How the Purpose of the Data Sharing Portal Changed Over the OmniCISA Debate
Last year, House Homeland Security Chair Michael McCaul offered up his rear-end to be handed back to him in negotiations leading to the passage of OmniCISA on last year's omnibus. McCaul was probably the only person who could have objected…
Monday Morning: Java Junky Jonesing
This morning will not launch without coffee. I don't care how you deliver it, just bring it or nothing will start and finish today without it.
Need more of it than usual given the wacky stuff I've been reading into the wee hours over the…
NFL Pro Bowl Trash Talk
Hahahahaha, psyche!
No, there is no substantive Pro Bowl Trash Talk. Because the Pro Bowl is a complete worthless joke.
This is a let loose on idiocy in general post. Which is more than what the NFL Pro Bowl is at this point.
Have fun…
The Leak Hypocrisy of the Hillary Shadow Cabinet
In what has become a serial event, the State Department and Intelligence Community people handling Jason Leopold's FOIA of Hillary Clinton emails have declared yet more emails to be Top Secret.
The furor over Hillary Clinton's use of a private…
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Yahoo Warrant
The government has started unsealing a bunch of previously sealed documents from the Boston Marathon investigation. In this post I wanted to comment on a motion to suppress the evidence from a Yahoo, Google, and computer search.
There are…
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Previous posts in this series:
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 1: Introduction.
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 2: Antisemitism
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on the Tea Party
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part…
The Virgin Birth of Obama's Wonk Core
There's a telling paragraph in this post from Ezra Klein, one of a series of posts written lately by self-described "wonks" defending the electoral and political approach Hillary Clinton embraces.
It's a vision that is intuitively plausible…
Afghanistan Quagmire Update: Now With Even More Failure
Just before the election this fall, the US war in Afghanistan will pass its fifteenth birthday, making it old enough to obtain a driving learner's permit in most states. Despite the fact that the Taliban government fell after only eight days…
Friday Morning: Know When to Fight
Sun Tzu said,
"There are five occasions when victory can be foretold: When the general knows the time to fight and when not to fight..."
Fridays are lousy times for fights, eh? Unless it's just for fun.
Speaking of fun...
Oil crash wreaking…
Jim Sensenbrenner Flip-Flops Wildly on Value of Classified Hearings
Jenna McLaughlin has a report on what I noted here -- House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte has scheduled a classified hearing to talk about Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act on February 2. In it, she includes this unbelievable…
What We Don't Know about What Rummy Didn't Know
Earlier this week, Politico did a story on a report done for Donald Rumsfeld in summer 2002 about what the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Intelligence team knew about Saddam's WMD program.
There are two specifics of significant note the Politico…
Silencing Whistleblowers, 12 Years Later
As reported by Zoe Tillman, Thomas Tamm, the first whistleblower to go to Eric Lichtblau with reports of Stellar Wind, is being investigated for ethical violations by the DC Bar. The complaint alleges he failed to report that people within DOJ…
Thursday Morning: War All The Time
War All The Time -- seems appropriate now, and it's been more than a dozen years since this song was released. Also rather pathetic that MTV censored a reference to suicide in this tune, like a drop of merthiolate on a gaping wound.
Say it…
After Lying in a Closed Surveillance Briefing in 2011, Intelligence Community Plans Another Closed Briefing
On May 18, 2011, 48 members of the House (mostly Republicans, but also including MI's Hansen Clarke) attended a closed briefing given by FBI Director Robert Mueller and General Counsel Valerie Caproni on the USA PATRIOT Act authorities up for…
The FBI's Two Weeks of Peddling Kiddie Porn and Section 702
As you may have heard, from February 20 to March 4, 2015, the FBI was operating the world's largest kiddie porn site, during which point it hacked the site and thereby IDed the IP address of up to 1,500 users, both in the US and abroad.
Ars…
Wednesday Morning: Adulting is Hard
While looking for Wednesday, I discovered there's a video short series based on a grownup version of Wednesday Addams character. Cute, though from Wednesday's POV becoming an adult isn't all the fun one might expect.
So much for those carefree…
Wonks and Trump
Back in July, I wrote that if and when Republicans, having worked their way through the 5 stages of Trump grief, came to accept him as their party's standard bearer, I hoped that "they may well recognize that their ideological celebration of…
Harvey Hollins Is Supposed to Be Leading Flint Response but Snyder Sent Richard Baird Instead
In my posts on Flint, I've alluded to a guy named Rich Baird, whom Governor Rick Snyder calls his "Transformation Manager."
This morning, the Detroit News reported Snyder is sending Baird to oversee his Flint response.
The governor is dispatching…
Tuesday Morning: Chasing the Clouds Away
Hope by this afternoon all the major thoroughfares are clear and transportation nearly back to normal along the east coast. You'd think by now we'd have developed and installed self-maintaining highways that melt ice and snow, right?
For…
Bill Schuette's Bogus Excuse for His Belated Investigation into Flint
This morning, Michigan's Attorney General and aspiring gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette appointed a lawyer who has donated $10,200 to his own state-wide elections and chunks more to other Republicans (as well as a smaller donation to Jennifer…