The Commentariat -- June 22, 2013

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leak of agency documents has set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance, has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for disclosing classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post, the Justice Department said on Friday. Each of the three charges unsealed on Friday carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, for a total of 30 years. But Mr. Snowden is likely to be indicted, and additional counts may well be added.... The charges were filed on June 14 by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which handles many national security cases. American officials said they have asked the authorities in Hong Kong, where Mr. Snowden is believed to be in hiding, to detain him while an indictment and an extradition request are prepared." ...

... The Washington Post story, by Peter Finn & Sari Horwitz, is here. ...

Ewen MacAskill, et al., of the Guardian: "Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA)....The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.... The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases. The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m 'telephone events' each day...." ...

... Laura Donohue, director of Georgetown University's Center on National Security and the Law, argues in a Washington Post op-ed that NSA's surveillance programs may be lawful, but they're unconstitutional.

... Gerry Shih of Reuters: "Facebook Inc has inadvertently exposed 6 million users' phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers over the past year, the world's largest social networking company disclosed late Friday. Facebook blamed the data leaks, which began in 2012, on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information collected from its 1.1 billion users worldwide. As a result of the glitch, Facebook users who downloaded contact data for their list of friends obtained additional information that they were not supposed to have." ...

... Tim Wu of the New Yorker: "The remarkable consolidation of the communications and Web industries into a handful of firms has made spying much simpler and, therefore, more likely to happen.... The national-security state tends to love monopolies -- a cooperative monopoly augments and extends the power of the state, like a technological prosthesis.

James Risen & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times recount the famous hospital-room showdown over warrantless eavesdropping between James Comey & top Bush White House aides Andrew Card & Alberto Gonzales. Worth noting: "Despite the showdown, in which Mr. Comey refused the request of White House aides to reauthorize a program for eavesdropping without warrants, he was later willing to go along with most of the Bush administration's surveillance operations." ...

... President Obama announces Comey's nomination to head the FBI:

Sorry, Darrell. Brian Beutler of TPM: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, address[ing] the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Friday..., effectively acknowledged to disappointed conservatives that recently revealed IRS malfeasance probably wasn't the consequence of any direct action taken by the White House. 'There might be some folks out there waiting for a hand signed memo from President Obama to Lois Learner [sic.] to turn up,' he said.... 'Do not hold your breath.' These remarks were extemporaneous -- they did not appear in the prepared text of his speech.... '... the President and his political allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments,' he said. 'But that's quite different from saying they ordered it.'"

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. AP story here. ...

... ** Tom Kludt of TPM: "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Friday that the new border security amendment added to the immigration reform bill in the Senate is nothing more than a gift to defense contractors, but the Senate Judiciary Committee will still hold his nose and support the legislation. The measure offered by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) would both double the number of border security officers on the United States-Mexico border and double the length of the border fence. Leahy said the amendment 'reads like a Christmas wish list for Halliburton.'" Read all of Leahy's remarks. ...

... Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "The Senate will vote Monday on ending debate on a border security deal supporters hope will bring more GOP support to the immigration bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the vote Friday as he filed a cloture motion on a border security amendment to the bill." ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with Ryan Lizza & John Cassidy discuss immigration reform (Lizza's piece -- referred to in the discussion -- is firewalled; if you're a subscriber, you can read it here):

... Frank Rich on immigration reform & other stuff.

... Charles Blow: "This one statement ... [by] Neal Boortz, a retired radio talk show host who refers to himself on his Web site as 'Mighty Whitey' and who was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009 by, of all people, Rush Limbaugh ... outlines the whole of the problem with conservative opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. It harkens to ideas of nativism, racism, misogyny, elitism and inequality from which the country is moving forward, but for which some conservatives still yearn." ...

... CW: for all the Tea Party's claims to "patriotism" & love of founding principles, yadayadayada, what primarily drives their "philosophy" is a belief in white-man rule. (And, yes, this makes women & minorities who subscribe to this brand of conservatism particularly pathetic.) ...

...Julia Moskin of the New York Times: "Paula Deen, the self-proclaimed queen of Southern cooking and a sugary mainstay of the Food Network, was dropped by the network on Friday, after a bewildering day in which she failed to show up for an interview on the 'Today' show and then in two online videos begged her family and audience to forgive her for using racist language." CW: you can use the N-word, Honey, but you can't piss off Matt Lauer. ...

... New York magazine foretells the New York Post front page.

News Ledes

New York Times: "While jurors in [George] Zimmerman's second-degree-murder trial, in which opening statements are scheduled for Monday, may get to hear the [911] recording in court, they will not hear the opinions of two audio experts for the prosecution about who the screamer is, or is not. One concluded that the voice was not Mr. Zimmerman's; the other said it was very likely [Trayvon] Martin's.In an order released on Saturday, the judge in the case, Debra S. Nelson, excluded their testimony."

New York Times: "Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria's opposition fighters. Libya's own former fighters, who sympathize with Syria's rebels, have been eager collaborators."

Comments

[Whyte Owen]

Ralph Nader wrote an exceptional, even for him, piece on the NSA flap:

http://nader.org/2013/06/20/corporatizing-national-security-what-it-means/

Note also his last line, an insight almost invisible in health care politics.

[PD Pepe]

Senator Leahy's words reveal the utter frustration he and his comrades feel having to deal with this immigration business. Bob Corker on a multitude of shows yapped about the rising deficit and how we HAD to reign in spending. Such hypocrisy, yet he and his buddies seem to have no shame. Rubio, too, joining the fiscal concern critters was bullish on border security, but now he's got a new one: In order to become a citizen one has to speak English and have a rounded knowledge of American civics. Ha! Unlike a goodly number of Americans who can't tell you how many judges are on the Supreme Court much less name one plus have a hard time writing something that makes sense that has more than 13 characters. How many more roadblocks will they come up with I wonder.

Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. If that isn't a fallacy, I don't know what is. Thinking about Paula Deen today––thinking about THAT word that has such power, more than the word Rush used to describe that lovely law student when she went to Congress to advocate women's rights––slut, he called her. In our films, in our stand up comics, in our raps, in many Southern novels that word permeates. Deen, however, went farther a field in her racism, even though she swears she's not, but it's that WORD that is being discussed without ever mentioning what it is. I recall at the end of the film, "Bulworth," when Halle Berry looks up at Warren Beatty and says lovingly, "You, mister, are my nigger."

[MAG]

@whyte owen The Nader piece, in short...bingo!

[Barbarossa]

I've always wondered about this, myself: http://www.nationalmemo.com/gop-ignores-children-once-theyre-outside-the-womb/