How Liberals — Yes, Liberals — Are Hobbling Government →
Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan, a former chief legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the author of a fascinating paper called "The Procedure Fetish". In it, Bagley argues that liberals — liberal lawyers in particular — have helped hobble the very government they now need to act swiftly and decisively..
Some great points in this interview on the role of rules:
What’s a concern is what we put in place to try to protect against those risks. And I think far too often, we’ve defaulted to lawyerly, procedural rules to try to get agencies to do better. And I think we haven’t been reflective enough about the possibility that, look, if you’ve got an agency that isn’t living up to your expectations, layering a bunch of procedural rules on top of it and subjecting it to judicial review is probably not going to help all that much.
And if we’ve got problems, we want to be thinking much harder about institutional design, about adequate budgetary support, about making sure they’ve got a clear statutory mandate, about getting good leadership, about fixing management problems. There’s a whole host of things we could do to improve the functioning of the administrative state.
On running an agency:
[I]f you are asking a group of lawyers how better to run a big institution, you’re asking the wrong group of people. [...] They’re not very good at running organizations. [...] It’s not something you learn in law school, how to run a government agency or — it’s just not part of the skill set.
On government legitimacy:
You write that, “Legitimacy is not solely, not even primarily, a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises, more generally, from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive and fair.”
And on public/private partnership:
[O]ne thing that’s become clear to me is that the private sector depends on an effective public sector in order to achieve its goals as well.
So right now, we’ve got a ton of money coming in, both private capital and also public capital for new investments in semiconductors and electric vehicles and renewable energy facilities, so all this money sloshing around. But all of these facilities require permits from the state. They require financial support, in some cases, from the state. They require literally parcels of land that the state often assembles.
Not to mention, they depend on a work force that the state has educated. They depend on a robust infrastructure, like transportation infrastructure, on water. I mean, if you are a private company looking to expand, looking to build these new businesses of the 21st century, you need a functional state. And crippling the state is bad for business.
Biden admin’s cloud security problem: ‘It could take down the internet like a stack of dominos’ →
The Biden administration is embarking on the nation’s first comprehensive plan to regulate the security practices of cloud providers.
Moralism Is Ruining Cultural Criticism →
Just as the reduction of art to political propaganda leads to bad art, the aestheticization of politics leads to bad, irresponsible politics. That’s because aesthetics and politics are not the same thing. They are not totally unrelated, obviously, but they are also and even primarily different. A political message can be part of an aesthetic effect, just as a political movement can benefit from an aesthetic appeal. But we get nowhere if we confuse or collapse these categories.
Subversive Trilemma: Why Cyber Operations Fall Short of Expectations →
A cool academic paper on the constraints of cyber operations as a "subversive trilemma" where speed, intensity, and control are negatively correlated. The author argues that because of this, most cyber operations fall short of their strategic promise and provide, at best, limited strategic utility.
The Way the Senate Melted Down Over Crypto Is Very Revealing →
I want to explain why crypto matters, even if you think Bitcoin is just goldbuggery for nerds. The technology is evolving to be much more than a digital currency, and Silicon Valley sees it as the digital infrastructure atop which the next internet will be built.
A discussion on crypto, distributed finance, digital asset ownership, and the societal and political ramifications from Ezra Klein.
The rise and importance of Secret Congress →
Journalists and activists talk a lot about how Congress is hopelessly gridlocked and unable to get anything done. And to an extent, it's true. [...]
But it's interesting to note that the sense of gridlock derives in part from the fact that something like the stalled political reform bill has attracted dramatically more media attention than something like the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021, which passed in May and appropriated $175 billion over five years to upgrade public water systems across the country. [...]. Do you think it's weird that legislation making Juneteenth into a national holiday passed last week with seemingly no warning?
The Secret Congress hypothesis is that this is not a coincidence. Congress takes bipartisan action not despite a lack of public attention, but because of it.
A Better Remedy for Cancel Culture →
The U.S. Constitution offers very broad protections for freedom of speech. While criticizing the government, or even waving the wrong flag, could get you imprisoned in any territory under Chinese rule, your right to freedom of expression is sacrosanct under the First Amendment—until you step into your place of work, that is. While the government is not entitled to punish political dissent, in most parts of America it is perfectly legal for your boss to fire you if they happen to dislike the person you voted for in the last election.
I'm convinced that reform to "at-will" employment contracts is definitely something that should be discussed, debated, and experimented with further.
Unified or divided government? It won't matter as much as you think for Biden and the Democrats →
Unless both Senate runoff elections in Georgia go Democrats' way, President-elect Joe Biden will face divided government from the start of his presidency. Many observers foresee years of unremitting legislative deadlock, with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) leading his party in obstruction, just as he did under President Obama. The emerging conventional wisdom is that the only chance for policymaking is to get a handful of GOP moderates, such as Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), to work with Democrats on small-ticket items.
Our new book, The Limits of Party, finds that this Beltway wisdom misses the mark. Divided government is not as devastating for a party's legislative accomplishments as is usually thought. In today's polarized Congress, legislation generally passes by large, bipartisan majorities — or not at all. Regardless of unified or divided control, Congress enacts very few laws on party-line votes.
The Two Americas Financing the Trump and Biden Campaigns →
An amazing analysis of the fundraising of each candidate by zip code.
Opinion | How Trump and Xi Can Both Win Their Trade War →
What Trump also underestimated is that we don't just have a trade access problem with China today, we also have a trust shortage problem. When all we bought from China were toys and T-shirts and cheap electronics, we did not care if they were communists, capitalists, authoritarians or vegetarians. But now that China wants to sell us many of the same high-tech products that America and Europe make — from 5G infrastructure to cellphones to advanced electronics — products that get deeply embedded in our society and can be dual use (civilian and military), we need a whole new level of trust between our societies. That will take time to build.
US violated Constitution by searching phones for no good reason, judge rules →
The United States government violated the Fourth Amendment with its suspicionless searches of international travelers' phones and laptops, a federal court ruled [...].
"This ruling significantly advances Fourth Amendment protections for the millions of international travelers who enter the United States every year," ACLU staff attorney Esha Bhandari said. "By putting an end to the government's ability to conduct suspicionless fishing expeditions, the court reaffirms that the border is not a lawless place and that we don't lose our privacy rights when we travel."
Let's hope it sticks.
I was a '60s socialist. Today's progressives are in danger of repeating my generation's mistakes. →
For the foreseeable future, though, if the left wants to create the political majority […], it will have to frame its positions in a vernacular that most Americans can understand. It will also have to draw a sharp distinction between the positions it deems essential for "big, structural change" and those that can be delegated to communities to calibrate and debate. The new left of the '60s failed in this mission. We didn't just dream big; we ascended into the realm of fantasy and visible sainthood. Today's left will need to learn from our mistakes.
Failing to moderate and propose practical, bipartisan policies will mean the left's coalition will be unable to effectively wield political influence.
Opinion | Quiz: Let Us Predict Whether You're a Democrat or a Republican →
Tell us a few details about you and we'll guess which political party you belong to. It shouldn't be that simple, right? We're all complex people with a multiplicity of identities and values. But the reality is that in America today, how you answer a handful of questions is very likely to determine how you vote.
Regardless of how you vote, make sure you vote. Super Tuesday is next week! If you don't know if or how you can vote, start at https://vote.gov.
I Work for N.S.A. We Cannot Afford to Lose the Digital Revolution. →
The threats of cyberattack and hypersonic missiles are two examples of easily foreseeable challenges to our national security posed by rapidly developing technology. It is by no means certain that we will be able to cope with those two threats, let alone the even more complicated and unknown challenges presented by the general onrush of technology — the digital revolution or so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution — that will be our future for the next few decades.
A frank telling from the chief lawyer of the N.S.A.
The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy →
Democracy is hard work. And as society's "elites" — experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule — have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.
[Rosenburg's] prediction? "In well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail."
Open Federal Data is Now the Law of the Land →
Federal agencies must publish all public data in a machine-readable format and appoint chief data officers to oversee open data efforts under a new law.
The Good War →
How America's infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience.
'Our democracy will not last' →
[F]or those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world - made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions. We are a mature democracy – it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring – or worse, endorsing - these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.
— Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
Do we really understand the Second Amendment anymore? →
We largely lack the framework to ask what gun ownership is for or to decide as a society whether it truly aligns with the good.
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump →
Republican senator Jeff Flake:
It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued.
If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?
The Stanford Professor Who Fought the Tax Lobby →
ReadyReturn's existence proves that the government can make it easier to pay taxes. If tax filing in America ever becomes as easy as in the rest of the world, we'll all be indebted to a selfless professor who loves taxes.
Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election →
According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America's economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the country's economic activity last year.
How Stable Are Democracies? 'Warning Signs Are Flashing Red' →
Yascha Mounk is used to being the most pessimistic person in the room. Mr. Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: that once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way.
His research suggests something quite different: that liberal democracies around the world may be at serious risk of decline.
Jon Stewart on President-elect Trump, hypocrisy in America →
Insightful and well-reasoned as always.
After the Election →
James Shelley with perhaps the best piece of writing I've read post-election.
The Electoral College Was Created to Stop Demagogues Like Trump →
Consider what Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper Number 68. The Electors were supposed to stop a candidate with "Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" from becoming President.
Trump? Clinton? Many young Americans prefer giant meteor, poll finds →
Young Americans are so dissatisfied with their choices in this presidential election that nearly one in four told an opinion poll they would rather have a giant meteor destroy the Earth than see Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the White House.
#giantmeteor2016
What makes governments resistant to coups? →
While social media are sufficiently new, and coups sufficiently infrequent to assess this claim, there's another way to look at the link between coups and access to information. In a series of papers and an ongoing book project, we examine the relationship between political instability and government disclosures of credible economic information — the type of information members of the public might use both to evaluate the performance of the government and to gauge the level of discontent of their fellows.
How American Politics Went Insane →
Populism, individualism, and a skeptical attitude toward politics are all healthy up to a point, but America has passed that point. Political professionals and parties have many shortcomings to answer for—including, primarily on the Republican side, their self-mutilating embrace of anti-establishment rhetoric—but relentlessly bashing them is no solution. You haven't heard anyone say this, but it's time someone did: Our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the establishment, not the other way around.
(via PBS NewsHour)
Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentially, you will be well advised to stay out of politics altogether and set up as a prophet; your prophecies may perhaps sow good seed for some future harvest. But as a politician you would be impotent. For at any given time the bulk of your countrymen believe firmly and devoutly, not only in various things that are worthy of belief, but also in illusions of one kind and another; and they will never submit to have their affairs managed for them by one who appears not to share in their credulity.
— British historian F.S. Oliver, 1935 (via The Atlantic)
The Republicans' Incompetence Caucus →
By traditional definitions, conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible. [...]
All of this has been overturned in dangerous parts of the Republican Party.
That's why I'm a conservative.
Seeking President, No Experience Necessary →
The struggle within the Republican Party right now centers on those who, figuratively speaking, want to rebuild the village and those who want to burn it down, those who want to fight irresistible demographic changes and those who want to responsibly embrace them, those who think they can win over new Americans and those who want to turn them away. There are a number of Republican presidential candidates — senators, governors and former governors — who, if given the chance, can make the Republican Party the party of aspiration instead of resentment, the party for this era instead of one seeking to reclaim a lost era.
Anger, doom, and insularism characterize the party right now.
The GOP's Make-Believe Foreign Policy World →
Paul and Kasich were the only ones who apparently understand how the world actually works.
That's why I believe that, regardless of politics, it's everyone's duty to support the troops, and also to support the Second Amendment should the day come when we need to overthrow the government and kill those troops.
— ClickHole.
How World War III Became Possible →
There is a growing chorus of political analysts, arms control experts, and government officials who are sounding the alarm, trying to call the world's attention to its drift toward disaster. The prospect of a major war, even a nuclear war, in Europe has become thinkable, they warn, even plausible.
I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me →
This new understanding of social justice politics resembles what University of Pennsylvania political science professor Adolph Reed Jr. calls a politics of personal testimony, in which the feelings of individuals are the primary or even exclusive means through which social issues are understood and discussed. Reed derides this sort of political approach as essentially being a non-politics, a discourse that "is focused much more on taxonomy than politics [which] emphasizes the names by which we should call some strains of inequality [ … ] over specifying the mechanisms that produce them or even the steps that can be taken to combat them." Under such a conception, people become more concerned with signaling goodness, usually through semantics and empty gestures, than with actually working to effect change.
Herein lies the folly of oversimplified identity politics: while identity concerns obviously warrant analysis, focusing on them too exclusively draws our attention so far inward that none of our analyses can lead to action. Rebecca Reilly Cooper, a political philosopher at the University of Warwick, worries about the effectiveness of a politics in which "particular experiences can never legitimately speak for any one other than ourselves, and personal narrative and testimony are elevated to such a degree that there can be no objective standpoint from which to examine their veracity." Personal experience and feelings aren't just a salient touchstone of contemporary identity politics; they are the entirety of these politics."
The Facebook "It's Not Our Fault" Study →
The tobacco industry might once have funded a study that says that smoking is less dangerous than coal mining, but here we have a study about coal miners smoking. Probably while they are in the coal mine. What I mean to say is that there is no scenario in which "user choices" vs. "the algorithm" can be traded off, because they happen together.
Facebook probably just needs to stop publishing research on their data if they're going to continue to do it incorrectly.
Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say →
It is true that liberals and leftists both want to make society more economically and socially egalitarian. But liberals still hold to the classic Enlightenment political tradition that cherishes individuals rights, freedom of expression, and the protection of a kind of free political marketplace. [...]
The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism's commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents [...] as hopelessly naïve. [...]
The modern far left has borrowed [this] Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. [...]
Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism [...], the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain safe, free discourse in a public square that frequently believes differing opinions (and the free expression thereof) are not ultimately the basis of democratic systems. This doesn't just apply to politics, either, as we see the increasing bifurcation of online communities (namely Twitter) over these issues of free speech, diversity, and respect.
The police, the people who are angry at the police, the people who support us but want us to be better, even a madman who assassinated two men because all he could see was two uniforms, even though they were so much more. We don't see each other. If we can learn to see each other, to see that our cops are people like Officer Ramos and Officer Liu, to see that our communities are filled with people just like them, too. If we can learn to see each other, then when we see each other, we'll heal. We'll heal as a department. We'll heal as a city. We'll heal as a country.
— NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, Police Respect Squandered in Attacks on de Blasio
The Wal-Mart Hippies →
The best thing I've ever seen written that explains the Tea Party.
How the Other Half Works: An Adventure in the Low Status of Software Engineers →
A thought-provoking essay on the difference between programmers and managers and the ways programmers have sabotaged their status in Silicon Valley.
Millennials' Political Views Don't Make Any Sense →
Millennial politics is simple, really. Young people support big government, unless it costs any more money. They're for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they've heard of. They'd like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn't run anything.
[...] "Totally incoherent," as Dylan Matthews puts it.
We Don't Need Net Neutrality; We Need Competition →
Good arguments for last mile independence and local loop unbundling having a more powerful effect on the state of American Internet than net neutrality. I'd personally love to have more than one possible ISP.
Sinkhole of Bureaucracy →
Every person who retires from the federal government has paperwork that goes through a totally paper system in the middle of an abandoned mine in Pennsylvania.
Why Putin's Crimean Move Crosses the Line →
Hard power, soft power, and the gaps between military intervention, policing, and international institutions.
You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
— James Madison
via The Economist, "What's Gone Wrong with Democracy?"
Technology and Jobs: Coming to an Office Near You →
In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately to capital; later on, labour reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers.
The skills that can't be automated (critical thinking, creativity, etc.) afford higher wages, increasing the income gap. The Economist argues that that income also brings mobility, which means the gap can't be closed by re-distribution of wealth.
The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it's true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It's no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won't necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.
— Quentin Skinner, Liberty, Liberalism and Surveillance: A Historic Overview (via Three Things I Learned From the Snowden Files)
Mike Row Answers CNN Viewer's Questions →
Amazing that of all places, Hacker News brought me to a moderate view on anything, much less one on hard work, education, debt, vocational training, and politics. I'm really impressed by Mike's responses as well as the S.W.E.A.T. pledge he links to at the end.
How the NSA tracks cell phone locations →
Was waiting for this "revelation" for quite a while longer than I expected to be. Now we know for sure the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA chief Keith Alexander repeatedly lied about the answer to this question on multiple occasions.
NSA Files Decoded: Edward Snowden's Surveillance Revelations Explained →
Wonderfully designed interactive look at the NSA controversy and what it means.
The triumph of opinion-driven cable TV and the collapse of newspapers has created an American news media that does an increasingly poor job of informing the public. And an excellent job of dividing it.
— David Rohde, "How the Broken Media Helped Break the Government"
In Which I Respond To A Defense of Prism
Below is the full text of an email sent to my Senator in response to her email defending the Prism and the Verizon metadata collection programs (edited for formatting only). It does not contain the whole of my opinion on the subject, either as a citizen or as an employee of a technology company subject to subpoenas, warrants, and National Security Letters for users' data, but this is certainly sufficient as a long overdue response to the controversy.
All comments expressed below are my own personal opinion and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or alma mater.
Dear Parker:
I received your communication indicating your concerns about the two National Security Agency programs that have been in the news recently. I appreciate that you took the time to write on this important issue and welcome the opportunity to respond.
Dear Senator Feinstein,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to the petition about the Prism and Verizon metadata collection programs that I signed. However, I would like to point out several factual inaccuracies in your email about these (and other newly-revealed) surveillance programs, which I've taken the liberty of interspersing inline for readability:
First, I understand your concerns and want to point out that by law, the government cannot listen to an American's telephone calls or read their emails without a court warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause.
Let's ignore the fact that the EPCA currently requires only a subpoena, not a warrant, to compel an email service provider to turn over all digital records over 180 days old.
According to recent revelations about the X-Keyscore project, the NSA is regularly partaking in the capture of unencrypted electronic communication from fiber tap points inside and outside the United States (in conjunction with other international agencies). This includes "nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet", which includes the SMTP protocol used by email service providers, one of which I work for, and up to 75% of domestic Internet traffic. In this method, the NSA "touches" more of the Internet's traffic than Google: chats, emails, websites, video, everything. Scanning, filtering, and capturing content such as email in this manner are as much "reading" my email as opening the letters I mail, looking for highlighted phrases, and photocopying it for storage.
As for the "American" part of that statement, internal audits have found that the NSA requires only a "reasonable belief", a 51% probability, that a target is foreign and the NSA itself has admitted to "incidentally" scooping up the digital records of Americans and has demonstrated the ability to perform warrantless searches for emails of Americans, either though national security letters or deep packet inspection as used in the X-Keyscore project. The NSA regularly violates the privacy laws of the United States (and other countries) through this inspection. FISC judge John Bates wrote in an October 2011 opinion that "the NSA may be acquiring as many as 46,000 wholly domestic [single communication transactions] each year."
As is described in the attachment to this letter provided by the Executive Branch, the programs that were recently disclosed have to do with information about phone calls – the kind of information that you might find on a telephone bill –
Unfortunately, presumably in an effort to save paper, AT&T has eliminated the types of information from my telephone bill that the NSA presumably regularly collects on me. I also have never previously seen this information on AT&T's website. The NSA has a better record of who I call, when, and for how long than I do on my telephone bills or my telephone. And while it has not been confirmed, there is evidence to suggest that the collection of location data is both technically feasibly and likely already underway, further personally identifying myself and my whereabouts to the government without my permission and likely declared as an illegal Fourth Amendment search under United States v Jones and indicated by the New Jersey Supreme Court.
– in one case, and the internet communications (such as email) of non-Americans outside the United States in the other case.
Please see my points in the second paragraph.
Both programs are subject to checks and balances, and oversight by the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary.
I believe you, I really do. The question is not whether there are checks and balances, but whether there are appropriate checks and balances. Many of your colleagues do not feel as you do. Internal findings have shown the NSA has repeatedly violated internal safeguards, and has the technical ability, but not the appropriate processes, to violate the privacy of all Americans.
FISC Judge John Bates noted in an 85-page opinion that his court originally approved the NSA's ability to capture a more limited and targeted amount of data. He writes: "In conducting its review and granting those approvals, the Court did not take into account NSA's acquisition of Internet transactions, which now materially and fundamentally alters the statutory and constitutional analysis."
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the PATRIOT act, has filed an amicus brief in ACLU v. Clapper in which he writes: "The vast majority of the records collected will have no relation to the investigation of terrorism at all. This collection of millions of unrelated records is built-in to the mass call collection program. Defendants' theory of 'relevance' is simply beyond any reasonable understanding of the word."
As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I can tell you that I believe the oversight we have conducted is strong and effective and I am doing my level best to get more information declassified.
I'm pretty sure that will continue to be taken care of for you by journalists around the world with greater speed and completeness than our government's efforts. We need more transparency without attempting to make half-hearted rebuttals and defenses for these programs and invoking state secrets. Without the government being willing to be fully transparent with its citizens about the existence and full purposes and capabilities of these programs, and the legal justification for them, we cannot trust the oversight of unaccountable branches of government.
Please know that it is equally frustrating to me, as it is to you, that I cannot provide more detail on the value these programs provide and the strict limitations placed on how this information is used. I take serious my responsibility to make sure intelligence programs are effective, but I work equally hard to ensure that intelligence activities strictly comply with the Constitution and our laws and protect Americans' privacy rights.
I would love to see the rulings from the FISC that justify the programs as legal; as of yet, all we've seen declassified are rulings that say they are not, such as the October 2011 ruling in which the FISC found that collection carried out under the NSA's minimization procedures was unconstitutional, and statements from the Director of National Intelligence admitting surveillance that was "unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment" and that "circumvented the spirit of the law." Your colleagues are working in a bipartisan manner to attempt to declassify many of these opinions, and yet as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I can't help but miss your name on that roster of sponsors; I hope you're indeed working with them on this effort.
These surveillance programs have proven to be very effective in identifying terrorists, their activities, and those associated with terrorist plots, and in allowing the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to prevent numerous terrorist attacks. More information on this should be forthcoming.
Not only has Congress been briefed on these programs, but laws passed and enacted since 9/11 specifically authorize them.
"Authorize them" in the sense that Section 215 of the Patriot Act was poorly written to encompass "business records" for parties "relevant to an authorized investigation" OR pertaining either to a suspected "agent of a foreign power" or someone in direct contact with the suspect, or pertaining to the "activities" of a suspect, rather than "relevant to the authorized investigation" AND with agency, contact, or shared activity. This means that all sorts of other business records might be "relevant" and meet the criteria as authorized, as the recent NSA leaks and thus by proxy the FISC have shown us they believe to be true.
The surveillance programs are authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which itself was enacted by Congress in 1978 to establish the legal structure to carry out these programs, but also to prevent government abuses, such as surveillance of Americans without approval from the federal courts. The Act authorizes the government to gather communications and other information for foreign intelligence purposes. It also establishes privacy protections, oversight mechanisms (including court review), and other restrictions to protect privacy rights of Americans.
The laws that have established and reauthorized these programs since 9/11 have passed by mostly overwhelming margins. For example, the phone call business record program was reauthorized most recently on May 26, 2011 by a vote of 72-23 in the Senate and 250-153 in the House. The internet communications program was reauthorized most recently on December 30, 2012 by a vote of 73-22 in the Senate and 301-118 in the House.
And yet while the FISC is happy to continue the renewal of these programs as it did on July 19, some of our esteemed elected representatives in the House are not so happy: "In terms of the oversight function, I feel inadequate most of the time," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Bulk surveillance "certainly was approved by Congress. Was it approved by a fully knowing Congress? That is not the case."
And a few weeks ago we saw the House of Representatives came within eight votes of defunding the NSA program that collects telephone metadata by amendment.
Attached to this letter is a brief summary of the two intelligence surveillance programs that were recently disclosed in media articles. While I very much regret the disclosure of classified information in a way that will damage our ability to identify and stop terrorist activity, I believe it is important to ensure that the public record now available on these programs is accurate and provided with the proper context.
These programs may provide some security, but I believe our security as a nation is worth little if the values of freedom, personal privacy, and transparency and accountability in democratic government are ruined in the process. I therefore welcome any and all further information on these programs in order to promote a healthy, accurate understanding of their Constitutional context.
Again, thank you for contacting me with your concerns and comments. I appreciate knowing your views and hope you continue to inform me of issues that matter to you.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Sincerely yours,
H. Parker Shelton
Microsoft Corporation
Johns Hopkins University '10
All comments expressed above are my own personal opinion and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or alma mater.
Apple's Web of Tax Shelters Saved It Billions, Panel Finds →
Atop Apple's offshore network is a subsidiary named Apple Operations International, which is incorporated in Ireland but keeps its bank accounts and records in California. Because the United States bases residency on where companies are incorporated, while Ireland focuses on where they are managed and controlled, Apple Operations International was able to fall neatly between the cracks of the two countries' jurisdictions.
Seems rather clever to me...
Five Ways Congress Should Improve the Copyright System →
Sensible ideas for copyright reform including proportionality, reforming the DMCA, and resolving orphaned works.
On Key Software Decision, Top Patent Court Grinds to a Stalemate →
Ten judges, seven opinions, 135 pages, zero legal precedent.
What a mess...
What does that sound like? Lebanon. But it's Lebanon on steroids. The Syria I have just drawn for you — I call it the Sinkhole.
— What Should Obama Do About Syria?
A nuanced look at the Syrian civil war, the parties involved, and why all the decisions about U.S. involvement are bad ones.
China's Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S. →
I'm a little late in sharing this, but it's the best exposition of the Mandiant report I've seen.
Troll Hunter: Meet the Oregon Lawmaker Who May Fix the Patent Mess →
This morning, Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced the SHIELD Act, which would create a "loser pays" system for some types of patent litigants. The bill is meant to stymie companies that do nothing more than file patent lawsuits.
That's a good start.
For stricter gun control to be instituted in the US would require a mass movement. First, a clear majority of Americans would have to be persuaded, and then they would have to apply sufficient pressure that either Republicans shift their position or Democrats retake Congress and develop the fortitude to pass laws.
— Ben Adler, Sandy Hook's dead deserve a change in US gun law. But don't hold your breath
Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments
In the coming days a vote will be presented before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the possibility of modernizing the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. I strongly encourage you to read up on the proposed amendment which requires the government to obtain a warrant before searching your email accounts and online storage. Digital Due Process is also a good resource for information from a consortium of top tech companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. If you feel as strongly about your online privacy as I do, I encourage you to call or write your Senator, especially if they are a member of the committee.
Below is the full text of my email to California Senator Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Dear Senator Feinstein,
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a vote is appearing before you in a few days that I feel very passionate about. Sen. Patrick Leahy has proposed amendments to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act in H.R. 2471 that bring the privacy laws governing electronic communication and storage into coherence with the increasingly digital society in which we live and the expectation we have about the privacy of our data.
Modifications to Section 2710 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code would allow video providers such as Netflix, Comcast, or NBC to release information about my viewing activities with my consent to third-parties, who may be able to visualize or process that data in new ways, or better recommend shows or movies I might like. Currently, no use of this data is permitted due to the ECPA's criminal penalties.
More importantly, modifications to Section 2703 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code would require a search warrant in order to view the contents of my email accounts or electronic storage, not just proof that this information "appear[s] to pertain to the commission of a crime". This would hold the federal government accountable for user data requests, which in the first half of the year (January to June 2012) affected 16,281 unique user accounts of American citizens on Google's services alone (http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/).
As a software developer for Microsoft's Hotmail and Outlook.com online email services, I know how important the data we keep in electronic storage is, what kinds of pains we take to ensure that users' data is safe from adversaries and even ourselves, and how important privacy is to us as a service and as a company. It goes against our culture and beliefs and the good faith of our customers when we are so easily compelled to provide this data to the government.
Email, cloud computing, and mobile technology have reshaped the way we communicate and how that information is stored and processed. It's a travesty that the laws dedicated to protecting the privacy of that information have not adapted as well. Strengthening these provisions helps add stronger protection for all citizens' online privacy and holds the government accountable for its actions.
I encourage you to read more at http://digitaldueprocess.org/, where a large number of technology companies, including top innovators such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter argue more persuasively for reform this area than I can. That said, I strongly urge a vote in favor of this resolution and ask for your continued support for increased privacy protection in our online world.
Sincerely,
H. Parker Shelton
Microsoft Corporation
Johns Hopkins University '10
Technical Difficulties
How exactly are both the New York Times and the Associated Press incapable of serving election results right now?
The Benghazi Embarrassment →
The embarrassment of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi is not that it happened. America has its victories against terrorism, and its defeats, and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American security personnel represents one defeat in a long war. The embarrassment is that political culture in America is such that we can't have an adult conversation about the lessons of Benghazi.
Cracks in Maryland and Washington Voter Databases →
In the last five years, Maryland and Washington State have set up voter registration systems that make it easy for people to register to vote and update their address information online. The problem is that in both states, all the information required from voters to log in to the system is publicly available.
They couldn't even use a Social Security number verification?
What Exactly Would Barack Obama Do With a Second Term? →
Lots of presidential candidates have run on a platform of Not The Incumbent, but Obama may be the first to define himself entirely as Not the Challenger.
Interesting perspective with a ring of truth to it.
Immigration and Skilled Workers →
...and the Olympics. In the same way the U.S. trains Olympians before shipping them off to other countries to compete against us, we train doctors, lawyers, and engineers that can't get visas to stay and work in the country. The number of employment-based visas is still capped at a hundred and forty thousand a year despite bipartisan support for reform.
The Supreme Court's ACA Ruling →
We, the people, have the means to eliminate laws we find noxious through our elected officials. Many have hoped that the Supreme Court would rule the mandate unconstitutional because they have little faith in Congress's — our elected officials — ability to get anything of any importance at all done, and I have little doubt many of those people are angry with the Court's decision today. But that is not the Court's concern, nor their role. Their job is not to take up slack when our elected officials are shirking their duties, and it is not only unfair, but counter to our system of government, to expect the Court to do so.
Best write-up of the Supreme Court's recent ruling I've read yet.
Do You Lose Free Speech Rights If You Speak Using a Computer? →
Ars Technica has an interesting article in which Timothy Lee rebuts the argument of Tim Wu, in which he says:
Protecting a computer's "speech" is only indirectly related to the purposes of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship. The First Amendment has wandered far from its purposes when it is recruited to protect commercial automatons from regulatory scrutiny.
Should the output of a computer program designed to mimic human curation be protected under free speech?
Stuxnet Confirmed to be of American Origin →
From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.
Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran's Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.
There are just some classified things that probably should remain classified. At the same time, props to us for a job very well done.
Is Obama More Popular Than He Should Be? →
Based on the historical relationship between presidential approval and the economy as well as these other factors, is Mr. Obama more or less popular than the model would predict, given the economy and other circumstances during his first three years in office?
Quite an interesting analysis, using 60 years of quarterly data dating all the way back to Eisenhower.
Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012 →
To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet.
In a political climate in which all sides do not share a basic trust in science, scientific evidence no longer is viewed as a politically neutral factor in judging whether a public policy is good or bad.
— MSNBC - Study tracks how conservatives lost their faith in science
California Declares War on Suburbia →
California's high cost of living also is driving people away. ... The exodus is likely to accelerate. California has declared war on the most popular housing choice, the single family, detached home — all in the name of saving the planet.
Because housing prices are so ridiculously inflated, we should build more apartments and prevent contractors from building suburbs. Government interference in the marketplace is sure to fix the problem, right? Right?
Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.
— Senator Olympia Snowe, Why I'm leaving the Senate
All Of Nation's Resources Dumped Into 50 Children Who Are Actually The Future →
Noting the vast majority of American children are not even capable of leading the United States into "a decent era, much less a bold new one," officials confirmed the nation has already begun to shutter schools and universities nationwide [...] and end all other government spending on the 99.9 percent of children determined by experts to certifiably not be our nation's most valuable natural resource.
TSA: Fail →
TSA has spent approximately $60 billion since 2002 and now has over 65,000 employees, more than the Department of State, more than the Department of Energy, more than the Department of Labor, more than the Department of Education, and more than the Department of Housing and Urban Development - combined. TSA has become, according to [a government] report, "an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy more concerned with……consolidating power."
Lots of good/harsh points from a former FBI Special Agent with the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force (and pilot).
Verisign Seizes .com Domain Registered via Foreign Registrar on Behalf of US Authorities →
US law (in fact, Maryland state law) has been imposed on a .com domain operating outside the USA, which is the subtext we were very worried about when we commented on SOPA. Even though SOPA is currently in limbo, the reality appears to be that US law can now be asserted over all domains registered under .com, .net, org, .biz and maybe .info.
At least they had a court order this time, but this is ridiculous. Government, the Internet doesn't work the way you think it does and you're breaking it.
Pew Study: 1 in 8 Voter Records Flawed →
More than 24 million voter-registration records in the United States— about one in eight — are inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicates. Nearly 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and perhaps 1.8 million registered voters are dead.
Smart people in technology, please fix this.
Insider-Trading Bill Passed by House 417-2 →
The bill would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers. It makes clear that the insider-trading ban in federal law applies to members of Congress and their aides as well as to officials in the executive and judicial branches of the federal government.
About time.
Midlife Crisis Economics →
Comparisons of today to the Great Depression and the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century are more different than similar.
Portugal's End to the War on Drugs →
In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.
[A] paper, published by Cato in April 2011, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
Dropped significantly - deaths related to heroin dropped by 50%.
SOPA, Internet Regulation, and the Economics of Piracy →
Obviously, there's quite a lot of copyrighted material circulating on the Internet without authorization, and other things equal, one would like to see less of it. But does the best available evidence show that this is inflicting such catastrophic economic harm—that it is depressing so much output, and destroying so many jobs—that Congress has no option but to Do Something immediately?
Spoiler: No.
Even if Hollywood was able to magically convert all pirates into paying digital distribution customers, there would be no increase in jobs as unlimited digital copies require effectively zero cost and little if any labor after the first copy is made.
Empire
Just finished reading Empire by Orson Scott Card, most famously known for his Ender's Game series. It's an action and political thriller about the start of an American civil war between fanatics on the Left and the Right and the rise of a dictatorship. Most powerful is the afterward where he shares the thoughts that formed the seed of the novel:
A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure anyone who opposes them must either be stupid and deceived or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.
We live in a time when lies are preferred to the truth and truths are called lies, when opponents are assumed to have the worst conceivable motives and treated accordingly, and when we reach immediately for coercion without bothering to find out what those who disagree with us are actually saying.
In short, we are creating for ourselves a new dark age - the darkness of blinders we voluntarily wear, and which, if we do not take them off and see each other as human beings with legitimate, virtuous concerns, will lead us to tragedies which cost we bear for generations.
Or maybe, we can just calm down and stop thinking that our own ideas are so precious that we must never give an inch to accommodate the heartfelt beliefs of the others.
How can we accomplish that? It begins by scorning the voices of extremism from the camp we are aligned with. Democrats and Republicans much renounce the screamers and heaters from their own side instead of continuing to embrace them and denouncing only the screamers from the opposing camp. We must moderate ourselves instead of insisting on moderating the other guy while keeping our own fanaticism alive.
Dear Congress, It's No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works →
Here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can't explain, and having the temerity to suggest there's no need to "bring in the nerds" to suss out what's actually on it.
Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress →
A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.
Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
I didn't even know the U.S. government had $7.7 trillion to lend. This story disgusts me with the effort the banks and the Federal Reserve went to prevent disclosure of these deals.
We're below sharks and contract killers.
— Freshman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Congress's 9% approval rating.
White House Kills Insurance Program for Long-Term Care →
Because the insurance program had been projected to reduce the federal deficit by $86 billion over the next 10 years, terminating it complicates the nation's budget picture.
(via Tightwind)
Political Shift in California Trips Brown →
10 months after his return here, a time when Mr. Brown might have hoped to move beyond struggling with the budget crisis that has dragged down this state, his associates say he appears bewildered and stunned by how much Sacramento has changed since he first served.
I'm sure I've missed some legislation or something, but I can't name a single thing Brown (or California) has done politically since I moved here, other than closing a portion of the state parks.
The Latest Jobs Plan →
The unfortunate reality is that even if Republicans gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, the impact on growth would be modest at best. Washington can most help the economy with serious spending restraint, permanent tax-rate cuts, regulatory relief and repeal of ObamaCare. What won't help growth is more temporary, targeted political conjuring.
Bad Luck? Bad Faith? →
Obama has not shown strong leadership or powerful ideas, yet slanders the Republicans for their ideological stances in the debt debates and blames the lack of economic recovery on "bad luck".
What Happened to Obama's Passion? →
Widely quoted article on Obama's showing in the last year. Whether you like his policies or not, he doesn't seem to be fighting for them well anymore.
How to Respond to Rick Perry's 'Response' →
Religion plays too important a part in many people's lives to be denied a role in the public square. To be sure, there are some things the state can't do, like demand that schoolchildren pray each day. But elected officials, like other citizens, are free to have and express religious views. And voters are entitled to support or reject public officials for all kinds of reasons, including their religious views. To hold that elected officials can't publicly invoke their religion won't help a country of believers, agnostics and atheists reach any kind of consensus. It will only impoverish the conversation, depriving many citizens of the ability to make, and judge, arguments that reflect their most cherished views.
California Enacts Law Letting Illegal Immigrants Pay In-State Tuition →
The California law updates a previously enacted law that allows all people who have attended high school in the state for three or more years to pay cheaper in-state tuition rates to attend one of its public universities, colleges or community colleges.This is the same California school system that has raised tuition as much as 32% in its struggle to stay afloat.
Economic Impact of the Human Genome Project →
A new report by research firm Battelle Technology Partnership Practice estimates that between 1988 and 2010, federal investment in genomic research generated an economic impact of $796 billion, which is impressive considering that Human Genome Project (HGP) spending between 1990-2003 amounted to $3.8 billion. This figure equates to a return on investment (ROI) of 141:1 (that is, every $1 invested by the U.S. government generated $141 in economic activity).Can we please spend more money on science and less on bailouts, please?
The Governor Who Cut His State Down to Size →
Great article on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' work transforming the state's budget crisis since taking office in 2004.
[Update] Perhaps an even better article: http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/ride-along-mitch
Obama's 2012 Budget Proposal: How It's Spent →
Graphical breakdown of President Obama's proposed budget for 2012 from the New York Times. And as an added bonus, it's done with HTML5.
Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans →
President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.
"We are not talking about a government-controlled system," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said.Because specifying how the private sector should implement this program doesn't mean it qualifies as a government-controlled system. Sounds kinda like the logic behind the new health care bill.
This program will run into the same opposition the National ID system (HR 4633) did in 2002. Nobody wants a single point of failure or single point of malicious interest for identity. Until we know the details of the system, however, you can take a look at the EFF's argument against National ID.
ObamaCare and the General Welfare Clause →
Mr. Randy Barnett and Mr. David Oedel, constitutional law professors at Georgetown University, argue that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional as it violates the "general welfare" requirement of Congress's ability to levy taxes.
Isarithmic History of the Two-Party Vote →
Big words, but a really awesome visualization of the shifts in political preference from the 1920s through 2008 all over the United States.
Rep. Charlie Rangel Found Guilty of 11 Ethics Violations →
This man just cruised to reelection in his Harlem, NY district.
The GOP Takeover in the States →
Republicans control 26 state legislatures and 29 gubernatorial seats, and have outright control of 21 states (both legislature and governor).
Each party tries to proves that the other party is unfit to rule. Both commonly succeed and are right.
— HL. Mencken
Final Nail in Coffin for Net Neutrality? →
Before Tuesday's midterm elections, there were 95 House and Senate candidates who pledged support for Net neutrality, a bill that would force Internet providers to not charge users more for certain kinds of Web content.While I don't believe it's dead, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Unfortunately, this is one of the few issues on which I disagree with the Republican party.
All of them lost -- and that could mean the contentious proposal may now be all but dead.
Republican Christine O'Donnell sounded a defiant tone the day after losing her Delaware Senate bid to Democrat Chris Coons, calling her loss a "symptom of Republican cannibalism."
So she's a cannibal, not a witch? Or she's a witch that ran for the cannibal party?
What do we want? Incremental change for the betterment of society! When do we want it? As soon as is reasonably practical.
It is not possible to determine the full range of state laws that could be affected or repealed by this measure.
— Prop 22, Proposed CA Constitutional Amendment
This state is so screwed up.
U.S. State Deficits: Any Relationship to Political Leanings? →
Turns out there is. The lowest per-capita state debt? Nebraska, at $15.
We need George Bush →
Let's be clear: I am not writing a support of Bush policies. I am saying that, for President Bush, the entire religion of Islam was not synonymous with extremism.
The Tea Partiers Are Half Right →
I suggest that the sense of the tea partiers that they have been had is largely a valid one. At the same time, their ideas of what ought to be done are very much off the mark.
The political class is a necessity in the modern world, and it cannot be abolished, as much as we might like.
Administration's Challenge to Arizona Law Is Not Over Profiling... →
...but rather preemption, or a state law taking precedence over a federal law, which violates federalism. This will be an interesting showdown sure to bring the 10th Amendment into play.
The United States of Throw the Bums Out →
Excellent analysis of the current political environment.
The Bad News About ObamaCare Keeps Piling Up →
I may not agree with everything that Karl Rove says, but he is pretty much a political genius, and I have talked to business owners that have said the same thing - it'd be cheaper to just take the fine.
Government Spending →
There is a very strong correlation, then, between a state voting for Republicans and receiving more in federal spending than its residents pay to the federal government in taxes. In essence, those in blue states are subsidizing those in red states. Both red and blue states appear to be acting politically in opposition to their economic interests. Blue states are voting for candidates who are likely to continue the policies of red state subsidization while red states are voting for candidates who profess a desire to reduce federal spending (and presumably red state subsidization).
Two things. First, Congress appropriates money. The executive branch doesn't. Second, Texas is not subsidized by the federal government. Woot.
Interesting numbers, flawed conclusions.
Source: Ezra Klein
Biggest Wall Street Revamp Since 1930s Approved →
Very thorough description of all aspects of the bill being sent back to the two chambers after reconciliation. While it is the biggest financial reform since the Great Depression, it might also be the largest increase in the federal government's size and power since the New Deal.
Saudi Arabia Gives Israel Clear Skies to Attack Iranian Nuclear Sites →
Both governments have denied the reports.Do they ever not?
Rand Paul and the Perils of Textbook Libertarianism →
Mr. Paul's quandary reflects the position of the Tea Partiers, whose antipathy to government, rooted in populist impatience with the major parties, implies a repudiation of politics and its capacity to effect meaningful change.
Change can't be made outside of the channels of political power in any movement.
Satisfaction With U.S. Historically Low for Midterm Year →
So far in 2010, an average of 23% of Americans have been satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is well below the 40% historical average Gallup has measured since 1979, when it began asking this question. The 2010 average is also the lowest Gallup has measured in a midterm election year, dating to 1982.Interesting...
Democrats Reach New Lows
The Democratic Party's favorability rating has dropped to the "lowest point in the 18-year history" of Gallup testing that number, the pollster reports. Just 41 percent of voters have a favorable impression of the Democratic Party, compared with 42 percent who have a positive view of the GOP. Democrats held an 11 percentage point lead on this question when Gallup polled it late last summer.
Still think health care was the right thing to do?
Source: Politico
The Gaping Loophole in Obama's Nuclear Posture Review →
Politics is all about perception.
Texas vs Washington →
An article on the political battle for the Texas governorship between Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Why the mainstream media loves Sarah Palin →
Generating clicks means the media will keep generating stories.
Political Poll
"Research 2000, a non-partisan firm that polls for the liberal Web site Daily Kos, surveyed 2,003 Republicans between Jan. 20 and Jan. 31. The poll had a margin of error of 2.2 percent. It showed, among Republicans, 53 percent believe Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama. Just 14 percent think otherwise."
God help us all.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/03/republicans-uncertain-challenge-obama/