National security

"Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money.

Plus, Richard Cohen walks back his "just plainwrong" (mis)judgments of Edward Snowden"Some computer has a strange sense of humor. . . .

The great Art Buchwald"During his later life, [Art] Buchwald, an old-school liberal who died in 2007, at the age of eighty-one, spent a lot of time kvetching about the fact that, unlike Mary McGrory and Daniel Schorr, he didn't make it onto Richard Nixon's famous White House enemies list.

He's already shown he's wiling to lie for the cause. Who better to turn to to protect the secrets of our secrets?"It's really hard for most people to understand just how much contempt our lords and masters have for us. . . .

So you think you have a right to know something, anything, about the workings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? Maybe we need to, um, discuss this at greater length in, you know, secret."[The members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] all seem to have some type of a pretty conservative bent, I don't think that is what the Congress envisioned when giving the chief justice that authority.

by KenIt's one of those adages reporters are supposed to have echoing in their heads: Follow the money. But it doesn't always (often?) happen in the journalistic big leagues, especially when it's money that's connected to Big Money.

RT | July 11, 2013

US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.

Confidential to budding spies: In general it's better not to share your "confidential" plot machinations with your investigation target.by KenYou've probably heard about this, from the NYT:

By Tim Cushing | techdirt | June 26, 2013

US Should Top the List of the International Quota for Political Refugees