electronic surveillance

Almost all the Koch-funded far right extremist groups have now joined the battle to nominate teabagger Matt Bevin over McConnell in the May 20th Kentucky primary. The latest, this weekend, was the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Just over a week ago, we presented a post featuring JFK ruing the day he had ever decided to keep Allen Dulles as head of the CIA. NOt just that-- JFK was ruing the day he had ever gotten into business with the CIA at all. Incredibly incompetent and determined to run its own unaccountable proto-fascist foreign policy, the CIA, Kennedy came to realize, was the center of evil in American politics.

Judge Walton says: "The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court. The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance."by KenYou want a good laugh?You know the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the one created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to issue surveillance warrants in cases too secret to go through normal court channels?

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. . . .

The day before the big vote on the Amash-Conyers Amendment to protect the 4th Amendment from encroachments by the NSA, someone on a discussion group I participate in asked how the Democratic leaders would vote.

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.

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:

"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