Depends on Whose Ox is Being Gored: Al Franken Style

Senator Al Franken

It's pretty lonely to be the National Security Agency right now. The revelation of a massive data-collection program has left many progressive senators criticizing the agency, from Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., to Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. But one of the other most liberal senators in Congress is so far speaking out in NSA's support.

Al Franken, the Minnesota Dipshit Democrat who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, knew about the data-mining. Or at least that's what he told Minnesota's WCCO on Tuesday. "I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people," Franken said. The senator also believes the data collection has saved American lives:

"I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us, and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism.There are certain things that are appropriate for me to know that is not appropriate for the bad guys to know."

Last Thursday, Franken issued a press release that expressed concern about the privacy-security balance in the NSA program.

Franken hasn't always been so forgiving of similar practices. At a September 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of expiring components of the USA Patriot Act, Franken read the Fourth Amendment to the assistant attorney general for national security as a means of questioning the act's "roving wiretap" provision. Franken would also eventually vote against a 2012 reauthorization of the FISA amendments that give the government wide surveillance authority.

But in an early 2006 AlterNet interview before he was officially running for Senate, Franken disparaged the Bush administration's NSA warrantless-surveillance program, laughing off a similar rationale to the one he's used in part to justify the current program:

"They're trying to justify these warrantless wiretaps by saying, "Oh, it's al-Qaida!" One guy is saying it's just al-Qaida--the Hayden guy, and then on the other hand, you hear from the FBI that they were inundated with referrals on all kinds of stuff with these calls, so much so that they couldn't get to their real work, and that none of the referrals led anywhere.

I think it's a Roveian strategy: "We win on national security; we'll scare people, and then we'll just win."  

Just being reminded this nit-wit got elected and is on the Judiciary Committee makes my skin crawl.  And no, people of Minnesota, you are not excused. 

Biden: Gun Control ‘Fight Is Far From Over’

Since the first Round Went So well, Let's Go for Two, Joe.

WASHINGTON (AP) —Six months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, some of the victims’ families are heading to Capitol Hill to remind lawmakers they are painfully waiting for action, while some of the president’s allies are asking him to do more without any new prospects of legislation to toughen gun laws.

Gun control advocates also are anticipating further action from President Barack Obama, who said he would do everything he could to stem gun violence even without Congress.

The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with close ties to the White House, is asking Obama to issue a dozen more executive actions they say are within his power to reduce gun crimes. The group has been pushing those measures in meetings with the White House, where point man Vice President Joe Biden declared in an email to supporters Friday, “This fight is far from over.”

Obama issued 23 executive actions in the aftermath of Sandy Hook and hasn’t ruled out doing more. His aides say he isn’t planning to announce any new initiatives or hold a gun-related event this week but will likely acknowledge the anniversary.

Read More 

Obama Goes Full Biden in Press Q&A

The Curious Russian Afterlife of Actor Steven Seagal

Long, long ago – for about 15 minutes – Steven Seagal was a big deal in Hollywood. His movie “Under Siege” made a lot of money. But that was pretty much it. Next came a string of big-budget flops followed by a lengthy and ongoing twilight spent in straight-to-video purgatory. As for me, I don’t think I’ve ever made it all the way through a Seagal film. His stiff, tubby frame, extreme humorlessness and mystic posturing make it impossible for me to suspend disbelief. Here in the US he serves as a punch line, part of the flotsam and jetsam of trash culture.
 
Indeed, Seagal has sunk so low that a few years ago he starred in an awful reality show named “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” which followed the bloated actor around down here in Louisiana as he helped cops solve crimes. Seagal claimed to be some kind of reserve policeman. In one episode he drove a tank into the wall of a man’s home who was suspected of raising roosters for cockfighting. Soon afterward a member of Seagal’s SWAT team shot the fellow’s dog. A lawsuit ensued.

Hollywood Z-Lister  and Former
Bad Ass Steven  Seagal 

That wasn't Seagal’s only bout of legal trouble in recent years. Shortly before the tank incident, he was accused of tricking female personal assistants into becoming his “sex slaves”, while last year a former business partner with known mafia connections took Seagal to court for not paying his debts. All of this scandal and absurdity tends to overshadow Seagal’s claim to be the reincarnation of Chungdrag Dorje, a 17th-century “treasure revealer” of Tibetan Buddhism – much to his frustration, I am sure.

Given all his trouble at home, it’s not difficult to understand why Seagal has been spending so much time in Russia lately. Back in March he opened a martial arts center in Moscow with Vladimir Putin himself. Putin of course is a big judo fan, and Seagal used to be a martial arts instructor. Watching video of the ceremony, I was struck by Seagal’s fake goatee. It was on his face when he was with Putin, but subsequently vanished when he took to the mat for a demonstration of morbidly obese old-man judo. Mysterious; and yet Seagal’s disappearing beard drew no comment from journalists anywhere.

Last May, Seagal (with beard) popped up in Chechnya, hot on the heels of fellow washed-up action dude Jean-Claude Van Damme and Russian patriot Gerard Depardieu. The republic's leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who definitely looks like the kind of guy who enjoys Steven Seagal movies, declared the corpulent master of kung fu “almost a Chechen.”

And then last weekend things turned from surreal to tasteless as Seagal (without beard) showed up in Beslan, where over 380 people, including many children, died during the 2004 siege. According to a spokesman, Seagal declared that he would dedicate the rest of his life to “fighting terrorism,” though in what capacity remains unclear. On Tuesday, however, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin revealed that he wanted to offer Seagal a job as a global sales rep for Russian weapons. A curious post for a Buddhist, but maybe – given all these lawsuits – he needs the cash. Not since Vaclav Havel offered Frank Zappa the position of cultural attache' for the Czech Republic has a government made such a bizarre offer.

So maybe I should go easy on the star-struck Kadyrov as he proclaims his admiration for Steven Seagal. Maybe in Russia, people aren’t up on the scandals about dead puppies, alleged sex slaves, and the mafia stuff. On the other hand, when Seagal visited Beslan last weekend he did so in the company of a group of American congressmen. And I ask you, what was going on there? Didn’t one of them stop and think, isn’t this the guy who sells an energy drink named “Lightning Bolt” and who released an easy-listening album called “Songs from the Crystal Cave”? What the hell is he doing here?

A Good Monday Morning

The Air Ship of State

Earl of Taint

Middle Finger Symphony Theater:

*No Tuxedos Required*  

President Issues Statement to Verzion Users

WASHINGTON - Today, President Obama issued the following letter to all Verizon customers:

 Dear Verizon Customers,

Recently it came to light that the National Security Agency has been collecting, without my knowledge,  millions of phone records from you each and every day. Since that news was released, many of you have called the White House with questions and concerns about this new program. To save my time and yours, here are answers to three of the F.A.Q.s (Frequently Asked Questions) we’ve been hearing from you:

1. Will I be charged extra for this service?

I’m happy to say that the answer is no. While the harvesting and surveillance of your domestic phone calls were not a part of your original Verizon service contract, the National Security Agency is providing this service entirely free of charge.

2. If I add a phone to my account, will those calls also be monitored? 

 Once again, the answer is good news. If you want to add a child or any other family member to your Verizon account, their phone calls—whom they called, when, and the duration of the call—will all be monitored by the United States government, at no additional cost.

3. Can the National Security Agency help me understand my Verizon bill? 

 Unfortunately, no. The entire National Security apparatus  has tried, but failed, to understand Verizon’s bills. Please call Verizon customer service and follow the series of electronic prompts.

 I hope I’ve helped clear up some of the confusion about this exciting new program. But if you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to call the White House. Joe Biden is standing by to answer all your questions. 

 God bless America,

 President Barack Obama

Borowitz 

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Big Data

Mollie Hemingway

Some conservatives are cheering on the federal government's collection of data on all Americans' phone calls, internet activity, credit card transactions, etc.

Wall Street Journal: Thank You for Data-Mining

Andrew McCarthy/NRO: Phone Record Gathering Story Blown Out of Proportion

And I suppose there's no reason why conservatives who cheered on President Bush's expansion of the surveillance state should feel differently about it just because President Obama has further expanded it and given it some teeth. I'm much more weirded out by the liberals who screamed bloody murder at the Patriot Act who have suddenly gotten all comfortable with it under Obama.

But knowing that liberty-loving Americans are in short supply, I've decided to just join with the other side. Embrace Big Data and Big Brother and everything. Is there any reason we have to suspect that our federal government would ever do anything nefarious against its citizens? Anything at all?

In 2008, Ian Ayres wrote "Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart." It's about meta-data analysis. On page 34, he writes:

"Imagine a world where people looked to the IRS as a source for useful information. The IRS could tell a small business that it might be spending too much on advertising or tell an individual that the average taxpayer in her income bracket gave more to charity or made a larger IRA contribution. Heck, the IRS could probably produce fairly accurate estimates about the probability that small businesses (or even marriages) would fail. In fact, I'm told that VISA already does predict the probability of divorce based on credit card purchases (so that it can make better predictions of default risk). (A little later on, we will take on whether all this Super Crunching is really a good idea. Just because it's possible to make accurate predictions about intimate matters doesn't mean that we should.) But I might at least want the option of having the government make predictions about various aspects of my life. Instead of thinking of the IRS as solely a taker, we might also think of it as an information provider. We could even change its name to the "Information & Revenue Service."

Don't you feel better? 

Wouldn't that be awesome to get the IRS engaged in some meta-data analysis? Why this meta-data doesn't just fight terrorist bombings in Boston (OK, bad example) but it can also tell you to get a divorce! And once we drop those barriers between agencies, the sky's the limit about what Big Data Brother can do for you.

Who else is on board?

Gentlemen, It's Fishnet Friday

On the Decline of the Obama Presidency:

"The Obama administration is in an unexpected and sharp state of decline. Mr. Obama has little influence on Congress. His presidency has no theme. He pivots nervously from issue to issue. What there is of an Obama agenda consists, at the moment, of leftovers from his first term or proposals that he failed to emphasize in his re-election campaign and thus have practically no chance of passage.

"Congressional Republicans neither trust nor fear the president. And Democrats on Capitol Hill, to whom Mr. Obama has never been close, have grown leery of him. ...

"The Obama breakdown was not caused by the trio of scandals -- IRS, Justice Department, Benghazi -- now confronting the president. The decline preceded them. It's the result of what Mr. Obama did in his first term, during the campaign and in the two months following his re-election. But the scandals have worsened his plight and made recovery next to impossible." - Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard Executive Editor

Dancing Madly Backwards on the Constitution

NSA Collects Phone Records of EVERY Verizon Customer

Poor Richards News

"If thought government spying on your phone records was just for journalists that make the Obama administration mad, think again. If you have a phone, there’s a good chance the Federal government has already tapped your phone records. A newly revealed order from the NSA shows that the agency is collecting the phone records of every single Verizon customer."

from The Guardian:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government’s domestic spying powers.

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.

The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.

The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.

The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI’s request for its customers’ records, or the court order itself.

READ THE REST

"The 4th Amendment is essentially a worthless scrap of paper at this point unless Americans begin to stand up and demand an end to this kind of totalitarian statism.

If you’re a Verizon customer, I would highly suggest looking into a class action lawsuit."