domestic spying

You may have learned this month, as I did, that Surveillance State shill "Dutch" Ruppersberger of Maryland has an energetic young primary opponent, Paul Rundquist. MD-02, most of which is part of Baltimore County (with pieces of Anne Arundel, Howard and Hartford), is solidly blue, with a PVI of D+10.

I met state Senator Ted Lieu at John Amato's birthday dinner a few weeks ago. I didn't know a lot about him-- just that he's one of the hard-working progressives in the state legislature and that he infuriated the banksters by writing and passing-- it took two sessions-- a consumer protection bill that stopped shady mortgage come-ons dead in their tracks.

Congenital liar, Mike Rogers (R-MI)Until recently, Michigan congressman Mike Rogers has operated mostly in the shadows. Some might find that fitting for the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; we don't. Rogers is charged with over site of the sprawling, out-of-control surveillance state. Instead he has run his committee as a cheering squad for it.

Yesterday's Politico featured a post by Manu Raju explaining how both Democratic and Republican candidates are running against the NSA's Cheney-conceived domestic spying agenda-- the NSA's Cheney-conceived domestic spying agenda that Obama has largely kept intact.

After Obama's speech defending the incompetent and corrupt U.S. spy agencies, Democrats who disapprove of the way he has continued the Cheney NSA agenda that completely guts the Constitution, were in an awkward position. How to disagree with his bullshit authoritarian stand without completely trashing him. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley gave it a try:

There are now 117 congressmembers cosponsoring H.R. 3361, the John Sensenbrenner and John Conyers-penned USA Freedom Act introduced at the end of October.

As we mentioned yesterday, Boehner has made time for Congress to debate how many fewer meals per week underprivileged children should be allowed to eat per week, but has no time to debate the Senate's bi-artisan comprehensive immigration reform bill or the legislation to prevent employment discrimination against the LGBT community.

Since taking over from Tim Sebastian in 2006, Stephen Sackur has been the anchor for the BBC's flagship news interview show, HARDtalk, which runs four times a week. I travel a lot, so I see it a lot. Sackur has a well-deserved reputation as the voice of Establishment Group Think propaganda and for asking questions and then aggressively interrupting his guests when they attempt to answer. He's one of television's most annoying little twits and I often wonder why credible figures ever agree to be interviewed by him. Last week, he interviewed Glenn Greenwald.

Not even waiting for the Supreme Court to halt the vote count in Florida and award the White House to Bush, Cheney moved with incredible speed to fill every position in the national security apparatus with his own people and claim that part of the government as his own turf. If there is one person who can be blamed for dereliction of duty in the events that led up to 9/11, it is Dick Cheney.

The Friday morning tweet from Alan Grayson (above) was anything but gratuitous. Grayson worked his way through Harvard as a janitor. He graduated, summa cum laude, with a degree in economics. Before going back to Harvard Law, he worked as an economist. He graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude.