Bob Cesca at The Daily Banter writes—NSA Bombshell Story Falling Apart Under Scrutiny; Key Facts Turning Out to Be Inaccurate:
It turns out, the NSA PRISM story isn’t quite the bombshell that everyone said it was. Yes, there continues to be a serious cause for concern when it comes to government spying and overreach with its counter-terrorism efforts. But the reporting from Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post has been shoddy and misleading.
We shouldn’t shrug off our weakened privacy as a merely a side effect of the digital age, either. We ought to fight to preserve as much of our personal information as possible. So if there’s any benefit to the NSA news, it’s to serve as a reminder that, yes, the government is serious about attaining information in its war on terrorism and that we should be aware of what’s going on — checking it when it gets out of control.
But with new contravening information emerging since the original stories were posted by Greenwald and the Washington Post, it’s clear that the reporting by each news outlet was filled with possibly agenda-driven speculation and key inaccuracies.
Rupert Cornwall at
The Independent writes—
The one million people working in US security:
Despite the outcry from civil libertarians, however, there is little doubt the Obama administration has been acting legally, within the powers accorded it not just under the Patriot Act, but by laws going back to 1978. The problem is that those powers are loosely defined, while the work of both the special court that authorises the eavesdropping and wiretapping, and the congressional committee that monitors it, are shrouded in secrecy. Mr Clapper has come at least part way clean.
Russ Douhat at
The New York Times writes—
Your Smartphone Is Watching You:
ON Thursday, just after reports broke that the National Security Agency had been helping itself to data from just about every major American Internet company, an enterprising Twitter user set up an account called “Nothing to Hide,” which reproduced tweets from people expressing blithe unconcern about their government’s potential access to their e-mails, phone records, video chats, you name it. [...]
Another tweeted: “...this sort of thing was bound to happen. We live in the information age. Besides, I have nothing to hide.” [...]
These citizens have a somewhat shaky grasp of how civil liberties are supposed to work. But they understand the essential nature of life on the Internet pretty well. The motto “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”—or, alternatively, “abandon all privacy, ye who enter here” — might as well be stamped on every smartphone and emblazoned on every social media log-in page.
More pundits can be found by reading below the fold.
Maureen Dowd at The New York Times writes—Peeping Barry:
Obama says agents are not actually listening to calls, but as the former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau told The New Yorker, the government can learn an immense amount by tracking “who you call, and who they call.”
When James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was asked during a Congressional hearing in March whether the N.S.A. was collecting any information on “millions or hundreds of millions of Americans,” Clapper replied “No, sir,” adding, “not wittingly.” That denial undermines our faith in the forthrightness of those scooping up every little bit of our lives to feed into government computers.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board writes that
Secret, widespread spying on citizens by the government should be alarming to all Americans:
There's a lot we don't know about the secret court order giving the federal government access on an "ongoing daily basis" to millions of telephone records, and that's a large part of the problem. But we know enough from a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper, which essentially has been confirmed by officials, to conclude both that current law gives the government too much leeway to monitor the communications of its citizens, and that the Obama administration is exploiting that authority as aggressively as the George W. Bush administration did. The result is a brave new world of pervasive surveillance that Americans should find alarming. [...]
When the Patriot Act was up for renewal, this page argued that its provisions for acquisition of "business records"—the section on which the judge in the Verizon case relied—were far too loose. We still believe that the government should be required to show more than that the material it seeks is "relevant to an authorized investigation."
Jameel Jaffer at
The New York Times writes—
Our Surveillance Laws Are Too Permissive:
The revelations about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance activities supply further evidence, if any were needed, that our surveillance laws are too permissive, our privacy safeguards too weak, and our oversight mechanisms utterly dysfunctional. [...]
On Friday, in an effort to quell a swelling tide of criticism, President Obama observed that these surveillance activities had been blessed by all three branches of government. That observation is alarming, not reassuring. Congress should have more narrowly limited the N.S.A.’s authority to monitor the communications of innocent people.
Ana Marie Cox at
The Guardian writes—
No amount of 'rebranding' will win back young voters to the Republican party:
In reading the report on the GOP and young voters from the College Republicans National Committee, one should keep in mind that they were clearly hamstrung in making recommendations for broadening the party's appeal beyond the "old white guy" bloc by the party's core certainty that there is nothing wrong with the policies they've put forward. Written between the lines of the report (and often in the lines themselves) is the belief that issue is marketing and message, not values or beliefs. (This is nothing new: Republicans who have faulted GOP policies, while media darlings, don't seem to have gained traction in the party itself.)
There's a section in report superficially about policy, but that's just it – it's superficial. The recommendations revolve around how to talk about policy, not engineer it. This isn't the fault of the report's authors, I think: around the edges, there are glimmers of self-awareness, hints that the CRNC would do things differently if they were given the chance.
Heidi Moore at
The Guardian writes—
May jobs report gains mask the US economy's weak, uneven recovery:
[T]he monthly numbers are misleading, and optimism is often swiftly punished. It's important to look at long-term measures of of the economy's health. Those have not been encouraging at all: the average US household has regained just 45% of the wealth it lost during the recession, according to the St Louis Federal Reserve.
"It's not a recovery," wrote Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, this week. "It's not even normal growth. It's bad."
That is an ugly reality check, but it's better than living in a delusion. It's that delusion that allows Congress and CEOs to continue to ignore the problem of joblessness.
Jacob Heilbrunn at the
Los Angeles Times writes—
At White House, liberal hawks ascend:
With his decision to elevate Susan Rice to become his national security advisor and the nomination of Samantha Power as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Obama is not simply rewarding the loyalty of two women who have backed him from the start. Nor is he merely increasing the diversity of his foreign policy team. Rather, their promotions hints at a new source of fireworks in a growing foreign policy battle in the Obama administration. Liberal hawks and doves in the White House and the Democratic Party are struggling for hearts and minds over whether it makes sense to intervene in Syria and to attack Iran.
James West at
Mother Jones writes—
Samantha Power's Climate Silence:
In the absence of other evidence of [U.N. Ambassador nominee Samantha Power's] approach to climate change—I approached the White House to comment directly on her climate record for this article—experts have suggested looking at her husband, Cass Sunstein, who has written a lot about climate change and America's need to act, and Secretary of State John Kerry, for whom climate change is a major priority, and who will no doubt help set a lot of Power's agenda through the State Department.
But these little hints are few and far between. In the end, Power's appointment seems to put other concerns above climate, says Busby. "They may have higher priority items, like what to do in Syria, that they are thinking about." And in the end, orders will come from the top, says Stavins: "Whether or not climate change is a priority for her, I assume, will depend on the White House."
James Mann at the
Washington Post writes—
Inside the mind of Samantha Power:
...Obama has seemed eager to limit America’s military footprint around the globe, to shift gradually to a more modest U.S. role in the world and to give greater scope and power to the operations of the United Nations. In his Nobel Peace Prize speech, Obama declared that “America’s commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone.” He added, “That’s why we must strengthen U.N. and regional peacekeeping.”
Power served as Obama’s closest aide in drafting that speech. And she wrote, in “Chasing the Flame,” that [Brazilian-born U.N. trouble-shooter Sergio] Vieira de Mello had “wondered, with all the ingenuity that fueled progress in the developed world, why so little of it was ever made available to assist what he called ‘convalescing states.’ ”
Stanley Crouch at the
New York Daily News writes—
Bachmann and her demagogue pals :
The Bachmanns of the world have great freedom to say what they wish, for they have no responsibility other than to gin up their followers. They burn trees without ever planting any.
For those who like this style of entertainment, have no fear: Bachmann leaves plenty of heirs in Congress. One is on the Senate side, Ted Cruz of Texas. He blusters and brags like the best — or worst — of them.
Though Cruz has been talked up as a possible GOP standard-bearer in 2016, he’ll have serious trouble. Because rather than offer any serious alternative policies, Cruz would rather play for the applause.