PBC News & Comment: NSA Ran Blanket Surveillance During Salt Lake City Olympics

NSA whistleblower Tom Drake files revealing declaration in case brought by former presidential candidate Rocky Anderson over Olympics dragnet surveillance…--the report and link to his declaration are at Washington Post
Note: your humble host is on call for jury duty tomorrow, so our podcast plans are uncertain
--Supreme Court agrees to hear a case related to cellphone location tracking
--SCOTUS also will hear appeal of Trump “travel ban”, which Trump has torpedoed with self-defeating tweets fear-mongering over London weekend attack
--with election on Thursday, PM Theresa May is on defensive about cuts to police she made as Home Secretary
--in rational op-ed, Peter Bergen says travel ban is “useless”
--Portland, OR pro-Trump rally draws more counter-protesters, and enough anti-fa hooligans to produce 14 arrests and violent TV footage
--NY Times reports “several dozen” March for Truth protesters in DC called for independent panel to investigate Trump/Russia
--based in part on that event, Norman Solomon issues important warning to progressives to reject demagoguery
--in rare moment of truthiness on MSDNC, Andrea Mitchell says Hillary Clinton is promoting conspiracy theories
--in overhyped NBC interview with Megyn Kelly, Putin denies the US narrative pretty effectively; of course, he could be lying
--Gareth Porter offers some important history about Henry Kissinger’s secret back channels to Russia, using a known KGB agent
--emboldened by Trump, 5 Arab countries unite against Qatar, a key US ally in our MidEast wars
--50 years after Six Day War, Israel’s lies to the US are exposed, along with a nuclear option that wasn’t activated; Read Mel Goodman’s account here
--it’s infrastructure week in Trumpville, first plan is to privatize air traffic control system, an homage to GOP hero Reagan
--Pulitzer prize winning historian and author David J. Garrow publishes blistering critique of Obama, read Paul Street’s review here