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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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay Trailer

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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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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!...

Big Banks Caught Rigging Currency Markets Again: Please, Can We Regulate Them Now?

By Elisabeth Parker

Today’s Republicans seem to think rigging currency markets and robbing customers and tax payers blind is a perfectly acceptable way for banks to operate. Image from www.bellybillboard.com.

What do you do when you have more money than God? Cheat so you can make even more money! Bloomberg reports that foreign exchange traders at “some of the world’s biggest banks”  got caught rigging currency markets to generate higher profits. Even more disturbing, it turns out they’ve been doing it for an entire decade. Basically, WM/Reuters sets foreign exchange rates and currency values each morning based on trades and quotes from the previous day. But traders can — and apparently often do — place massive buy and sell orders late in the day to weight values in their favor. This practice — the global financier’s version of the proverbial butcher surreptitiously placing a thumb on the scale — is controversial, but not explicitly illegal:

Employees have been front-running client orders and rigging WM/Reuters rates by pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmarks are set, said the current and former traders, who requested anonymity because the practice is controversial. Dealers colluded with counterparts to boost chances of moving the rates, said two of the people, who worked in the industry for a total of more than 20 years. [...]

Furthermore, the foreign exchange market is considered to be “like the Wild West” even by the low standards of these anti-regulation, libertarian finance industry types:

The $4.7 trillion-a-day currency market, the biggest in the financial system, is one of the least regulated. The inherent conflict banks face between executing client orders and profiting from their own trades is exacerbated because most currency trading takes place away from exchanges.

Meanwhile, Peter Schroeder from The Hill reports that Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) issued a statement demanding that the Treasury Department revisit its recent decision to exempt foreign exchange from the stronger regulations mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:

“The Treasury Department should reconsider its ill-advised exemption of foreign exchange derivatives from the full protections of the Dodd-Frank Act. Our financial regulators should protect American businesses and families from price rigging abuses by fully regulating these derivatives trades and by finalizing the long overdue Merkley-Levin provisions on proprietary trading and conflicts of interest.”

Considering how recently Barclays and other international banks got in hot water for fixing the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), you’d think folks in Washington would listen to the senator from Michigan. But … oh wait, I forgot … The House is run by a bunch of crazy Republicans who think unscrupulous traders from big banks should be able to do whatever the heck they want.

Despite the fact that the too-big-to-fail whales big banks have repeatedly proven they cannot be trusted, the GOP STILL doesn’t want us to regulate them. They have repeatedly tried to sabotage the Dodd-Frank act, so bankers and traders can lie, cheat, and rob people blind with impunity while destroying our economy, America’s middle class, and our faith in our financial system.

AI’s Justin Rosario reported earlier this week that Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) vociferously objected when the Financial Stability Oversight Council identified “at least three” financial institutions as too-big-to-fail, and requiring higher levels of oversight and regulation to “keep them from dragging the entire financial sector under in a replay of the 2007-2008 collapse.” Apparently, Hensarling protested that taxpayers would be placed “greater risk of being forced to fund yet another Wall Street bailout,” and added, “Designating any company as ‘too big to fail’ is bad policy and even worse economics.”

For today’s Republicans, apparently, free markets are not supposed to be transparent, and companies should not be held accountable for their actions and lack of ethical behavior. Go figure.

If you’re curious about how the currency markets and foreign exchanges work, and have a half hour to kill, watch the British Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary, “Billion Dollar Day.” The 1986 film follows three traders in New York, London, and Hong Kong, as they wheel and deal and exchange over a billion dollars in various currencies over the course of 24 hours. These days, an average of $4.7 trillion is traded each day on the foreign exchanges. Here’s the video:



If you’re short on time, here’s the short version — an ancient, humorous commercial from a leading foreign exchange broker, Forex. Just substitute the Euro for the Great Britain Pound (GBP) and the Chinese Yuan for the Japanese Yen. Here’s the video:

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.

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/06/12/wall-street-caught-rigging-currency-markets-but-gop-still-wants-less-regulation-video/#ixzz2W5RbmOec

Why you should worry about the NSA

The just-revealed surveillance stretches the law to its breaking point and opens the door to future potential abuses

By Richard A. Clarke / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 4:15 AM

How troubled should Americans be by the NSA’s spying?

None of us want another terrorist attack in the United States. Equally, most of us have nothing to hide from the federal government, which already has so many ways of knowing about us. And we know that the just-revealed National Security Agency program does not actually listen to our calls; it uses the phone numbers, frequency, length and times of the calls for data-mining.

So, why is it that many Americans, including me, are so upset with the Obama administration gathering up telephone records?

My concerns are twofold. First, the law under which President George W. Bush and now President Obama have acted was not intended to give the government records of all telephone calls. If that had been the intent, the law would have said that. It didn’t. Rather, the law envisioned the administration coming to a special court on a case-by-case basis to explain why it needed to have specific records.
I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.

The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.

Secondly, we should worry about this program because government agencies, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a well-established track record of overreaching, exceeding their authority and abusing the law. The FBI has used provisions of the Patriot Act, intended to combat terrorism, for purposes that greatly exceed congressional intent.

Even if you trust Obama, should we have programs and interpretations of law that others could abuse now without his knowing it or later in another administration? Obama thought we needed to set up rules about drones because of what the next President might do. Why does he not see the threat from this telephone program?

The answer is that he inherited this vacuum cleaner approach to telephone records from Bush. When Obama was briefed on it, there was no forceful and persuasive advocate for changing it. His chief adviser on these things at the time was John Brennan, a life-long CIA officer. Obama must have been told that the government needed everyone’s phone logs in the NSA’s computers for several reasons.

The bureaucrats surely argued that it was easier to run the big data search and correlation program on one database. They said there was no law that could compel the telephone companies to store the records on their own servers.

If the telephone companies did so, government and company lawyers then certainly said, they would become legally “an agent” of the government and could be sued by customers for violating the terms of their service agreements.

Finally, Obama was certainly told, if the NSA and the FBI had to query telephone company servers, then the phone companies would know whom the government was watching, a violation of need-to-know secrecy traditions.

If there had been a vocal and well-informed civil liberties advocate at the table, Obama might have been told that all those objections were either specious or easily addressed. Law already requires Internet service providers to store emails for years so that the government can look at them. An amendment to existing law could have extended that provision to telephone logs and given the companies a “safe harbor” provision so they would not be open to suits. The telephone companies could have been paid to maintain the records.

If the government wanted a particular set of records, it could tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court why — and then be granted permission to access those records directly from specially maintained company servers. The telephone companies would not have to know what data were being accessed. There are no technical disadvantages to doing it that way, although it might be more expensive.

Would we, as a nation, be willing to pay a little more for a program designed this way, to avoid a situation in which the government keeps on its own computers a record of every time anyone picks up a telephone? That is a question that should have been openly asked and answered in Congress.

The vocal advocate of civil liberties was absent because neither Bush nor Obama had appointed one, despite the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and a law passed by Congress. Only five years into his administration is our supposedly civil liberties-loving President getting around to activating a long-dormant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. It will have a lot of work to do.
 
Clarke is a former counter-terrorism adviser to Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

All Those People Who Were Supposed to Get Insurance Probably Won't

One year later, the Supreme Court's health care decision on Medicaid expansion looks more like a Pyrrhic victory for the President.

By Margot Sanger-Katz Jun 11 2013, 2:40 PM ET


When the Supreme Court decided the big health-care case last June, its ruling was seen as a huge win for President Obama. His administration had fended off a challenge that would have dismantled the entire reform effort; it lost on only a small issue to which few people had paid much heed. But a year later, it's increasingly clear that the minor loss is punching a major hole in the law's primary ambition - expanding health insurance coverage to most of the 49 million Americans who lack it.

Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance for the poor and disabled, was a cornerstone of the law's strategy. An expansion of the program that would open eligibility to every American earning an income near or below the poverty line was designed to enroll some 17 million people - about half of the law's coverage gains. But the Court ruled that Washington couldn't force the states to expand their programs, and politicians in most states, disdainful of Medicaid's rules and opposed to all things "Obamacare," have simply said no.

That means some 25 states, and some 7 million people, will lose out on access to coverage, leaving low-income residents with no opportunity to obtain affordable insurance in the new regime. "It's bad," says Caroline Pearson of the consultancy Avalere Health. As recently as February, she had predicted as few as five state holdouts by year's end; her current forecast is much more pessimistic.


Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is putting on a brave face. "Given the climate around this law, given the number of states that were actually in litigation, and the election, the number of Republican governors who stepped up and said, 'We really want to do this,' I find to be very encouraging," she tells National Journal. Nevertheless, it's a long way from the administration's original plan.

Twenty-six states brought the case asserting their right not to expand Medicaid. Although they won that right, administration officials, health industry leaders, and journalists concluded after the Supreme Court decision that they'd eventually go along. The feds promise to pay 100 percent of expansion costs for three years, and then an amount that would never go below 90 percent; this was seen as too good a deal to turn down. Governors had grandstanded against the 2009 economic-stimulus money too, but nearly all had signed on. What state leader would want to turn down a huge infusion of federal cash?

Republican governors soon began querying HHS. Would the department let them use federal funding to expand Medicaid only partway? HHS held off answering them for months, and then, after the presidential election, told them the decision was all or nothing. The administration was sending a message: The law cannot be bargained over or repealed, so the choice is in or out.


As predicted, Republican governors started flipping. First Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada endorsed a full expansion. Then came the governors of New Mexico, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan. Even Rick Scott, the Florida governor elected on an anti-Obamacare platform, said expanding Medicaid was the right thing to do. Chris Christie followed suit in New Jersey, as did others. But endorsements haven't always led to expansions. The Florida Legislature did not share the governor's conversion, and Scott quickly backed down. At press time, both Ohio and Arizona's Legislatures continue to debate expansion.

Other governors who were considered obvious gets - such as Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett and Tennessee's Bill Haslam - declined expansion. Some of the poorest states with the most to gain have left piles of federal cash on the table. Medicaid was such a toxic issue in Mississippi that the Legislature adjourned without even reauthorizing the state's current program. While governors know they'll be judged on the health of the state economy, many legislators care more about ideological purity, and few Republican lawmakers are interested in the political risk associated with voting for anything branded with the president's name. Brian Haille, a former health aide to Haslam, says he doesn't expect any Medicaid enthusiasm in Tennessee until after the Republican primary filing deadline next year. "You've got lawmakers who are ducking and covering and do not want to vote on anything related to Obamacare before then," he said.

There may still be some stragglers. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear announced in May his state would move forward (he doesn't need legislative approval). Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa, an early skeptic about Medicaid, just reached an agreement with his Legislature to expand. But to do so, he needed to rebrand the program as something else. The plan, which still needs federal approval, will move some poor residents into private insurance markets and other into a state-run program that covers different benefits and pays doctors differently from the state's existing Medicaid program. "It isn't Medicaid expansion," insists Michael Bousselot, a policy adviser to Branstad, although he notes that it will use the federal funds. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert tells NJ he won't be making a Medicaid decision until at least September.

But given the logistical and administrative hurdles associated with expansion, even if politicians change their minds and convene special legislative sessions, few additional states will be able to expand by January. That means many low-income Americans will be left uninsured next year, despite the promise of health care reform. While middle-income people will have access to subsidized private insurance, the poorest adults in those states that don't expand will get nothing. The Supreme Court dealt Obamacare a major blow after all.

Townsend Farms Hepatitis A Outbreak Hits 87

By News Desk | June 10, 2013

At least 87 people in eight states are now known to have been sickened with hepatitis A in the outbreak connected to Townsend Farms frozen berries sold at Costco stores, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least 36 people have been hospitalized. Based on known information, roughly 66 percent of cases are female, with the age of those infected ranging from 2 to 84.

Townsend Farms recalled all potentially contaminated products on June 4, including a berry mix sold at Harris Teeter stores. No illnesses have been associated with the Harris Teeter mix.

The Costco product was sold in a 3 lb. bag labeled “Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend, with UPC code 0 78414 404448.

Early tests have identified the virus as genotype 1B, a type rarely found in North America but more common in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Those investigating the outbreak say the contamination came from the mix’s pomegranate seeds, which were grown in Turkey.

Symptoms of hepatitis A infection include fatigue, aching muscles, nausea, fever and abdominal pain.

Those who ate the berries but have not experienced symptoms may be able to prevent infection by receiving a hepatitis A vaccine within two weeks. Those who have received a vaccine in the past do not need another one and should not fall ill.

Join Britain in cringing at Alex Jones

By Rob Beschizza

Alex Jones, American radio host and conspiracy theorist, was invited to the BBC's Sunday Politics. It is not to be missed.

Michele Bachmann tries to rewrite history

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The Next American Revolution Has Already Begun: An Interview With Gar Alperovitz

By Gar Smith, The Berkeley Daily Planet

Gar Alperovitz, currently a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, has been writing books about wealth, democracy and national security for 48 years. In addition to serving in several government posts (including Special Assistant in the US State Department), Alperovitz is a founding principle of The Democracy Collaborative and a boardmember at the New Economics Institute.

What Then Must We Do? (his latest book and his twelfth since 1965) is a breezy, conversational read filled with somber forecasts, hopeful alternative economic strategies and lots of surprising facts and stats (Some examples: If the nation's personal wealth were divided evenly, a family of four would receive $200,000 a year. The hourly US minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is now $2 less than it was in 1968. The US is such a large country "You can tuck Germany into Montana!")

What Then Must We Do? (the title is borrowed from Tolstoy) explores a challenging premise: "The coming painful decades may be the prehistory of the next American revolution – and an evolutionary process that transforms the American system, making it both morally meaningful and ecologically sustainable."

Daniel Ellsberg calls this book possibly "the most important movement-building book of the new century" and Juliet Schor, author of True Wealth, hails it as "the most compelling account yet of how we can move beyond the piecemeal, project–by–project transformation of our political economy to truly systemic change."

Alperovitz recently took time from his busy schedule to discuss the arguments in his new book and explore the ramifications of social and economic change in an era of pending systemic collapse.
Gar S: You point out that 400 plutocrats in the US now own more wealth than 180 million other Americans. A scale of inequality that ranks as “medieval.” Shortly before his assassination, Dr. King noted America's problems could not be solved without “undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.”

Gar A: The concentration of wealth in this country is astonishing. 400 individuals—you could seat them all on a single airplane—own as much wealth as 60 percent of the rest of the country taken together. I was describing this distribution as “medieval” until a medieval historian set me straight: wealth was far more evenly distributed in the Middle Ages. When you ask where power lies in our system, you are asking who owns the productive assets. And that's the top 1 percent—in fact, the top 1 percent of the 1 percent. It is a feudalistic structure of extreme power. It is anathema to a democracy to have that kind of concentration of wealth. More and more people are beginning to realize the extent and reach of corporate power and the power of those who own the corporations. The Koch brothers get a lot of publicity, but it’s a much wider phenomenon.

You mentioned Martin Luther King, citing some of the quotes I included in the book. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and we will be doubtless be hearing a lot about that and Dr. King’s leadership on racial equality and civil rights. I worked with him on neighborhood ownership questions we were looking at in the Senate at the time; and then again, a few years later, when he came out against the Vietnam War. He was also questioning the distribution of wealth, citing the “triple evils” of racism, economic exploitation and militarism. At the end, right before he was assassinated, he even began to talk about changing the economic power structure, even occasionally, using the words “democratic socialism.” In this era of difficulty we would do well to remember Dr. King as a visionary who was beginning to step out beyond the cramped consensus to ask far deeper questions about the nature of America and the possibilities for a different future for this country. That is our challenge today.

Gar S: You argue that it was not politics but circumstance (the Great Depression, followed by WW II) that precipitated the New Deal's progressive change and the country’s post-war economic prosperity. I was surprised by your assessment that an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression is no longer likely. Could you explain?

Gar A: Despite the systemic problems a crisis collapse of the scope and scale of the Great Depression is not likely. Here are a few reasons. First, the size of ongoing government spending stabilizing the economy is much, much larger than it was at the time of the Great Depression. Government spending—the floor under the private economy, if you like—was at 11 percent in 1929, now it is roughly 30 to 35 percent of the economy (depending on the year, and whether we are in recession.) The economy may decline rapidly, but the floor is three times higher than it was during the 1930s. Second, today we have built-in economic “stabilizers”—spending that kicks in to help offset the decline when recessions begin to get underway: unemployment insurance, food stamps, and so on. Then there is the sea change in politics. The American public now holds political leaders responsible for making sure the economy works—or at least does not totally fail. There is a heavy political price for any politician who fails to deal with truly massive economic pain. Perhaps most importantly, when push comes to shove, major corporate leaders also support action to counteract truly major economic contractions. You saw it in 2008 and 2009 when business leaders demanded action—including the stimulus plan.

So massive and sustained economic collapse of the kind that opened the way for extremely unusual and far-reaching policy change in the Great Depression and New Deal era, though not impossible, is no longer likely. This is not to say great recessions, ongoing economic pain, and high unemployment may not occur for long periods of time. Indeed, that is what we face at present.

Gar S: The new word for economic performance is no longer “growth” but “stagnation.” One percent of the country controls so much wealth but—unlike the middle class and working poor—the rich don't spend a significant part of their wealth.

Gar A: This prospect of stagnation—or “punctuated stagnation,” as I write (there may be small intermittent upticks; plus oil and other commodity price explosions)—is very important to grasp. I believe (along with many observers) that we are entering an era of deepening stagnation and political stalemate. One problem is lack of demand in Keynesian terms, but I think it’s far deeper than that. We are returning to a pattern of stagnation that was common before the Depression collapse, on the one hand, and the extremely unusual conditions that prevailed during the postwar economic boom, on the other.

A short form of the argument would be this: in the first quarter of the twentieth century, up to World War I, there was decay, decline, and indeed major recession and almost depression. We don’t know what would have happened; World War I intervened, bailing out the economy. Same story with the Great Depression: World War II, not the New Deal, solved the economic problem in the second quarter of the century. In the third quarter of the century the post-war economic boom—brought about partly by savings built up during the war, partly by military spending in the Korean War, Vietnam War, and the big military budgets of the Cold War, and partly because US competitors (Germany, Japan, and many others) had been significantly destroyed—was an extremely unusual boom moment—the greatest sustained boom in our history. But thereafter the pattern of economic difficulty resumed in the final quarter of the century. Even though military budgets are high today in absolute terms, they are comparatively small as a share of GDP. And I think nuclear weapons now preclude an industrial-scale global war like World War I or World War II. We can have small horrible wars, but they don’t function economically in the way that larger wars did previously.

Now these difficulties could be resolved if you had sufficient political power to mount a traditional Keynesian solution. But what is significant—and this is the heart of the matter—is that such a solution is no longer available, politically, for a number of reasons. I could go into a lot of them, but the principal one is the decline of organized labor. Labor union membership, the muscle behind progressive politics, was at its peak of around 35 percent just after the war, but is now down to the 11 percent range (and the 6 percent range in the private sector). Liberal reform now lacks an institutional basis. So that’s a picture of decay, and there doesn’t seem to be an easy way out.

Gar S: You argue that “evolutionary reconstruction” does not flow from reform or revolution but rather “from building institutions, workplaces and cultures concerned with democratizing wealth.” How significant are cooperative enterprises in today's economy. Could you describe the current state of America's cooperative economy?

Gar A: Given that the economy is unlikely to truly collapse and provoke explosive change—for all the reasons I have indicated—and given that a “reform” solution like the New Deal is extremely difficult in the absence of a strong institutional power base for liberalism (e.g. labor unions), we face an extremely unusual political situation. I believe we are entering an extended period, a multi-decade period, in which the dominant reality is likely to be one of erratic growth, stagnation, periodic inflation, substantial political stalemate and decay.

In such a context, the prospects for near-term change are obviously not great—especially when such change is conceived in traditional terms. On the other hand, for precisely such reasons, there is likely to be an intensified process of much deeper probing, much more serious political analysis, and much more fundamental institutional exploration and development. In fact, this is already well underway. Beneath the surface level of politics-as-usual, continuing political stalemate and the exhaustion of existing approaches have begun to open up some very interesting strategic possibilities. These are best understood as neither “reforms” (policies to modify and control, but not transcend, current corporate-dominated institutions) nor “revolution” (the overthrowing of current institutions), but rather a longer-term process of “evolutionary reconstruction”—that is, institutional transformation that unfolds over time.

Like reform, evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public (rather than “the one percent”) increasingly comes to own more and more of the nation’s productive assets. As the old system decays, an evolutionary reconstruction would see the foundations of a new system gradually rising and replacing failing elements of the old.

Though the press doesn’t much cover this, such processes are already observable in many parts of the current American system. Some numbers: There are now ten thousand worker-owned companies of one kind or another in the country. And they are expanding over time, and they’re becoming more democratic rather than less. There are 130 million people who are members of one or another form of cooperative. A quarter of American electricity is produced by either municipal ownership or cooperatives. Twenty-five percent of American electricity is, in other words, “socialized.” There are neighborhood corporations, land trusts, and other municipal and state strategies. One can observe such a dynamic developing in the central neighborhoods of some of the nation’s larger cities, places that have consistently suffered high levels of unemployment and poverty. In such neighborhoods, democratizing development has gone forward, paradoxically, precisely because traditional policies have been politically impossible.

All this has been building in scale and sophistication to the point that growing numbers of people now talk about a “New Economy.” It doesn’t yet compare to the giants of Wall Street and the corporate economy, of course. But it is growing to the point where challenges are also becoming possible. Move Your Money campaigns have seen billions transferred out of Wall Street banks into credit unions and local and community banks. If you add up the credit unions they are the equivalent of one of the largest US banks, knocking Goldman Sachs out of the top five.

I see this era as something akin to the decades before the New Deal, the time when experimentation
and development in the state and local “laboratories of democracy” laid down the principles and programs that became the basis for much larger national policies when the right political moment occurred.

Gar S: You clearly show that regulating Wall Street doesn’t work and breaking up large banks is unlikely to last. The conservative Chicago School of Economics, you point out, had a solution: essentially any business “too big to regulate”” should be nationalized. “Take them over; turn them into public utilities.” Could large banks really be taken over and transformed?

Gar A: The old conservative economists were right: Regulation doesn’t work; they capture the regulators. Anti-trust doesn’t work; if you break them up, they re-group. Look at Standard Oil. Look at AT&T and the telephone companies. In fact, the major banks are even bigger now than they were in 2008 when they were deemed “too big to fail.” They imperil the entire economy. So ultimately the only answer, logically, is to take them over at some point. Milton Friedman’s revered teacher, H.C. Simons, the founder of the conservative Chicago School of economics, was one of the first to point out this logic. He argued that this was necessary because it was the only way to preserve a genuinely free economy.

Can it be done? We just did it in one form: In response to the financial crisis the federal government essentially nationalized General Motors and A.I.G. and was in a position to do the same with Chrysler and several major banks because of the huge injections of public capital that were required to save them from bankruptcy. At one point, Obama frankly told the bankers that he was the only one standing between them and the pitchforks. What happens when the next financial crisis occurs (as most observers on left, right and center think inevitable)? Or the one after that?

There are also already alternative models at hand. Most people don't realize this, but the federal government currently runs 140 different government banks. They aren’t always called banks, although sometimes they are, like the Export-Import Bank and the National Cooperative Bank. But sometimes they take the form of small business loans programs or agricultural programs. Then there is the Bank of North Dakota, a public bank that has been there for ninety years. It's a state-owned bank, very popular with small business but also labor. Twenty states have introduced legislation to create public banks of their own. States have huge tax flows, which could capitalize such banks. Once you start to look more carefully, beneath the surface of media attention, it may be that far more is possible much earlier and much faster than many now imagine.

Gar S: If you don’t like corporate capitalism or state socialism, what’s left? Shouldn’t a fundamental goal be to prevent accumulations of great wealth. Once great wealth or power is attained, there is a tendency to fear the majority and seek to protect one’s fortune at all costs.

Gar A: That is a fair question, and most people don’t face it squarely: “If you don’t like corporate capitalism, where the corporations dominate the political system, and you don’t like state socialism, where the state dominates the system by virtue of its ownership, what do you want?” I think the developments reported on in the book point towards something very American, something that might be called “a community sustaining system”—one in which national structures and regional structures and local structures are all oriented to producing healthy local community economies, and thereby healthy and ecologically sustainable democratic communities.

We are at a very remarkable moment in American history: Even as we face massive economic, social and environmental challenges, more and more people are beginning to see that politics as usual doesn’t work, that the problems are fundamental to the system itself. These issues are on the table for the first time in many decades. So there needs to be an answer at some point, in terms of system design, to the question of what a system looks like that isn’t corporate capitalism and isn’t state socialism but begins with community and how we build it.

The truly central question is who gets to own the nation’s wealth? Because it’s not only an economic question, it determines politics in large part. The corporate capitalist system lodges such power in the corporations and tiny elites. An alternative system must begin at the bottom and democratize ownership from the bottom up—all the way from small co-ops and neighborhood corporations on up through city and state institutions and even, when necessary, regionally and nationally.

I think we can see the outlines of such a model already emerging in developments in the New Economy. It might be called a “Pluralist Commonwealth.” Plural forms of common wealth ownership. Worker ownership, co-ops, municipal utilities, neighborhood land trusts, state ownership of certain national firms. Plural forms. It’s not very sexy language, but it attempts to get to the idea that you must change ownership of wealth in many different ways in order to achieve democratic results and achieve cultural changes that allow us a democratic solution to the systemic problem. The key thing is that just below the surface of media attention a great deal is going on—many, many new developments that move in the direction of democratic ownership, starting at the very grass roots level, and moving up.

All of this ultimately also puts “the system question” on the table. We need a serious and wide-ranging debate around a broader menu of institutional possibilities for America’s future than the stale choices commonly discussed on both left and right.

The Deeply Embarrassing Senator of the Week Award

And now it’s time to present the Viewpoint award for the deeply embarrassing senator of the week.

Never easy to narrow it down to just one, but this week the honors go to Georgia’s own, Saxby Chambliss. Who famously ran for senate in ‘02 against Democrat Max Cleland, a guy that lost 3 limbs in Vietnam — a war Saxby supported, but got student and medical deferments to avoid serving in.

Fortunately Saxby released a TV ad showing actual war hero Cleland side by side with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, thereby, electing Saxby in a landmark moment in American political toolery.

Lawrence O'Donnell on Rudy Giuliani's rewrite of history

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani cited his terrorism experience in criticizing security failures in the Benghazi attack. In his Rewrite segment, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out what Giuliani did–and did not do– before 9/11.

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Cenk Uygur's response to the NSA cell phone scandal: ‘Barack Obama is a liar.’

In light of the reports that the National Security Administration has been collecting information from American citizens’ cell phones, Cenk calls out President Obama for false campaign promises to fight terrorism while protecting our privacy and civil liberties.

“I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom,” Obama promised in 2008. “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens…that’s not who we are.”

“Well, that’s not who we’re supposed to be, but that’s exactly who Barack Obama is,” Cenk says.

“He lied. It’s not subtle. He said ‘there will be no spying on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.’ He lied. There is spying on all of us, and we are not suspected of a crime. Barack Obama is a liar.”