These guys get blamed for EVERYTHING.
- Edward Snowden appears unwilling to face the legal consequences of his asserted-conscientious civil disobedience: he has stated his intent to fight his extradition from Hong Kong back to the United States tooth and nail. Talk about talking out of both sides of one's mouth: one minute Snowden says he is not currently in Hong Kong to 'hide from justice', the next insists he will not return to the United States without immunity from prosecution or acquiesce to the legal process of extradition. Snowden was either engaged in an act of civil disobedience (i.e. violating the law) for moral reasons or he wasn't. Snowden's post-disclosure comments and conduct say a lot that is not too charitable about him, frankly. Especially since he has now, in an act clearly not in furtherance of Americans' right to know about the PRISM program as it related to our civil liberties, leaked classified information about US intelligence/spying operations directed at China. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others gladly went to jail because they believed their acts in contravention of the law were in furtherance of higher moral principles. So it's hard to have a whole lot of sympathy for a low-level IT tech claiming that he should escape even being brought to trial in the country whose laws he allegedly wants changed.
[For the record, since here at Daily Kos the periodic 'You're either for us or agin' us' mentality has once again reared its head over Edward Snowden, the PRISM program, the 'might be legal, might not be legal yet is definitely unholy' offspring of the warrantless Stellar Wind spying program begun by the Bush Administration, is an affront to the foundational principles of the United States—the same position this writer took 7 ½ years ago when Bush's warrantless spying on American citizens was finally brought to our attention by the New York Times. Making something legal, as the Obama Administration contends it did by expanding that surveillance while still requiring a secret FISA warrant, doesn't mean that it's right. In other words, to paraphrase another Kossack, this writer hates PRISM 'with the force of 1,000 suns.']
- Speaking of PRISM (who isn't) the Obama Administration and President Obama himself are looking more and more desperate about damage control and less and less principled about former Senator Obama's promises to rein in the Bush Administration's overreach where spying on US citizens is concerned every day. We have been now promised some greater details. Yet an FBI official has also now actually said, with a straight face, that PRISM could have 'stopped 9-11.' Both the Administration and Congresscritters are also citing the successful thwarting of a 2009 terrorism threat against NYC subways as justification for the program, based upon e-mails that would have been obtainable without PRISM. When the Obama Administration has to rely upon a defense ('9-11, 9-11, 9-11') that was trademarked by the Bush Administration as a justification for its overreach, it cannot possibly help the President's credibility on his stated assertion (before he became President, anyhow), that he wanted a reasonable balance between the needs of antiterrorism efforts and privacy rights. But to be fair, the Administration is not alone in being in serious damage control mode over PRISM right now.
- The FBI raided and seized records from the Montebello offices of California State Senator Ron Calderon (D) and the offices of the state Senate's Latino Legislative Caucus. No official comment has been forthcoming from the FBI, and the underlying warrant is under seal. However, Calderon's attorney Mark Geragos contends that the raid 'is the result of a leak from DOJ.' Not sure why this fact is relevant to the defense of Geragos' client, but with the world focused on leaks these days, perhaps Geragos' is relying on the knee-jerk assumption that there is always a nexus between government leaks and criminal government behavior, if you look hard enough.
- According to the United Nations, approximately 93,000 people have been casualties of the ongoing Syrian civil war, including 6,500 children. This news comes at the same time as the Obama Administration claims to have confirmed that the al-Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its opponents in the war, crossing what the President once referred to as a 'red line' separating direct US military support for the Syrian rebel cause from what has previously been the Administration's 'humanitarian aid and diplomacy' approach. Thus, we're going to be sending weapons to the Syrian opposition forces. (Has anyone else seen this movie before?)
- As of Thursday night, 360 homes had been destroyed in the 'Black Forest Fire' raging in the outskirts of Colorado Springs, with no containment, fickle winds, rising humidity, 2 deaths and a mandatory evacuation order for 1,000 homes as of this writing. At the same time, another wildfire is doing its own damage just 50 miles southwest, resulting in the mandatory closure of the Royal Gorge Bridge, one of Colorado's biggest tourist attractions. And 'high fire danger" season has only really just begun.
- Did you know you were a copyright infringer when you last sung Happy Birthday to You (or one of its offspring derivatives, such as the version we used to sing as children in the 'Hood that involved monkeys, smells and zoos?) Apparently, Warner Music Group believes that the song is not in fact in the public domain such that it has a right to collect royalties from people who want to use it. This is despite the song being the most performed song in the world. One can only hope that the pending declaratory relief action to declare Happy Birthday to You (itself a derivative work based upon a song no longer protected by copyright, apparently) in the public domain actually takes care of this. Otherwise, birthday videos of folks singing off-key are going to get a lot more boring . . . .
- Chief Justice Roberts must be trying to soften up us anti-racists up for what is anticipated by many to be a gutting SCOTUS decision in Fisher v. University of Texas. In response to a
judicial misconduct complaint lodged by LULAC, the NAACP and others, Justice Roberts has ordered a rare out-of-circuit transfer and ethics review into the virulently racist, ethnophobic and ablest remarks made by Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit. As a reminder, Judge Jones (formerly Chief Judge of the 5th) proudly flew her Stormfront freak flag during a panel at University of Pennsylvania Law School in February of this year. Specifically, she claimed (even after she got push back, so much that she ultimately lost it, requiring the panel Q & A to be ended abruptly), that (a) Black people and Latinos are 'predisposed to violent crime;' (b) Mexican convicts on death row are 'better off' and would rather be on death row than imprisoned in Mexican prisons; and (c) claims of mental retardation as a defense against imposition of the death penalty were 'a red herring' that did the mentally disabled a 'disservice.'
- Mississippi Goddam. In yet another display of the absolutely clueless approach to teenage pregnancy beloved by the right wing, on July 1 doctors and midwives attending births in Mississippi will be required to obtain umbilical cord blood if the delivering mother was under the age of 16 at the assumed time of conception if either (a) the putative father is 21 years old or more or (b) "paternity is in question." This blood is then to be delivered to the state Medical Examiner, who swears that information will not be entered into Mississippi's criminal DNA database. Honest. Supposedly, this law is intended to "help find statutory rapists" and to "combat teenage pregnancy." But how hard does one have to look for the statutory rapist when the over-21 father is already known (Scenario 1 under this law?) Or where there "question" about paternity at birth arises because more than one possible father has been identified whether or not he is age 21+ (Scenario 2?) And, as for the claim that this is going to somehow be 'reduc[ing] teenage pregnancy?' Really? REALLY? How many little girls (which is what a girl is if she is under the age of 16) are likely to pause and think 'Gee, I better not engage in this birth-control deficient booty call because if I get pregnant 9 months from now my umbilical cord blood is going to be collected by the government?' Most children that age don't even stop to think 'OMG my parents are going to be home any minute and if I get they are going to kick my whole ass' when they decide to engage in sexy time without birth control (which is what results in most teenage pregnancy, let's be honest.) Ah, well: what did we expect from Mississippi? Common sense approaches to teenage pregnancy such as ready access to birth control and comprehensive sex education? Come on now: it's Mississippi. Goddamn.
- It's official: aliens are not to blame for Scientology. Who knew?