Michael Gurnow

Do you remember what these 15 congresscritters have in common?

I read The Edward Snowden Affair by Michael Gurnow a couple of years ago and did a dozen or so posts about it since then.

Tuesday, we were looking at some of the reasons Hillary is doing less well-- even in states trending her way like Florida is now-- than she could be doing. While I was writing the post, I got a note from Ted Lieu about the Yahoo revelations.

Today, while Trey Gawdy's absurd and failing witch-hunt was playing out on TV-- all eleven gruesome hours of it-- Alan Grayson sent out a message to his supporters that says, in part

The 40 or so far right-extremists and libertarians who topped Boehner and denied McCarthy the speakership and are now deciding Paul Ryan's fate, are easy targets because they are generally misogynistic, homophobic racists. Some are neo-Nazis and even more are Confederates. But does that mean they're always wrong about everything? And, more to the point, what does that say about the bottom-up congressional rebellion they're leading against the House leadership rules now?

The intrinsically embarrassing nature of the Patriot Act came front and center again with the appearance on the national scene of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. This is a mature democracy? And for Obama... how did he shift from a senator so eloquently critical of unconstitutional surveillance practices to a chief proponent of expanding them?

Early in the third season of House of Cards, Russian President Victor Petrov has the Russian security police arrest American gay rights activist Michael Corrigan in Moscow, which causes a disturbance in U.S. domestic politics (and international relations).

Ever hear someone bitterly decrying "all Germans" as Nazis? I heard plenty of that growing up in a Jewish community in Brooklyn and later I heard plenty of it when I lived in Amsterdam. But there was always one response that could stop anyone going down that path in their tracks-- something about a family that took a Jew or a resistance fighter in and hid them from the Nazis in their home.

Getting control over congressional oversite was the biggest goal of the CIA and NSA in this election cycle. They’re actively infiltrating CIA agents into Congress itself. On the Democratic side, Steve Israel conspired with them to push forward several CIA candidates, including, among others, Kevin Strouse (PA-08) and Bobby McKenzie (MI-11). They were unable to gain any traction and were eventually abandoned by the DCCC to their own miserable fates. Both are expected to lose badly November 4.

When I think back to high school and recall the books I read that have had the most impact on my thinking since then, certainly the dystopian novels 1984 (1949) by George Orwell and Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley ranked high among them. Our world must never turn into the world’s created by Huxley and Orwell. This afternoon we looked at a reason to cast a vote to reelect Colorado Senator Mark Udall based on his role in preventing 1984 encroachment by the CIA and the rest of the U.S.