By now you're probably well aware that GOP presidential rivals Chris Christie and Rand Paul are already slugging it out-- over national security and governing philosophy. It looks to be pretty ugly, as anything Christie gets involved in always turns out to be. But their disputes aren't just a matter of two ambitious Republicans trying to knock each other out of presidential contention.
David Kravets put the vote on the Amash-Conyers amendment to end warrantless domestic spying into a sensible perspective for Wired Last week: Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash. And, appropriately enough, the photo in his piece-- Congress' most corrupt Military Industrial Complex shill, Buck McKeon (R-CA).
By now you're probably well aware that GOP presidential rivals Chris Christie and Rand Paul are already slugging it out-- over national security and governing philosophy. It looks to be pretty ugly, as anything Christie gets involved in always turns out to be. But their disputes aren't just a matter of two ambitious Republicans trying to knock each other out of presidential contention.
Wednesday night we looked at some of the amendments to the Pentagon spending bill. Today, let's just single out the one that most people are talking about, Justin Amash's and John Conyer's amendment that attempted to protect the 4th Amendment by limiting the ability of the government and its agents to spy on Americans without warrants and without probable cause. The amendment failed-- though narrowly-- 205-217.
This week I literally marveled at how deftly Alan Grayson was able to use congressional procedures beyond the ken of garden variety congressmembers to get five amendments to the defense-spending bill passed without controversy particularly one prohibiting torture. “This amendment," explained Grayson to any Members who might not be paying attention, "makes the intent of Congress clear; it makes the law clear: We. Don’t. Torture.
"Since President Obama is asking us to trade some of our privacy with respect to our phone calls and our use of the Internet for greater protection against terrorism, at the very least we need to know exactly how our privacy is being violated."-- Aryeh Neier, in a New York Review of Books blogpost,"Spying on Americans: A Very Old Story"by KenIn this voluminous NYRB blogpost (I'm thinking it mus
Monday we looked at Jason Farago's definitive Cory Booker analysis in the Guardian. One conclusion that struck me was about his lackey-like relationship with Big Business in general and Wall Street in particular.
If you read Ken's preview of the Iranian presidential election Friday night, you probably got the impression Hasan Rowhani was the guy we should be rooting for.
