The FDA Demonstrates What "Targeting" Does
"They think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want." -- Chuck Grassley, on learning his staffer's emails had been surveilled by the FDA
It is utterly predictable that members of Congress only get concerned about heavy-handed surveillance…
Glenn Kessler Didn't USED to Treat SEC Filings as Boilerplate
As gobsmacked as I am that no one can seem to find the people running Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002, when Mitt Romney was officially listed as its CEO, Chairman, and President, I'm equally shocked by Glenn Kessler's claims that SEC documents…
Where Is this Killer Instinct in Governance?
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I confess I am thoroughly enjoying the Obama campaign's attack on Mitt Romey's Bain experience. Contrary to DC pundits' beliefs, the outsourcing story really really resonates in those parts of the country where…
"Killing Is a Part of War, and Torture Isn't"
I wasn't crazy about the way that Tom Junod framed his first piece on Obama's Lethal Presidency; but it's getting a lot of people to think about the issues, so while I didn't comment on it I was happy to have it.
But I am rather interested…
Lamar Smith's Futile Leak Investigation
Lamar Smtih has come up with a list of 7 national security personnel he wants to question in his own leak investigation. (h/t Kevin Gosztola)
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, told President Obama Thursday he’d like…
Is Ambassador Feierstein Drawing Up the Kill Lists in Yemen?
The question of why John Brennan seized control of drone targeting continues to gnaw on me. Which is why I find this attack piece on the US Ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, to be so interesting.
You'll recall that one effect of the…
We Can't Afford Another "Complicated and Quirky" Presidency
You've no doubt heard about the BoGlo piece that describes 9 different legal documents on which Mitt Romney was listed as CEO of Bain after the time--in 1999--when he now claims to have left the company.
Romney has said he left Bain in 1999…
The House Judiciary Committee Preens in Full Ignorance at Leaks Hearing
The headline that has come out of yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on leaks is that the Committee may subpoena people. As US News correctly reports, one push for subpoenas came from a John Conyers ploy trying to call Republican…
Obama Brings Bankster and Oil Curses to Burma
After I read Obama's Executive Order opening up trade with Burma, I joked,
Wait. We're exporting FINANCIAL SERVICES to Myanmar? This is considered a favor to them?
Seriously. Sending our financial services to another country is, these days,…
Did NYPD Manufacture a Murder Tie to Occupy Wall Street because Its Terror Myth Is Dying?
Let's start with this. NYPD got its ass handed to it yesterday.
Specifically, Justin Elliott provided the definitive debunking of Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly's repeated claims that their multimillion dollar Muslim profiling program has done…
DIA Failed to Protect Jose Padilla's Welfare
On June 11, SCOTUS denied cert in Jose Padilla's suit against Donald Rumsfeld, former DIA Director Lowell Jacoby, and others at DOD for his denial of habeas corpus and abusive detention. On June 28, DOD responded to a FOIA Jeff Kaye submitted…
Fat Al Gore Colludes with Banksters in the Midwest
There's an ominous storm brewing in flyover country that may amount to little more than higher food and fuel prices, or may amount to something else.
First there's the drought. Last week's heat wave and the last month's dry weather hit just…
Rehman: Drones in Pakistan "Radicalize Footsoldiers, Tribes and Entire Villages"
I had missed Christiane Amanpour's Monday evening interview with Pakistan's Ambassador Sherry Rehman, but an article in today's Express Tribune alerted me to it. Video from the interview is embedded above. Putting aside the ridiculous crap…
First They Came for WikiLeaks ... Then They Came for Pot Dispensaries ... Then Online Sharing
Remember when Visa and PayPal cut off services to WikiLeaks as a result of what was clearly Administration pressure? The Administration never explicitly revealed it had pressured the financial services companies to cut off WikiLeaks. It never…
NYPD's Counterterrorism Strengths: Bigfooting, Entrapping, and Overselling
Justin Elliott takes the debunking I did here one step further: a claim by claim debunking of the NYPD's claims to have thwarted 14 attacks against the city. He helpfully groups his debunkery into three groups:
Real attacks the NYPD had no…
Security Clearance Tyranny
Let's review three data points on security clearances. They'll show that our system of security clearances are increasingly becoming an arbitrary system of control that does more to foster cowed national security employees than to foster actual…
McClatchy Exposes NATO Lies on Afghan Force Capability
Back in April, I noted that it appeared that NATO was engaged in an effort to bolster the image of Afghan forces by overstating their role in repelling insurgent attacks, assigning capabilities to them that seemed suddenly much higher than…
The Banksters Know They're Banksters
The headline news from this survey is that almost a quarter of 500 bankster executives surveyed responded they need to engage in ethical or legal wrongdoing to succeed, and a sixth said they'd definitely engage in insider trading to make $10M…
The Sevenfold Increase in Emergencies at AT&T
In its response to Ed Markey's questions about law enforcement requests for cellphone data, AT&T attributed the growing number of requests it gets to its expanding customer base.
To keep these numbers in perspective, AT&T serves over…
Our "Cooperation" with Yemen
Since we killed Anwar al-Awlaki and especially since Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi has taken over as President of Yemen, anonymous counterterrorism officials have repeatedly boasted how good our counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen is.
But this…