Since the Administration has had a couple of problems with spying on the US press (the Associated Press and Fox News to be specific). It therefore seemed only fitting that the latest leak of information (ill-timed for the Administration) that the NSA is collecting data on many of the rest of us came from "The Guardian", an English paper. Good show old boys and welcome to the party! Tea anyone?
Congratulations on not only scooping your American counterparts on yet another potential PR nightmare for the current Administration, but for creating a new level of national paranoia that we can only be hoped will be covered under the Affordable Care Act. According to responses from the President and other Administration spokespeople, all of this has been done according to law and under the auspices of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court. (Evidently FISA is like VISA, 'everywhere you want to be'.)
* According to information being touted on the Sunday talks shows, over 99.9% of FISA warrant requests have been approved by its judges. Can you say 'rubber stamp'?
Now I'm a Verizon customer and a Google user, so I probably don't have anything left in the way of secrets where the government is concerned. No wait, I forget that I was told that they weren't listening in on my calls or reading my emails by the same government who lied about a reporter being a 'co-conspirator' and went to three judges before they could get a warrant issued and also lied when they told me that they weren't having the IRS target conservative groups. So naturally I believe them when they tell me that they aren't going to intrude on my privacy or keep any private data from my phone or Internet use at the same time that they're building a massive new data storage facility in Utah.
Jesse Jackson Jr may be getting four years in prison after pleading guilty to engaging in a scheme to misuse $750,000 of his campaign contributions on personal items. Not only is the government looking for that same $750,000 in the way of restitution, but they're also looking for $168,000 in re-imbursement from his wife Sandra; who was receiving a $5,000 per month consulting fee on top of her six-figure salary as a Chicago alderman. On the bright side, Jesse and his wife may not have to serve their prison sentences at the same time, which would keep their two children from being parent-less, even temporarily.
With the example of 3 of the last 4 Illinois governors serving or having served time (including Rod Blagojevich, in a case in which Rep Jackson was at least incidentally involved, though no charges were filed), Jesse Jr was apparently incapable of finding someone in this capital of malfeasance to create a workable paper trail to hide behind. (What is Chicago coming to these days?) His dramatic attempt to drop off the radar and hint at a breakdown was a fair enough strategy, but it came far too late in the game and was poorly played.
One can only imagine how
disappointed that his father is. After all, Jesse Jr was not only raised in one
of the greatest schools of political corruption anywhere in the world ... Chicago, but apparently either
didn't apply himself to his lessons or was simply incapable retaining successful strategies while being mentored by an expert on living with dubious expenses. Jesse Sr has lived, after all, rather well for longer than Jr has been alive, in spite of a holding politically commendable, but financially questionable jobs which earned him a lavish lifestyle that would be the envy of many CEO's.
Pakistan summoned US Ambassador Richard Hoagland to its Foreign Office today. Evidently the new Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wasn't happy over the fact that the US decided to pop off a couple of missiles launched off a drone into his country, killing seven people, without letting bothering to let his government know about it. But what the heck can concepts like national sovereignty mean when you're fighting a war on terror that actually hasn't existed for some time according the same Administration pulling the trigger?
Now normally I would be concerned over the contradiction of terms involved with such an act and terrified over the long term implications of any government's use of such technology. Fortunately, MY government has told me that while it's the same government which has come to heavily rely on the concept of remote control 'rub-outs'; it's now going to review the use of such technology. (Though perhaps the review has more to do with a NBC story revealing that of a review of CIA records concludes that our government couldn't confirm the identity of 25% of the people they killed in drone strikes.) I know that I, the 25% we can't identify, and the 'incidental casualties' will certainly be comforted by the idea that someone in our government is gong to get to the bottom of this.
Hey! Maybe they could get the same people in the Administration who are going recommend legislation to Congress to protect the press from the DOJ that has recently targeted them from the DOJ itself to help on this other project before somebody escalates the war on AP and Fox News into drone attacks.
While listening to stories about the use of armed drones to attack alleged terrorists (thing time in Yemen), I was struck again by how much of war has become a strategy of 'push button' tactics. In WWII it was people miles in the sky in airplanes doing the pushing, now it people often hundreds or thousands of miles away pushing the buttons on the airplanes.
While all of this button pushing is going on and targets are being taken out, there are regrettably those that are killed with the target simply as collateral damage. But they're not the only incidnental results of such strategy.
It's this that I attempt to look at in this week's TFP effort "Defining Collateral Damage", which looks not only at what occurs in foreign lands, but that which occurs in this country as the result of such strategies.
While we're at it you might want to make sure to do a little collateral damage yourself by catching up with everything going on in Toledo and NW Ohio (it is Mother's Day weekend, after all) by reading Toledo's largest Sunday circulation and Ohio's best weekly newspaper for the third year in a row, the Toledo Free Press.
Having all but exhausted myself with a rant earlier in the week, I was reticent to attempt to annoy everyone with another bit of nonsense this week. There were however, a couple of things continuing to annoy me like an itch that I couldn't scratch. There are therefore going to be two weekday efforts this week (and don't you feel fortunate that this is so).
As I mentioned earlier this week rather briefly (he offered sarcastically), the President was doing a bit of public prodding of the Justices of the Supreme Court for doing their job in reviewing the Constitutional nature of the 'Patients Affordable Healthcare Act' (which of course, he and his spin masters are now hinting never really happened). While I believe that I probably said enough about most aspects of that subject, I would like to add a couple of related comments to the previous effort, since as the week has developed the President has added even more to his list of those who he's apparently not happy with.
Oil companies were early on the list, as the President once more attempted to attack subsidies and tax breaks granted 'by law' to companies that seem to be rather profitable. It seemed strange that he wasn't demonizing car companies that had likewise returned to profitability, and that continue to owe the government considerable sums of money, but perhaps it's because high priced cars never kept an incumbent officeholder from being re-elected, but high priced gas most surely has. It was also curious that the President wasn't demanding that Congress remove the subsidies from Corporate farmers or institutions of higher education who are likewise dining at the government trough while maintaining their profitability.
I also found it interesting that while he was more than willing to chide SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) for fulfilling its Constitutionally mandated responsibilities, he seemed unwilling to castigate a Democratically controlled Senate for failing to do theirs. The Senate is after all supposed to be submitting an annual budget, but has failed to do so for over 1000 days. I suppose that he might be holding back in doing so, lest the Senate take up the question of the President's most recent recess appointments. Such backroom agreements between the President and Senate Majority Leader, both Democrats, call for (as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once said as a Senator to General Patraeus about the Iraq War) "a suspension of disbelief".
On a completely separate but equally important note, I find myself continuing to be dismayed at the diminution of freedom in this country that has apparently fallen off the radar screens of the media and citizens. We continue to expand the government's ability to do warrant-less wiretaps and searches, apparently have no problem with deploying federal troops to perform law enforcement functions in violation of the Posse Cumitatus Act of 1878 (as long as it's done on Federal Interstate Highways), see little problem with deploying unmanned drones to perform surveillance on its citizens, see less of a problem with killing US citizens overseas without due process (or even filing charges), and preventing citizens from speaking freely within zones of 'protection' provided by the Secret Service.
Perhaps never in this country's history has the Bill of Rights been so grossly infringed upon. Oh sure, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War, shut down newspapers and exiled Congressman who said things he didn't like. Sure FDR rounded up and imprisoned US citizens whose ethnic background he felt threatened by. But you could at least you could say that we were in a 'state of war' declared by Congress. And while many will try to make the case that the war on terrorism is just as much a danger as those previous conflicts, no such war has been legally declared by Congress (and certainly not one on US soil). Beginning with the Patriot Act, and with continued assault on the Bill of Rights in what may be the only current example of continuing bi-partisan support, this nation can be said to have entered no less than a de facto state of martial law. It seems, at least according to Democrats and Republicans in our current ruling class, that the only way to protect the freedom we hold dear is to surrender it a piece at a time.
If this were not despicable enough on its face, our current foreign policy is one demanding sanctions against those in other nations seeking to infringe upon the freedoms of their citizens in the very ways our own government is doing to us. That it goes largely unnoticed by the mainstream media is tragic. That it goes unmentioned and unchecked by leading members of both major political parties during an election year is criminal. That it goes largely uncared about by the citizens whose freedoms are being compromised is .... just more Silly Bits.
