, or anyone who is not in the United States.

Leave aside the Patriot Act and FISA Amendments Act for a moment, and turn to the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications.

The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties.

This hairsplitting is inimical to privacy and contrary to what at least five justices ruled just last year in a case called United States v. Jones. One of the most conservative justices on the Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that where even public information about individuals is monitored over the long term, at some point, government crosses a line and must comply with the protections of the Fourth Amendment. That principle is, if anything, even more true for Americans’ sensitive nonpublic information like phone metadata and social networking activity.

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans’ privacy. It’s time to call the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.

Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

The Mind Your Own Business Act

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joins “Viewpoint” host John Fugelsang to discuss an amendment he will soon introduce in the House of Representatives called the Mind Your Own Business Act.

Grayson hopes this amendment will end NSA spying on Americans. He says, “That kind of spying does not make us safer and it is beneath our dignity as Americans.”

Grayson adds, “Virtually everybody that I know immediately recognizes how silly and pointless it is to spy on every person’s conversation.”

Civil rights leaders dealt ‘a devastating blow’

By Morgan Whitaker

Civil rights groups suffered major setbacks on Tuesday after the heart of the landmark civil-rights law that protects minority voters was effectively gutted by the Supreme Court.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act , which required many Southern states to obtain pre-clearance before making any changes to voting laws.

Although the ruling does state that pre-clearance still stands, it functionally halts that part of the law until Congress can draw up a new set of guidelines to determine which areas are subject to federal oversight.

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“This is a devastating blow to Americans, particularly African-Americans, who are now at the mercy of state governments,” Rev. Al Sharpton, PoliticsNation host and civil rights activist said in a statement released through the National Action Network. “Given last year’s attempts by states to change voting rules, it is absurd to say that we do not need these protections.”

Sharpton also vowed to continue the fight, noting the efforts that brought about the civil rights achievements of the 1960′s were set in motion by activism. “It was a people’s movement from the bottom up,” he said on MSNBC Tuesday. “And that’s what’s going to have to happen now.”

“James Crow Jr. Esquire is doing Jim Crow work today,” he added.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, echoed that sentiment.

“The Supreme Court has stabbed the Voting Rights Act in the heart. The White House and Congress must speak out as they are direct beneficiaries of the act and must assume leadership,” he said in a statement released on his Facebook page. “Democracy is just 48 years old. It began in Selma 1965. This decision is designed to unravel 48 years of progress.”

Many legally-focused civil rights organizations also spoke out against the ruling, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court, and called today’s ruling “an act of extraordinary judicial overreach.”

“The Supreme Court ruling takes the most powerful tool our nation has to defend minority voting rights out of commission.” Sherrilyn Ifill, President of the NAACP LDF, said in a statement. “By second-guessing Congress’ judgment about which places should be covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has left millions of minority voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination before it occurs.

“This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys,” she added. “To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Congress must step in.”

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which represented one of the defendant-interveners in the case, criticized the decision as well.

“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation’s most important and effective civil rights laws. Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades,” Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights said in a statement. “Today’s decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”

“This decision disregards the documented history of ongoing voting discrimination in the covered states and paralyzes Section 5, which has blocked thousands of racially discriminatory voting practices and procedures before they could ever take effect,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights President and Executive Director Barbara Arnwine added in a statement. “Civil rights and civic organizations must now unite with the American people – fighting new discriminatory voting laws lawsuit by lawsuit and state by state—until Congress acts decisively to replace what has been one of the most effective civil rights laws ever passed.”

For Rev. Sharpton, Tuesday’s decision has helped define the focus of the commemorative march honoring the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, which he says ”will now be centered around the protection and restoring of voter protection.”

“This ruling has in effect revoked one of Dr. King’s greatest achievements, the teeth of the Voting Rights Acts,” he added.

Obama’s ‘Internal Threat’ program: ‘We’re on the road to East Germany’

Cenk Uygur talks to TYT panelists Ana Kasparian, “TYT University” host John Iadarola, and comedian Jimmy Dore about the government’s “Internal Threat” program, which aims to discourage leaks by equating whistleblowing with treason.

The program also encourages government employees to rat out co-workers who may be potential whistleblowers based on risk indicators, such as martial or financial distress.

”In East Germany, once they found the paperwork after the wall came down, it turned out that one out of every ten people…was a government collaborator,” Cenk says. “We’re on the road to East Germany.”

Putting the lie to gross Hispanic stereotypes by Gohmert, ‘Top Gear’

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GOP governors in deep trouble in 2014

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America's infrastructure: Made in China?

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay Trailer

Bank of America employee: 'We were told to lie'

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Bernie Sanders On NSA Leak Revelations: We're Heading For An 'Orwellian Future'

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This Will Not End Well

By Eugene Robinson

A general view of damaged shops in Qusair, Syria.  AP/SANA

WASHINGTON—In Syria, the Obama administration seems to be stumbling back to the future: An old-fashioned proxy war, complete with the usual shadowy CIA arms-running operation, the traditional plan to prop up ostensible “moderates” whose prospects are doubtful and, of course, the customary shaky grasp of what the fighting is really about.

This will not end well.

It is tragic that more than 90,000 people have been killed in the bloody Syrian conflict, with more than a million displaced. But I have heard no claim that President Obama’s decision to arm the rebels will halt or even slow the carnage. To the contrary, sending more weapons into the fray will likely result in greater death and destruction, at least in the short term.

So this is not promising as a humanitarian intervention. And if the aim is to punish dictator Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of chemical weapons, surely there are measures—a missile strike on the regime’s military airfields, for example—that would make the point without also making an open-ended commitment.

Why decide now to announce stepped-up direct support for Gen. Salim Idriss and his rebel forces? It is surely not a coincidence that the Syrian military—with the help of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran—has been pulverizing the rebels in recent weeks and now threatens to recapture Aleppo, the country’s commercial hub.

Hence, a complicated proxy war: The United States supports Idriss. Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are U.S. allies, send money and arms to competing rebel factions that dream of turning Syria into an Islamic republic. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are supporting Assad with weapons, money and—in the case of Hezbollah—well-trained troops. The rebel side is mostly Sunni; the government side largely Shiite.

As I said, this will not end well.

President Obama’s reluctance to get dragged into this morass has been commendable, but now his ambivalence and caution become liabilities. Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world is Syria. Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union is in Syria. Does Obama care as much as those nations’ leaders do about who wins the war? If not, what’s the point?

It could be argued that providing Idriss with light arms and ammunition is a way to equip moderate, secular forces for their inevitable fight against Islamists in a fractured post-Assad Syria. But this is moot if Assad crushes the rebellion and holds on. Accordingly, U.S. aid reportedly may include some heavier weapons for use against tanks and aircraft. The CIA will take the lead in transferring the arms and training the rebels to use them, according to The Washington Post.

Perhaps bolstering Idriss can at least buy time for negotiations to produce a political settlement, which is what Obama has said he prefers. For a long time, Russia balked at joining the call for an international peace conference. Now that momentum on the battlefield has shifted and the Assad regime is in a stronger position, Russia is more willing to summon everyone to the table—but the Obama administration is no longer in such a big hurry.

Not every slope is slippery, but this one looks like a bobsled run. It was August 2011 when Obama issued a statement declaring that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Now that the president has put muscle behind those words, it will be difficult for the United States to accept any other outcome.

There will be pressure to impose a no-fly zone to neutralize Assad’s devastating air power. There will be pressure to contain the war so it does not spill beyond Syria’s borders and destabilize our allies in Turkey and Jordan, or our sort-of, kind-of allies in Iraq. There will be pressure to alleviate the immense suffering of the Syrian people. Perhaps all of this can be accomplished without putting American lives at risk. I doubt it.

Above all, there will be pressure to win a proxy war that Obama never wanted to fight. This is how quagmires begin, with one reluctant step after another toward the yawning abyss. (See: Vietnam.)

We do sometimes win proxy wars—in Afghanistan, for example, where the CIA helped the warlords defeat the mighty Soviet army. In the process, however, we created the chaotic power vacuum that allowed al-Qaeda to set up shop—and ultimately launch the 9/11 attacks.

I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m right: This will not end well.

Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is dark and full of terrors

The world of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is dark and full of terrors (preview)

June 17, 2013 8:30 AM

Stefanie Fogel 

 

You know, when you think about it, The Witcher video game series shares some similarities with the hit HBO TV show Game of Thrones. Both are based on works by popular fantasy authors. Both tell tales of characters that are neither completely good nor completely evil. Both are set in harsh fictional medieval worlds populated with mythical creatures, scheming nobles, and the occasional brother-sister incest.

And they both look damn good.

Due for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One sometime in 2014, The Witcher 3 is the final entry in CD Projekt RED’s critically acclaimed action-role-playing game franchise. It’s also the first title in the series to feature a truly open game world and free-roaming exploration, and it’s gorgeously detailed. 

CD Projekt claims it’s 35 times bigger than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (a large game in itself) and takes 40 minutes to travel on horseback end to end.

“Basically, the new philosophy of exploring the world in The Witcher 3 is that you can get to every place you see on the screen,” the developer told the media during a live gameplay demo at this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. “This is a massive improvement in comparison to Witcher 2, which had some artificial barriers.”

Of course, a world that big and beautiful is pointless unless it’s filled with interesting things to do. 

The Witcher 3′s standalone, nonlinear story once again focuses on mutant monster hunter Geralt of Rivia. CD Projekt promises a more personal story for Geralt this time around. Now freed from the political machinations of kings and elves, he’s able to search for his loved ones and pursue the Wild Hunt, a spectral force straight out of folklore that brings death and terror to all it passes. The beginning of the demo shows these skeletal riders attacking a village, and Geralt seeks the lone survivor of the massacre to get some answers.

The ability to track down and slay epic beasts is nothing new — Capcom built an entire franchise around it. But it’s an important part of The Witcher lore, and CD Projekt is putting greater emphasis on it this time around. “We decided we would no longer have this world of enemies who are very weak and who you’re just slashing them and killing them,” said The Witcher 3 game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. “We decided to create this Monster Hunting system and the Witcher Sense system and create monsters in a way that would be unique. They got their own special abilities, and the hunt for every one of these monsters will be different. You will feel that you’re a monster hunter actually in the game.”

There’s about 80 different monsters in The Witcher 3, the developer says, and each has its own habitat, strengths, and weaknesses. During the demo, the developer showed a side quest involving a formerly peaceful woodland spirit that is now terrorizing the village that used to worship it. Geralt agrees to slay the beast (for a price), but first he has to find it. A simple press of a button activates Geralt’s new Witcher Sense (think Detective Vision in Batman: Arkham Asylum), and it’s not long before he spots the creature’s trail. He discovers that it’s a Leshen — a tall, antlered being that can control the forest and disappear in a cloud of ravens.

Geralt has deep knowledge of his world’s more deadlier creatures, and all of that information is in the game’s Monster Journal. This Wikipedia-like bestiary is incredibly detailed; by reading it, the player learns that the Leshen is very territorial and uses totems to steal power from the forest. It also likes to bind itself to a nearby human and use that person’s vital energy to resurrect itself if it’s slain. Once again, Geralt’s heightened senses allow him to find the marked person, an innocent woman named Hilde. Once she’s dealt with (presumably killed), Geralt is free to hunt down and destroy the totems and finally the spirit itself.

The battle with the Leshen is a spooky, tense affair. Wolves spring out of the shadows at Geralt, and massive tree roots rise up to strike and hinder him. The Leshen itself is a cagey opponent that randomly teleports about the forest, but eventually Geralt is successful and returns to the village to collect his reward.

There he learns that not all of the world’s monsters have antlers or walk on four legs. While he was off dealing with the Leshen, the man who hired him decided to stage a coup, slaying the village elders in cold blood. Geralt calls the man a murderer but ultimately collects his fee and moves on. What else can he do? The world of The Witcher is dark and morally ambiguous, and sometimes picking the lesser of two evils is the best choice available.

Martin Bashir to Michael Steele: 'What Does the GOP Hope to Accomplish?'

By scarce

After playing a series of embarassing clips from Michele Bachmann, Phyllis Schlafly, Allen West, Sarah Palin, John Ratzenberger and others, the same bunch of assorted lunatics who show up at all these conservative conferences over and over again, this time at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference now on in DC, Martin Bashir asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele this rather pointed question...

MARTIN BASHIR: What does the GOP hope to accomplish by repeatedly appealing to the far right of the party while at the same time possibly alienating more mainstream republicans?

MICHAEL STEELE: [Deep breath and a sigh] Well, I think they need to....

...and Steele's voice trailed off as MSNBC's Karen Finney and Touré burst into howls of laughter.

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The good and the bad of the Farm Bill

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Chris Rock: George Zimmerman Can 'Eat a Dick'

Surveillance State Hypocrisy Champion Sean Hannity

By Brad Friedman on 6/12/2013, 8:22pm PT 

Several days ago, I posted a video showing the stark differences between the positions on massive surveillance programs by candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and President Barack Obama in 2013.

And now, since we're nothing if not "fair and balanced", here is a short video of Sean Hannity of Fox "News" repeatedly lauding massive NSA surveillance programs during the George W. Bush Administration...and then decrying the very same programs as "tyranny" and a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution now that Obama is doing it.

With all due respect to Hannity - and I have none - his over the top hypocrisy then versus now trumps even Obama's, hands down. Not to mention the small detail that the programs, as carried out under Bush were, at the time, illegal, while under Obama they have been made "legal". (Or so we are told. There is so much secrecy around them, of course, it is virtually impossible for the public to know either way.) Enjoy!...