The Commentariat -- June 9, 2013

Glenn Greenwald & Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications. The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks." ...

... James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence: "Over the last week we have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe. In a rush to publish, media outlets have not given the full context -- including the extent to which these programs are overseen by all three branches of government -- to these effective tools." ...

... Robert O'Harrow, et al., of the Washington Post: "The statement from Clapper is both an affirmation of PRISM and the government's strongest defense of it since its disclosure by The Post and the Guardian on Thursday. On Wednesday, the Guardian also disclosed secret orders enabling the National Security Agency to obtain data from Verizon about millions of phone calls made from the United States." ...

... Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed: "The main author of a string of stories revealing large-scale top secret spying on American citizens by the National Security Agency says that there are parts of the story that have been withheld for legal reasons and that the goal is not to execute an unedited document dump. 'We're not engaged in a mindless, indiscriminate document dump, and our source didn't want us to be,' said Glenn Greenwald ... in an email to BuzzFeed Saturday. 'We're engaged in the standard journalistic assessment of whether the public value to publication outweighs any harms.'" ...

... Timothy Gardner & Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "A U.S. intelligence agency requested a criminal probe on Saturday into the leak of highly classified information about secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency, a spokesman for the intelligence chief's office said. Confirmation that the NSA filed a 'crimes report' came a few hours after the nation's spy chief, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper launched an aggressive defense of a secret government data collection program." ...

... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Senior Obama administration officials, including the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and national intelligence, have held 13 classified hearings and briefings for members of Congress since 2009 to explain the broad authority they say they have to sweep up electronic records for national security purposes, a senior administration official said Saturday. The administration, by disclosing the briefings to lawmakers, sought to push back on claims by Democrats and Republicans in Congress that they were either not aware of programs to mine vast amounts of Internet data and business telephone records or were insufficiently briefed on the details. Lawmakers said that what they knew was vague and broad -- and that strict rules of classification prevented them from truly debating the programs or conducting proper oversight." ...

... I Guess He's Not Obambi Any More. Maureen Dowd: "Back in 2007, Obama said he would not want to run an administration that was 'Bush-Cheney lite.' He doesn't have to worry. With prisoners denied due process at Gitmo starving themselves, with the C.I.A. not always aware who it's killing with drones, with an overzealous approach to leaks, and with the government's secret domestic spy business swelling, there's nothing lite about it." ...

... Rob Taylor & Naomi Tajitsu of Reuters: "Unease over a clandestine U.S. data collection program has rippled across the Pacific to two of Washington's major allies, Australia and New Zealand, raising concerns about whether they have cooperated with secret electronic data mining. Both Canberra and Wellington share intelligence with the United States, as well as Britain and Canada. But both Pacific neighbors now face awkward questions about a U.S. digital surveillance program that Washington says is aimed primarily at foreigners."

Jackie Calmes & Steven Myers of the New York Times: "President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China said that they were building 'a new model' of more cooperative relations after 40 years of diplomatic ups and downs, as they wound down a second day of talks on Saturday that included discussion of a nuclear-armed North Korea, cyberespionage, climate change, free trade and human rights. Mr. Xi said he and Mr. Obama 'reached important consensus on these issues' when they spoke to reporters during a break late Friday, after meeting for more than the planned three hours and before a nearly two-hour working dinner." ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "Even as they pledged to build 'a new model' of relations, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China ended two days of informal meetings here on Saturday moving closer on pressuring a nuclear North Korea and addressing climate change, but remaining sharply divided over cyberespionage and other issues that have divided the countries for years." ...

... Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "The agreement between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday to wind down the production and consumption of a class of chemicals commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners could mark a key step toward eliminating some of the most potent greenhouse gases. The United States and roughly 100 other countries have already pledged to seek substitutes. For the first time, the United States and China will work together to persuade other countries, most notably holdouts such as Brazil and India, to join the effort to slash or eliminate the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs."

Sometimes members of Congress have good ideas. WCBS reports that Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) will introduce legislation to repeal dishonorable discharges that were ordered because servicemembers were gay. Changing dishonorable discharges to honorable would allow the gay former servicemembers to receive medical & other benefits.

Congressional Race

Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "Cory Booker, who has built national celebrity from his perch as mayor of this beleaguered city [Newark], brought another of the state's most famous political figures here on Saturday as he officially declared his campaign for United States Senate. At the announcement, former Senator Bill Bradley, who like Mr. Booker is a Democrat who entered politics as an Ivy League-educated former Rhodes scholar, introduced the mayor-turned-candidate as 'the right person for the right office at the right time,' one who sees politics as 'a noble enterprise, not a dirty business.'"

Remember those GOP "autopsy reports"? Now Republicans are beginning to act on the recommendations. First step: ratchet up their outreach to evangelicals! Pete Hamby of CNN reports. CW: the New GOP is just like the Old GOP, except worse.

News Ledes

AP: "A heavy equipment operator who is accused of being high on marijuana when a downtown building collapsed onto a thrift store, killing six people, is in custody after surrendering to face charges in the deaths, police said. Sean Benschop, who has a lengthy police record, surrendered Saturday and faces six counts of involuntary manslaughter, 13 counts of recklessly endangering another person and one count of risking a catastrophe. A warrant had been issued for his arrest and police had been searching for him. He is awaiting arraignment." The Philadelphia Inquirer story is here. CW: so the contractor who hired the guy & the building's owner who hired the contractor have no culpability?

Boston Globe: "Argeo Paul Cellucci, a Hudson, [Massachusetts,] native who rose from a small-town selectman to become governor of Massachusetts and ambassador to Canada, died at his home in Hudson [Saturday] afternoon after a five-year battle with Lou Gehrig's disease, according to two close family friends. He was 65. Mr. Cellucci, who served as governor from 1997 to 2001, died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a degenerative and incurable neurological condition."

Reuters: " Jury selection begins on Monday in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and then famously walked free for 44 days, triggering nationwide protests and calls for his arrest."

AP: "Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at a 'truce village' on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects."

The Commentariat -- June 8, 2013

The President's Weekly Address:

Christi Parsons of the Los Angeles Times: "The United States and China are economic competitors who face 'a whole range of challenges on which we have to cooperate,' President Obama said late Friday as he welcomed his Chinese counterpart to a two-day summit in this California desert town." ...

... Rory Carroll of the Guardian: "President Barack Obama has brushed aside the outcry over surveillance operations by the US government to tell China's President Xi Jinping he wants a world order where all countries play by the same rules on cybersecurity.

Glenn Greenwald & Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) 'can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging'". The directive is here. ...

... Max Fisher of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration, based on these documents, seems to see offensive cyber attacks as most appropriate when used to preempt a possible incoming attack. In this sense, their cyber doctrine bears a striking resemblance to Obama's case for the use of drone strikes, which he articulated in a recent speech." ...

... Nick Hopkins of the Guardian: "The UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world's biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The documents show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year. The US-run programme, called Prism, would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK." ...

... Josh Gerstein & Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama defended his administration's data-gathering programs Friday, calling them necessary for national security and well within the bounds of the law, and saying he believed his administration had 'struck the right balance' between privacy and security." ...

Oversight?

... (1) Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday disputed a claim President Obama made at a press conference only moments earlier, when the president said that every member of Congress had been briefed on the National Security Agency's (NSA) domestic phone surveillance program. Merkley said only select members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been briefed on the program, and that he was only aware of it because he obtained 'special permission' to review the pertinent documents after hearing about it second-hand." ...

... (2) Burgess Everett & Jake Sherman of Politico: "Several Republican lawmakers said they had not been briefed on the Obama administration's classified programs to monitor cellphone and Internet traffic. That's in direct contradiction to President Barack Obama's assertion. The president said on Friday that 'every member of Congress' has been briefed on the programs led by the National Security Administration." ...

... (3) Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "Despite President Obama's reassurance today that there is strict oversight of the government's data collecting activities, the federal court meant to provide a check against such espionage overreach hasn't denied a single request in almost four years -- and rarely rebuffs intelligence agencies' desires to conduct electronic or physical surveillance -- records reveal."

... Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "A secret U.S. intelligence program to collect emails that is at the heart of an uproar over government surveillance helped foil an Islamist militant plot to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009, U.S. government sources said on Friday. The sources said Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, was talking about a plot hatched by Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident, when he said on Thursday that such surveillance had helped thwart a significant terrorist plot in recent years." ...

... David Sanger & Charlie Savage of the New York Times on Zazi & on the broader question of whether or not catching a few Zazis merits indiscriminate mining of communications. ...

... Larry Page & David Drummond of Google: "... we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government -- or any other government -- direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a 'back door' to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.... We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law." ...

... Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook: "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday." ...

... Henry Blodgett of Business Insider: "Most of the major companies have now explicitly denied participating in such a program. Apple, Facebook, and Google have denied all knowledge of it.... These denials are explicit, vehement, and detailed, and they do not leave much room for parsing (except by diehard conspiracy theorists).... The assertion that the country's biggest Internet companies are voluntarily giving the government direct open access to their user data in real-time looks increasingly like bunk. The Washington Post has now changed and hedged its original story. The 'direct access' claim is now just attributed to a government document that, at least on this score, is likely inaccurate." ...

... Actually, No. Claire Miller of the New York Times: "... Internet companies, increasingly at the center of people's personal lives, interact with the spy agencies that look to their vast trove of information -- e-mails, videos, online chats, photos and search queries -- for intelligence.... The ... government and tech companies work together.... Instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations [between the government & the tech companies] said.... Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies' responses." Twitter refused to negotiate the government. ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who helped draft the PATRIOT Act, is exploring options to narrow a provision of the law that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to obtain telephonic metadata on nearly all Americans. The comments are the first indication that Congress may act to restrict the government's ongoing data collection since the Guardian published a secret court order compelling Verizon to turn over its records on a 'on an ongoing daily basis' and the Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T and Sprint are also sending their records to the government.... Sensenbrenner indicated that he will draft legislation to 'change that part of the business records part of the Patriot Act before it expires in 2015' ... and will question FBI Director Robert Muller about the program when he appears before Congress next week. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also plans to offer a bill designed to close the 'business records' provision." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link. ...

... Stephen Braun of the AP: "For years, top officials of the Bush and Obama administrations dismissed fears about secret government data-mining by reassuring Congress that there were no secret nets trawling for Americans' phone and Internet records. 'We do not vacuum up the contents of communications under the president's program and then use some sort of magic after the intercept to determine which of those we want to listen to, deal with or report on,' then-CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in July 2006. But on Friday, President Barack Obama himself acknowledged the existence of such programs...." CW: perjury in the name of national security? ...

... CW: I agree with contributor P. D. Pepe: Alec MacGillis of The New Republic provides a refreshing perspective on all the hoo-hah, not that some of it isn't merited. ...

... He's a Constitutional Scholar! Gail Collins: "Do you remember how enthusiastic people were about having a president who once taught constitutional law? I guess we've learned a lesson."

... Charles Pierce: "Listen very closely, Mr. President, because I voted for you twice and, given the alternatives, I would do so again. OK? Here it is. I...don't...believe...you." ... Thanks to James S. for the link. ...

... Pierce again: "We are a less free people. We are a people who have decided, en masse, and through our choice of leaders, to be a less free people. We should at least own that, and not talk about "trading" things that were not ours to give away." ...

... John Cassidy of the New Yorker: Rand Paul = boy hero; Barack Obama = George W. Bush.

... Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg News: "President Barack Obama should end the broad surveillance of telephone calls and Internet usage, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said today ... in an interview on 'Political Capital with Al Hunt,' airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television.... Manchin, 65, also indicated that Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been criticized for targeting news organizations, among other issues, should consider resigning." ...

... David Firestone of the New York Times: "What the public never learns is how many of those patterns [the NSA searches] lead to wiretaps of innocent citizens. The Guardian reported that the Internet-search program, known as PRISM, results in 2,000 further reviews of messages every month, which means that government investigators read the actual contents of tens of thousands of messages. That number undoubtedly includes many false hits on people who were not communicating about terrorist plots. But even in the unlikely case that the government never eavesdrops on the wrong people, the cost to civil liberties is still too high. The tiny chance of a useful match cannot justify collecting everyone's phone records, or running searches on millions of e-mail messages and Internet chats." ...

... Philip Ewing of Politico: "The National Security Agency pushed for the government to 'rethink' the Fourth Amendment when it argued in a classified memo that it needed new authorities and capabilities for the information age. The 2001 memo, later declassified and posted online by George Washington University's National Security Archive, makes a case to the incoming George W. Bush administration that the NSA needs new authorities and technology to adapt to the Internet era."

Katherine Skiba of the Chicago Tribune: "Federal prosecutors urged today that former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. be sent to prison for four years and his wife, Sandi Jackson, be incarcerated for 18 months. In making the recommendation, prosecutors suggested the prison terms could be structured so that the Jacksons, who have two children ages 9 and 13, are not behind bars at the same time. Prosecutors asked that Sandi Jackson be imprisoned first."

** Chumpbait. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "... a lot of editorialists at the [Bradley] Manning trial, who have decided that the 'real story"'in the Manning case is what this incident showed about our lax security procedures, our lack of good due diligence in vetting the folks we put in charge of our vital information.... If you can convince the American people that this case is about mental state of a single troubled kid from Crescent, Oklahoma, then the propaganda war has been won already.... This case is entirely about the 'classified' materials Manning had access to, and whether or not they contained widespread evidence of war crimes. This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.... The debate we should be having is over whether as a people we approve of the acts he uncovered that were being done in our names."

For those of you who think AG Eric Holder is "just right" in his representation of the Obama administration, David Ignatius of the Washington Post disagrees: "The problem with Holder is the plain fact that, in the judgment of a wide range of legal colleagues, he has been a mediocre attorney general. Holder's mistakes in management and judgment are clear in the current controversy about leak investigations. He was silent as zealous prosecutors overrode the Justice Department's guidelines for subpoenaing reporters; he recused himself from the case but bizarrely doesn’t seem to have kept a written record of the recusal; and he failed utterly to anticipate the political flap that erupted when Justice informed the Associated Press that it had collected the call records for more than 20 phone lines." (Links original.) CW: Read the whole column. I'm with Ignatius. Holder has always blown with the wind, & (except as evidenced by his tepid & tardy pushbacks against 2012 voter suppression efforts, which could easily be seen as simply pragmatic) he doesn't seem to have any strongly-held principles. A cynic might think President Obama chose him because of his shortcomings, not in spite of them.

Air Force Damage Control. Hayes Brown of Think Progress: "The Air Force on Friday announced that it had named a woman to head its troubled Sexual Assault Prevention program, herself a much higher rank than the former director who was himself arrested on charges of sexual assault. Maj. Gen. Margaret H. Woodward was named the new director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office within the Air Force on Friday afternoon.... According to her official biography, Woodward has served in the Air Force since 1983...." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

Ellen Sturtz, in a Washington Post op-ed, explains why she heckled Michelle Obama. "... it's been almost 40 years since similar legislation to ENDA was first introduced in Congress. And being polite hasn't gotten us any closer to it becoming a reality." She writes that when Obama said, "Right now, today, we have an obligation to stand up for those kids," she (Sturtz) felt she had to speak up for LGBT kids. Also, she adds that the First Lady is always asking for money from LGBT groups, so the government should pay up by providing them more protection.

Ed Kilgore provides three reasons why Republicans and conservatives obsess over ObamaCare. "Given their premises about government and their very low opinion of their own country, the Obamacare Derangement Syndrome makes abundant sense for conservatives." CW: there's a 4th reason that Kilgore doesn't mention: they're afraid it will be as successful & popular as Social Security & Medicare. Here again, they're probably right.

No Strategy. Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post: Republican Senators are "all over the map" in their reactions to President Obama's three nominations for the D.C. Circuit Court.

News Ledes

Reuters: "The Ohio man accused of kidnapping three women and holding them captive in his Cleveland home for a decade will plead 'not guilty' to several hundred charges that also include rape and aggravated murder, his attorney said on Saturday. Former school bus driver Ariel Castro was indicted on Friday on 329 criminal counts in connection with the imprisonment of Gina DeJesus, 23, Michelle Knight, 32, and Amanda Berry, 27. The women were freed from Castro's house on May 6."

KTVK Phoenix: "A 4-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his father at a home in Prescott Valley Friday, according to a spokesman for the Prescott Valley Police Dept. Police have identified the victim as 35-year-old Justin Stanfield Thomas of Phoenix, a military veteran who served in the Army Special Forces. Detectives say he and his son were from Phoenix and they were visiting a friend at that home. The boy found a gun in the living room and accidentally shot his father."

AP: "Former South African President Nelson Mandela is in 'serious but stable' condition after being taken to a hospital to be treated for a lung infection, the government said Saturday, prompting an outpouring of concern from admirers of a man who helped to end white racist rule."

AP: "The FBI says a Texas< woman admitted sending ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but only after trying to pin it on her husband. Shannon Guess Richardson was charged Friday with mailing a threat to the president. The federal charge carries up to 10 years in prison.... No charges have been filed against her husband. His attorney says the couple is divorcing and the letters were a setup."

Reuters: "Police on Saturday were investigating what prompted a man dressed in black to embark on a string of shootings in the beach community of Santa Monica, killing four people before police gunned him down in a community college library. Five other people were wounded in the shooting rampage, which unfolded just a few miles from where President Barack Obama was speaking at a political fundraiser elsewhere in Santa Monica.... The bloodshed did not appear to be related to Obama's visit to Santa Monica and the Secret Service called it a 'local police matter.'" ...

     ... AP Update: "The gunman who went on a chaotic rampage killing four people before being fatally shot by police at a college campus planned the attack and was capable of firing 1,300 rounds of ammunition, the police chief said Saturday."

AP: "Soaking rains that spawned numerous flood warnings pushed some streams and creeks over their banks throughout the Northeast, yet the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season sped up the Eastern Seaboard without causing major damage. Andrea was centered over eastern Long Island in New York by 5 a.m. Saturday, with winds of 45 mph, and flood warnings were in effect for parts of New England. The storm was expected to reach Canadian waters by Sunday."

Reuters: "Syrian government troops backed by Hezbollah guerrillas seized the western village of Buwayda on Saturday, extinguishing final rebel resistance around the town of Qusair in a fresh success for President Bashar al-Assad. The swift fall of Buwayda came just three days after rebels were swept out of Qusair, denying them a previously important supply route into neighboring Lebanon and giving renewed momentum to Assad's forces battling a two-year civil war."

The Commentariat -- June 7, 2013

Josh Lederman & Donna Cassata of the AP: "Moving to tamp down a public uproar spurred by the disclosure of two secret surveillance programs, the nation's top intelligence official is declassifying key details about one of the programs while insisting the efforts to collect America's phone records and the U.S. internet use of foreign nationals overseas were legal, limited in scope and necessary to detect terrorist threats. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in an unusual late-night statement Thursday, denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America's security will suffer. He called the disclosure of a program that targets foreigners' Internet use 'reprehensible,' and said the leak of another program that lets the government collect Americans' phone records would change America's enemies behavior and make it harder to understand their intentions." ...

... Here's Clapper's full statement. ...

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "New disclosures about top-secret government programs to collect data on Americans' phone calls and Internet activity are likely to overshadow President Obama's two-day summit this weekend with the president of China. Mr. Obama is set to meet with President Xi Jinping on a 200-acre estate in Southern California on Friday and Saturday, a historic visit that was expected to be a venue for Mr. Obama to raise concerns about Chinese cyber attacks and spying. But now, that diplomatic conversation will take place in the midst of striking revelations about the United States's surveillance operations on its own citizens." ...

... Barton Gellman & Laura Poitras of the Washington Post: "The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind." ...

... Glenn Greenwald & Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian broke the story at about the same time. (Apparently, the two papers worked together on the story.) ...

... Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "The federal government has been secretly collecting information on foreigners overseas for nearly six years from the nation's largest Internet companies like Google, Facebook and, most recently, Apple, in search of national security threats, the director of national intelligence confirmed Thursday night." ...

... Siobhan Gorman, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities." ...

... Noam Cohen & Leslie Kaufman of the New York Times profile Glenn Greenwald. "The article [on Verizon], which included a link to the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers."

"President Obama's Dragnet." New York Times Editors: "To casually permit this surveillance [of Americans' phone records] -- with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power -- fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. The defense of this practice offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to be preventing this sort of overreaching, was absurd.... This stunning use of the [Patriot Act] shows, once again, why it needs to be sharply curtailed if not repealed." ...

     ... Margaret Hartmann & Joe Coscarelli of New York: "On Thursday afternoon (even before the world learned of 'PRISM'), the New York Times published a blistering editorial on the developing government surveillance scandal that declared, 'The administration has now lost all credibility.' The phrase was soon all over Twitter and appeared prominently on websites ranging from Politico to Drudge -- everywhere but the New York Times. As cataloged by NewsDiffs, by the evening, the phrase had been modified to read, 'The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.' (Emphasis added.)"

... Ellen Nakashima & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration and key U.S. lawmakers on Thursday defended a secret National Security Agency telephone surveillance program that one congressman ... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) ... said had helped avert a terrorist attack in recent years."

... Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic: "The NSA spying is bigger than Verizon." Way bigger. P.S. NSA workers think your phone sex is, well, fucking hilarious. ...

... Jane Mayer of the New Yorker: "... it's worse than many might think." ...

... William Saletan of Slate is sanguine: "The government's phone surveillance isn't Orwellian. It's limited and supervised." ...

... Adam Serwer of NBC News: Judge Roger Vinson was so worried that the federal government could force him to eat broccoli that he declared the Affordable Care Act an unconstitutional violation of the commerce clause, yet somehow Vinson is with shredding the Fourth Amendment. CW: I guess Vinson is not concerned that the Feds can find out who is mistress & bookie are.

... Not as Bad as John Yoo! Scott Lemieux in the American Prospect: "At the very least, the indiscriminate nature of the Verizon order indicates flaws with the FISA framework established by Congress in 2007 and recently extended until 2017." That the Obama administration acted "legally" and "that the Supreme Court probably won't hear a challenge to current FISA arrangement and would probably uphold it if it did doesn't make the Court right." ...

 ... Atrios: "It's totally not a big deal and that's why it needs to be completely secret and free from meaningful oversight." ...

... Marcy Wheeler: "Here's the question, though: if this program is no big deal, as the Administration and some members of Congress are already claiming in damage control, then why has the Administration been making thin non-denial denials about it for years? If it is so uncontroversial, why is it secret?... The secrecy has been entirely about preventing American citizens from knowing how their privacy had been violated.... [Its purpose is to] undercut separation of powers to ensure that the constitutionality of this program can never be challenged by American citizens." ...

... John Sides: "... the presence of a fairly sturdy bipartisan elite consensus on domestic surveillance -- whether it is motivated by partisanship (Republicans defended Bush, Democrats defend Obama) or by a sincere belief in the value of the policy -- makes it hard to imagine that revelations about the NSA-Verizon agreement will lead to dramatic changes in policy."

... Matt Apuzzo of the AP has a pretty good -- and simple -- Q&A on the NSA's sweep of Verizon (and most likely other company) phone records. ...

... Timothy Lee of the Washington Post also has a good post explaining what the NSA is probably doing. ...

... Ed Kilgore: "... for the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, a civil libertarian who has been fighting a long war against national security surveillance practices, it has to be a peak moment to be the public conduit for leaked documents establishing what he had long suspected."

"The Spite Club." Paul Krugman: "... the only way to understand [Republican-dominates states'] refusal to expand Medicaid is as an act of sheer spite. And the cost of that spite won't just come in the form of lost dollars; it will also come in the form of gratuitous hardship for some of our most vulnerable citizens.... The rejectionist states would lose more than $8 billion a year in federal aid, and would also find themselves on the hook for roughly $1 billion more to cover the losses hospitals incur when treating the uninsured."

Alan Fram & Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP: Faris Fink (his real name), "an Internal Revenue Service official whose division staged a lavish $4.1 million training conference and who starred as Mr. Spock in a 'Star Trek' parody shown at the 2010 California gathering, conceded to Congress on Thursday that taxpayer dollars were wasted in the episode.... [The IRS Inspector General's] report concluded that rather than saving money by negotiating lower room rates with ... three Anaheim hotels, the IRS paid a standard government rate of $135 per room but accepted perks in return. Asked why the IRS didn't negotiate for lower room rates, Fink said, 'I was not aware we had the ability to do that.'" CW: really? This guy is definitely not smart enough to audit my taxes. ...

... Another IRS training video surfaces, this one supposedly an attempt to parody Don Draper, the "Mad Man" character. (I think the actor sounds more like Rod Serling of "The Twilight Zone"):

William Gibson of the Orlando Sentinel: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he's working really, really hard to pass immigration reform legislation even though "Both sides accuse him of playing political games. Some speculate that his shifting stance -- going from cheerleader to occasional critic, and back again -- is part of a strategy to enact a signature piece of legislation without political damage while preparing to run for president in 2016."

"Big Pot." Tim Egan on nascent efforts of big-name capitalists to make big pots of gold selling legalized pot in Washington state & Colorado.

Congressional Race

Jenna Portnoy of the Star-Ledger: New Jersey "Gov. Chris Christie today named New Jersey attorney general Jeffrey Chiesa to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Chiesa said he won't seek election later this year." The article includes a brief biography of Chiesa. The New York Times story is here. ...

... Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "In appointing state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa to fill the seat vacated by deceased Sen. Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has come as close to appointing himself -- without actually doing so -- as possible. Chiesa is a longtime loyalist and friend of the governor -- with little public profile or known ideological agenda -- following Christie from private practice, to the U.S. attorney's office, to the governor's mansion, making one wonder if his Senate office will effectively function as an extension of the governor's office in Washington." ...

... Times of Trenton: "U.S. Rep. Rush Holt ended the speculation this morning that he might run for the U.S. Senate seat left open by the death of Frank Lautenberg by officially asking his supporters to help collect signatures for the race.... Holt, a Democrat, has represented New Jersey's 12th Congressional District since 1999." CW: Holt was briefly -- and surprisingly -- my Congressman. I like him. He's liberals, he's a physicist, and he's smarter than the computer Watson! (Really.)

Local News

Bob Warner, et al., of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Despite multiple complaints, shoddy demolition work at 22d and Market Streets went uninspected for more than three weeks before the deadly collapse of a building Wednesday, raising basic questions about the city's competence regulating demolition projects.... Mayor [Michael] Nutter and Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams acknowledged Thursday that the city had granted a demolition permit for that project without any inquiry into the contractor's qualifications for demolition work. The city does not require demolition contractors to establish their qualifications.... Although the city began fielding citizen complaints about the Center City project as early as May 7, city inspectors reported no problems at a May 14 visit and did not follow up.... Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said the city relied on OSHA to look into safety issues at active demolition sites." ...

... Mark Faziollah, et al., of the Inquirer: "The contractor hired to demolish the building at 2136-38 Market St. has a criminal record stemming from a phony car-wreck scheme with a Philadelphia police officer, according to court records. And his demolition work next to a Salvation Army thrift shop worried neighbors, workers, and others in the days before Wednesday's fatal collapse, because an adjoining wall was left unsupported.... Griffin Campbell ... has city permits to demolish six other properties, including three Market Street properties owned by STB Investments Corp., the owner of the collapsed building. The principal of STB is Richard Basciano, owner of many seedy properties and once dubbed 'the undisputed king of Times Square porn.'" ...

... Kathy Matheson, et al., of the AP: "The search for victims of a building collapse that killed six people wound down Thursday amid mounting questions about whether the demolition company that was tearing down the structure at the time caused the tragedy by cutting corners."

Vital International News

Secret of the Kremlin Revealed! Ellen Barry of the New York Times: Russian "President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Thursday that he plans to divorce his wife of 29 years, Lyudmila, who for years has barely appeared in public, prompting widespread chatter about the secretive leader's private life. The couple made the announcement to a television crew after attending a ballet performance at the Kremlin together -- an unusual event in itself, since in recent years Lyudmila Putin has appeared in public only rarely."

News Ledes

AP: "A pregnant Texas actress who told FBI agents her husband had sent ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been arrested for orchestrating the scheme herself, law enforcement officials said Friday. It was not immediately clear what charges would be filed against Shannon Guess Richardson of New Boston, Texas, a mother of five who has played bit roles in television shows. Two U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed her arrest to The Associated Press...."

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "A Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a 329-count indictment this afternoon against Ariel Castro, charging the 52-year-old Cleveland man with the kidnapping and rape of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. Castro was indicted for one act of aggravated murder -- for purposely and with prior calculation and design causing the unlawful termination of another's pregnancy,said County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty."

Reuters: "At least four people were wounded when gunfire erupted near Santa Monica College west of Los Angeles on Friday, about 3 miles from where President Barack Obama was attending a political fundraiser, and a suspect was arrested, authorities said. A spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol told Reuters the highway patrol had received a report of a man armed with multiple weapons, including a shotgun, firing at passing cars and a bus at two locations near the college campus." ...

     ... CBS News Update: "A gunman with an assault-style rifle killed at least six people in Santa Monica on Friday before police shot him to death in a gunfight in the Santa Monica College library, authorities said." ...

... AP: "Two people were found dead Friday in a burned home near Santa Monica College, where someone sprayed a street corner with gunfire, wounding at least four people, authorities said."

AP: "Richard Ramirez, the demonic serial killer known as the Night Stalker who left satanic signs at murder scenes and mutilated victims' bodies during a reign of terror in the 1980s, died early Friday in a hospital, a prison official said."

Reuters: "U.S. employers stepped up hiring in May, a sign the economy was growing modestly but not strong enough to convince the Federal Reserve to scale back the amount of cash it is pumping into the banking system. The United States added 175,000 jobs last month, just above the median forecast in a Reuters poll, Labor Department data showed on Friday."

AP: "After bringing rains, heavy winds and even tornadoes to parts of Florida, Tropical Storm Andrea moved quickly across south Georgia and was speeding through the Carolinas on Friday morning...."