A final set of numbers from our NBC/WSJ poll: 31% don't know who Edward Snowden is, and another 24% have neutral feelings about him
— @mmurraypolitics
Pew on question wording in government surveillance polls:
Combined in this way, respondents who heard the program described as collecting only “data such as the date, time phone numbers and e-mails… with court approval as part of anti-terrorism efforts” were the most supportive: 41% said they would favor this kind of program. By contrast, only 16% favored a program they heard described as collecting recordings of phone calls or the text of emails with no mention of either courts or the goal of fighting terrorism – fully 25-points lower than support when these other considerations are mentioned.
A problem with GOP's attempts to catch up to Ds on Big Data: Most young data jocks hate GOP's positions.
http://t.co/...
— @DLeonhardt
Byron York:
Tensions inside the Republican Party about a proposal to defund Obamacare reached a new level Friday when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., a lawmaker with unsurpassed credibility in the field of cutting federal spending and limiting the size of government, called the defunding plan “dishonest” and “hype.”
That's because it's dishonest and hype.
Sr WH official: @BarackObama won't nominate a new Federal Reserve chair until the fall. (So we get at least another month to speculate...)
— @JessicaYellin
More politics and policy below the fold.
How do we know Anthony Weiner won't be the next mayor of NY? Well, there's the polls and there's this:
The magazine cover of the year
Jonathan Bernstein:
The key to this is that it probably doesn’t matter very much for future Republican electoral prospects if they actually vote for comprehensive immigration reform. What matters is making the issue go away as quickly as possible. As long as immigration is a front-burner issue, it’s going to be important to many — maybe most — Latino voters, and that means they’re going to be judging the GOP on the Steve Kings of the party. And, as we’re reminded this week, there’s always going to be a Steve King.
Read that Bernstein piece, it's excellent.
Film critic Ann Hornaday on white privilege:
As a drama about the needless death of a young, unarmed black man, the shattering new movie “Fruitvale Station” has found particular resonance with audiences in the past few weeks. The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant, who was shot by a white Oakland, Calif., transit police officer in 2009. But the scene from the film that has most haunted me does not address racial profiling or any of the events directly related to the shooting.
It’s New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. On a crowded street, while waiting for his date to go to the bathroom, Oscar strikes up a conversation with a white man around his age, who, like Oscar, has committed a crime. Unlike Oscar, he has clearly rebounded. After they chat about the women in their lives, the stranger confesses that he was so broke when he married his wife that he had to steal her ring. He issues a warning about going down the same road, then cheerfully tells Oscar that he now owns a business and gives him his card.
That brief but eloquent scene deftly illustrates the subtleties of white privilege — a reality too seldom portrayed in film and too often ignored by its beneficiaries in life.
Fernando Gómez Mont and Jorge G. Castañeda:
Last year, voters in Colorado and Washington state approved initiatives legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. While the details are being worked out, those watching the developments are in not only the United States. Mexico, too, is taking note, having paid an enormous price waging a costly — and, to a certain degree, futile — years-long crusade against drugs in consonance with the international community’s punitive approach.
A growing number of Mexicans are asking logical questions: Why should their leaders follow a path that provokes violence, generates human rights violations, erodes the country’s image abroad and costs a fortune — mainly to stem the northern flow of drugs? Why spray and uproot marijuana fields in the hills of Oaxaca, search for tunnels in Tijuana and incarcerate “weed” traffickers in Monterrey if consumption is made legal in parts of the United States? Why deploy such an enormous effort to deter drug trafficking if Washington does virtually nothing to stop the flow of firearms to Mexico — and has concluded that it can, and should, prevent migrants from Mexico and Central America from entering the United States? If Congress can “secure” the border against people, using walls and drones, why can’t it do the same against drugs or guns and, in the process, respect Mexico’s right to design its own policies?
Charles Blow:
Our 50 states seem to be united in name only.
In fact, we seem to be increasingly becoming two countries under one flag: Liberal Land — coastal, urban and multicultural — separated by Conservative Country — Southern and Western, rural and racially homogeneous. (Other parts of the country are a bit of a mixed bag.)
This has led to incredible and disturbing concentrations of power.
Added:
David Brin in NY Times:
So, is there a bigger perspective to this latest phase? Look again at Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden or the Swiss bank employees who recently exposed their secretive masters to cleansing light.
More significant than any specific revelation is what these knights errant and countless others represent about our time. Spanning the range from brave whistle-blowers revealing the illegal and heinous, all the way to preening indignation junkies (often blending both extremes), they are just what you’d expect from a society whose pop media endlessly preach eccentric individualism and suspicion of authority.
Which brings us to Lesson No. 1: O ye mighty, whether you qualify as conspirators or protectors, you must limit the number of your henchmen.