Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee are calling on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up an NSA reform bill this month now that a court has ruled the program is illegal.
"The dragnet collection of Americans' phone records is unnecessary and ineffective, and now a federal appellate court has found that the program is illegal," Leahy and Lee said in a statement. "Congress should not reauthorize a bulk collection program that the court has found to violate the law. We will not consent to any extension of this program."
Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee while Lee, a Republican from Utah, heads the GOP's Steering Committee.
The two are co-authors of the USA Freedom Act, which adds significant restrictions to the government's controversial telephone surveillance program that was authorized in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The House is scheduled to take up the measure next week, where it is likely to pass with bipartisan support, but in the Senate, the future is less certain...
Has there ever been an American president as inept and clueless as Barack Obama? It was not so long ago that he said ISIL - as he calls ISIS - was nothing but a JV team, and that al-Qaeda was defeated and in retreat.
He responded to ISIS's recent barbarities by arguing that the Crusades proved Christianity was once just as evil. No worries - they got over it. Strangely, he has continued in W's footsteps by insisting there is only a war on terror, and not one against radical Islam. Obama, like Bush, refuses to state who is guilty.
We spend more time, more time, talking about what you call it, as opposed to what do you do about it. You know? I mean really. If Fox didn't talk about this they'd have nothing else to talk about. You know, radical Islam, Islamic extremism, you know … I'm not sure an awful lot is gained by saying it. It doesn't have an impact on our military posture …
Those damn talking heads on Fox News. If not for them, no one would be talking about radical Islamic extremism. As for tactics and military strategy, the same president who said last year that the Syrian rebels should not be armed because they were disorganized, ineffectual, and we would not know in whose hands the arms would end up, is now floating the idea of arming them. This might have helped three years ago, but it may be too little, too late. And at the same time, the promise to arm the Kurds has been slow and bogged down in red tape...
Hillary Clinton is attempting to justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars she gets for speaking fees by claiming she has "donated" those extravagant fees to "charity." But it turns out that "charity" is her own Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation.
Hillary's speaking fees have become such a hot-button issue for colleges that one school in Buffalo, New York is trying to protect itself from protest by refusing to disclose what it recently paid Hillary to speak.
After weeks of claiming that she and Bill were "dead broke" despite having earned over $100 million since Bill left the White House and after her high speaking fees were criticized by at least one college group, Hillary was finally pressed by a reporter.
Since the controversy has swirled around her for several weeks, ABC News finally asked the former Secretary of State about what she charges for appearances and where the cash goes. Hillary told ABC's Ann Compton that she "donated" the fees to "charity."
"All of the fees have been donated to the Clinton Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and life-saving work," Hillary claimed. "So it goes from a foundation at a university to another foundation."
The National Security Agency is storing the online metadata of millions of internet users for up to a year, regardless of whether or not they are persons of interest to the agency, top secret documents reveal.
Metadata provides a record of almost anything a user does online, from browsing history - such as map searches and websites visited - to account details, email activity, and even some account passwords. This can be used to build a detailed picture of an individual's life.
The Obama administration has repeatedly stated that the NSA keeps only the content of messages and communications of people it is intentionally targeting - but internal documents reveal the agency retains vast amounts of metadata.
An introductory guide to digital network intelligence for NSA field agents, included in documents disclosed by former contractor Edward Snowden, describes the agency's metadata repository, codenamed Marina. Any computer metadata picked up by NSA collection systems is routed to the Marina database, the guide explains. Phone metadata is sent to a separate system.
"The Marina metadata application tracks a user's browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops summaries of target," the analysts' guide explains. "This tool offers the ability to export the data in a variety of formats, as well as create various charts to assist in pattern-of-life development."
The guide goes on to explain Marina's unique capability: "Of the more distinguishing features, Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days' worth of DNI metadata seen by the Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection."
The revelation comes from three Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions declassified today by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The NSA told the court in 2011 that it had accidentally collected an estimated 56,000 Internet communications by Americans or people in the U.S. that were unconnected to terrorism, a byproduct of collecting communications that are in bundled data packets from fiber-optic cables or other channels that travel through the U.S. telecommunications system. The court ordered the NSA to limit the material it collects and how long it keeps it, and the NSA agreed to limit storage of such bundled communications to two years. The court also ordered the NSA to destroy all bundled communications collected under the program between 2008 and 2011.
The news comes several hours after the Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA has the capability to spy on 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic. The Journal maintains that the NSA is capable of observing much more of Americans' online communications than officials have acknowledged.
In a statement to Fox News, the NSA defended the program, saying that it was charged with defending the country from foreign foes and protecting the rights of U.S. persons.
"It's not either/or," the statement said. "It's both."
"Who can you trust?" That's the title of a pretty good album, but it's also the question for our age. One of the underpinnings of successful representative government is that voters feel they can trust their representatives, and those in the bureaucracy to whom power is delegated, to follow the law. That trust in government officials' willingness to follow the law is the foundation for a sense that the law is legitimate, so that citizens feel a duty to follow the law as well.
But that trust has taken a big hit lately. Over the weekend, the IRS scandal hit the 100th day since the IRS admitted targeting conservative groups during the 2012 election year. Yet the IRS is still being charged with stonewalling Congressional investigators. IRS official Lois Lerner, of course, has already taken the Fifth rather than testify about what went on.
Meanwhile, new revelations of NSA lawbreaking have come out. As the Washington Post reported, the NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times per year. It appears that despite assurances that there was no domestic spying program, the NSA was, in fact, hoovering up vast numbers of phone calls, emails, etc. in order to spy on Americans. (New White House talking point: Hey, it's not a domestic spying program, it's just a program that does a lot of domestic spying!)
"The Post declines to accept the substitute language as quotations from DeLong." http://t.co/xPwYSeXtzW Story behind story is revealing too.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) August 16, 2013
The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.
The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Senior European officials expressed concern Sunday at reports that U.S. intelligence agents bugged EU offices on both sides of the Atlantic, with some leftist lawmakers calling for concrete sanctions against Washington.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said he was "deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of U.S. authorities spying on EU offices" made in a report published Sunday by German news weekly Der Spiegel.
The magazine said the surveillance was carried out by the U.S. National Security Agency, which has recently been the subject of leaks claiming it scanned vast amounts of foreign Internet traffic. The U.S. government has defended its efforts to intercept electronic communications overseas by arguing that this has helped prevent terror attacks at home and abroad.
Schulz said that if the allegations that the NSA bugged European Union offices were confirmed "it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations."
As we now know, the NSA has been collecting data on millions of domestic and international phone calls for some time now — since 2006, according to Dianne Feinstein. Maybe this bothers you; maybe it doesn't. Feinstein insists the program is an essential part of "protecting America"; Congressman Mike Rogers says it has already been "used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States."
But one person who doesn't like the idea of the NSA spying on Americans is Oregon senator Ron Wyden. And at a hearing in March, he asked James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, a straightforward question: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
Clapper's answer? "No, sir ... not wittingly."
Update, 5:13 p.m.: Clapper tells the National Journal, "What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens' e-mails. I stand by that." Except ... that's not what he said.
If you've lost Bob Beckel, you've lost .. one of Fox News's six or seven liberals, some of whom are defending the NSA's record-harvesting even now. Ah well. Worth watching anyway, partly because occasions for a second look at Beckel are rare and partly because of Dana Perino's argument at the end about how Beckel would feel if the feds stopped data-mining and his son was killed in a terrorist attack. That's the other evergreen defense of the surveillance state, complementing Lindsey Graham's point yesterday that if you haven't done anything wrong you should have nothing to worry about.
