Police state intimidation: British authorities detain Glenn Greenwald's partner at Heathrow Airport

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Honestly, the surveillance state apologists all across the spectrum, on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, can go fuck themselves.

Because this is how their beloved "democratic" governments operate, this is what they do when you dare challenge their undemocratic rule, their regime of secrecy and surveillance:

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

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"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.

"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."

It is indeed such a profound attack, and I hope that Greenwald and others, undeterred and indeed strengthened by this appalling incident, continue to expose the illegal and/or at the very least deeply troubling activities that in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere are corroding the core elements of a free society, undermining the democratic principles that are the essence of enlightened self-governance, and eating away in very real terms at the basic rights that we all supposedly hold so dear and for which, over the centuries, so much blood was spilled.

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Even Krazier Bill Kristol says Palin can "resurrect herself" with Senate run

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You have to wonder.

Krazy Bill Kristol has a long history of the Krazy. And it's not just partisan Republican or ideological neocon. Sometimes it's just batshit insanity, "analysis" that is so Krazy it makes you wonder if he's serious in his Kraziness or just throwing around bullshit to see what sticks. I used to think he was a fairly bright fellow, if terribly misguided, and so my sense used to suggest the latter. But now I'm not so sure.

To wit:

The Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol was one of Sarah Palin’s earliest supporters to be picked as the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, and now he says she can “resurrect herself” by running to be a senator from Alaska.

In an interview on Sunday, ABC's Benjamin Bell asked Kristol if Palin had disappointed him after he pushed so hard for her to be on the 2008 ticket.

"I was for taking the gamble of putting her on the ticket, I don't think it hurt the ticket in 2008," Kristol explained. "I think her stepping down as governor of Alaska was a big problem. People don't like to see a candidate, a governor, an executive — absent some medical reason or whatever — just leave office early. And she had been a good governor — incidentally — of Alaska until then. So, I think that is something, I think, she has to recover from in terms of being a serious leader in the party. Still has a lot of loyalty, still can shape the debate, she still has a great political touch."

"I think the way Palin would possibly resurrect herself — if that's the right word or rehabilitate herself, I think is a better way of putting it — run for Senate in Alaska in 2014," he continued. "I'm not urging that. I'm just saying, if I were her adviser, I would say, 'Take on the incumbent, you have to win a primary, then you have to beat an incumbent Democrat, it's not easy.'" 

Yeah, except that she embarrassed herself in ridiculous fashion during the '08 campaign and certainly did hurt McCain. And that she did step down as governor because she didn't give a shit or something, or because she wanted to pursue fame, fortune, and glory on the right-wing national media stage and, you know, by being a reality TV celebrity. And that she'll never be considered a serious leader of her party except by those on the moron fringe who hang on her every gargle of nonsense. And that many Republicans, including in the leadership ranks, see her as a massive liability. And that there's no way she can shape the debate given her lack of policy ability, not to mention rationality. And that she's shown zero interest in actually being a serious political actor. And that her "political touch," such as it is, is limited to Facebook and Fox News assaults on anyone and everyone she doesn't like, anyone and everyone who doesn't share her wacko right-wing views. And that... well, and that she's Sarah Palin, a huge national joke.

No, Krazy Kristol isn't advising her, isn't urging her, but he sort of is, isn't he? He was her champion well before most anyone had ever heard of her, and it was he and his neocon rabble who got her onto McCain's ticket. He was wrong then, as he is generally, and he's wrong now, the Krazy even Krazier than usual.

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Data implies its misuse

By Frank Moraes

Recently, I've been confronted with a lot of people telling me that they don't care about government surveillance programs because, "I don't have anything to hide." This seems like a strange response to me. First, you all may not have anything to hide, but I do. I am working on of a high tech project that we are concerned will become known before we go public. And it is especially the kind of computer hackers who the NSA employs that we don't want finding out about our work. Second, even if you don't think you have anything to hide, you are wrong. You don't want your social security number known. You don't want your medical records know. You don't want recordings of you on the toilet released on the internet. And finally, even if you personally have nothing to hide, there are lots of people who make your life better who do have things to hide. The most obvious example is the way that government agencies have gone after peace activists. Robust debate and dissent are critical to having a democracy.

Yesterday, Bart Gellman broke a big story over at the Washington Post, NSA Broke Privacy Rules Thousands of Times Per Year, Audit Finds. When I read that headline, I laughed out loud. Of course! And this is just what the NSA finds using their own screwed up idea of privacy.

Consider that in the first quarter of 2012, the NSA violated FISA 195 times. This is big news because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provides us with very few protections. To give you some idea of this, the FISA court is more or less a rubber stamp for law enforcement: anything they want, they get. You doubt me? As I wrote in February:

Funny thing about the FISA courts. The government has made 38,093 requests from 1979 through 2011. In that time, the FISA courts have denied—Wait for it!—just 11 requests. In fact, before 2003, they never denied a request.

Almost the first thing that Edward Snowden said publicly was that from his terminal at work, he could spy on anyone. Many people in the media and politics claimed that this was untrue, but it, like everything else he's said, has turned out to be true. This most recent revelation ought to concern all those people who think that the government would never misuse the data they collect. Information is power. And currently, the NSA is collecting all the information they can just because they can. Such information does not sit idle for long. And there is an entropy problem: it tends to get mixed and ends up in places you would never predict.

Think about Edward Snowden. The people who claim that he is a villain and that we have nothing to worry about regarding the NSA are being inconsistent. It is not remotely possible that he was the only person who had access to that data that has or will use it in a way that we don't approve of. And Obama's idea of limiting the number of people who have access to the data will not fix the problem.

But this kind of misbehavior by people at the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the dozens of other "law enforcement" organizations isn't even at issue in this most recent revelation. This one is just about the fact that the NSA having data about us means that they will misuse it. There is no need to even discuss the many nefarious aspects of the agency. The existence of the data implies its misuse. If we are going to address this problem, we must do it on the front side—on the collection side. After the data are collected, the battle is lost.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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A.M. Headlines

(Washington Post): "NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds"

(CNN): "Christie raps potential 2016 rivals at Republican confab"

(Politico): "Eve of destruction"

(Wall Street Journal): "An Ohio prescription for GOP: Lower taxes, more aid for poor"

(National Journal): "Michigan GOP poised to botch Senate pickup opportunity"

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Karl Rove and the politics of impotence

By Frank Moraes

I think I may understand why Karl Rove sounds like the voice of reason in the Republican Party these days. Unlike most of the Republicans in Congress, he's practical. To him, it is very simple: blocking everything that Obama proposes does not lead to Republican policy. Nor is it the case that just standing around blocking all policy will lead to a Republican White House and Congress. 

In fact, on Monday, the Washington Examiner published, House at Risk in 2014 Unless GOP Offers Agenda.  According to the article, Republicans are quietly worried that they really could lose control of the House, even if the public statements assure us that it would be, "Pert near impossible." And that is the kind of thing that Karl Rove is worried about.

Rove was debating the issue with Mike Lee on the Sean Hannity Radio Showon Monday. Rove said, "This assumes that the Democrats are going to be scared of a shutdown. They're aren't; they want it! They know what happened to us in 1995." Lee responded that Rove was being a coward, "You mean to suggest that we're not going to fight and we shouldn't fight simply because we're so afraid of being blamed for it? This is how we get into this mess when we say we're afraid that the other side's not going to cave so we have to. So we cave and we cave and we cave." Note the framing: normal legislation within the limits of your power is caving. "Ignorance is strength" much?

It only gets worse. Jonathan Chait wrote an article this morning that suggests that we won't see a government shutdown because the Republican establishment "is pushing back aggressively and effectively." But that even if this is the case, it will only be a temporary reprieve. He flags an amazingNational Review article by Robert Costa, Shutting Down a Shutdown. In it, he wrote, "Sources tell me the House GOP will probably avoid using a shutdown as leverage and instead use the debt limit and sequester fights as areas for potential legislative trades." So instead of something bad (government shutdown), the Republicans will do something really bad (government default). Brilliant!

The problem here is the politics of impotence. At least half of the Congressional Republicans feel they must do something but they must notcompromise their ideology. This makes them impotent because they simply don't have the power to do what they want. Normally, a party would do what it must do to get the power it needed. That is certainly what people like Karl Rove want to do. But among the true believers, there is (as I've written aboutmany times before) a revolutionary fervor. They think that if they just stand firm and believe, then the Democrats will just crumble. This is a very dangerous situation.

I don't think that Rove is right to say that the Democrats want a shutdown. I think most of us would rather just have a reasonable party that we could deal with. But he is most assuredly right that the Democrats don't fear a shutdown. It would be bad for the Republican Party. It could be just what the Democrats need to take back the House in 2014. But here's the interesting thing: even if that happened, I don't think that the Republican Party is ready to change. Even if they lost, the remaining members of the House Republican Caucus would claim that the problem was that they compromised too much. They would redouble their efforts at obstruction. And we would have to wait until 2018 to see any real changes. And that is what Karl Rove is worried about and it is why he is the most prominent voice of reason in that very troubled party.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Stillbirth

By Mustang Bobby

Josh Marshall makes the case that it’s pointless to go after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the question of whether or not he’s eligible to run for president: the law is pretty clear that he’s a natural-born U.S. citizen.

Yes, it’s nice to see Tea Partiers discomfited that their guy really was born outside the United States (he was born in Calgary). But that schadenfreude doesn’t change the fact that he’s natural born and thus eligible. As he told ABC News a month ago, “My mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. She’s a U.S. citizen, so I’m a U.S. citizen … “I can tell you where I was born and who my parents were.” And he’s right. That settles it.

By every historical and legal standard, “natural born” in the Constitution simply means that you were born an American citizen. The fact of your birth made you an American citizen.

It is well-established that being born on American soil makes you an American citizen. And being born to an American citizen, no matter where you were born, makes you an American citizen. At the time of his birth, Cruz was born to a mother who was an American citizen. That clinches it. The fact that his father was then not yet an American citizen is not relevant. Just as the location of Cruz’s own birth is not relevant. The Congressional Research Service actually did a study of this a couple years ago and after lengthy research and documentation, they basically came up with what I said above.

Over the last half dozen years, in addition to coming up with numerous conspiracy theories that allege specific factual inaccuracies about President Obama’s birth, the ‘birther’ community has developed all sorts of harebrained interpretations of what ‘natural born’ mean. They’re all wrong. It simply means, did you become an American citizen by the fact of your birth – whether that mean your parentage or geography?

Still thinking of pressing this point? Nope. Zip it. It’s done.

The only reason I’ve ever brought it up in the past was to tweak the noses of the birthers who have been using President Obama’s birth certificate as a thin veil for their racism. And if they keep insisting on bringing it up when Mr. Cruz runs — and he will — then it will be fun to hear them pretzelize themselves to explain how “that’s different!” Yeah, how?

The other reason Mr. Cruz’s circumstances of birth are pointless is because of the simple fact that it will not matter. He will never be elected President of the United States, so it’s a waste of time to think about it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

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A.M. Headlines

(Politico): "Hillary Clinton considering academic options"

(The Hill): "Republicans fear 2016 free-for-all will only boost Hillary Clinton"

(Bloomberg): "With so many job openings, why so little hiring?"

(New York Times): "Death toll in Egypt raids climbs to 525"

(The Hill): "Crunch time for Keystone XL"

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