Stable Genius Liberal

GOP bill cuts NSA funding for data collection violations

A tiny step in the right direction. Bipartisan too.

The Surprising Truth About Government Fraud

the culprits are usually managers and executives, not “welfare queens.”

Worth a read.

Moment of Truthiness

Do people like Mr. Cantor or Mr. Paul know that what they’re saying isn’t true? Do they care? Probably not. In Stephen Colbert’s famous formulation, claims about runaway deficits may not be true, but they have truthiness, and that’s all that matters.

And please stop saying both sides are just as bad. MSNBC is not reporting we are running a surplus. The NYT isn’t reporting there is no deficit. Its isn’t the same.

Rand Paul’s aversion to facts

Friedman is the king of monetarism; to assert the opposite highlights Paul’s significant ignorance on a subject that should be in his bailiwick.

Intelligence committee withheld key file before critical NSA vote

“It is not acceptable for the intelligence committee, or any other committee, to withhold critically important information pertaining to a program prior to the vote,” Amash told the Guardian

The NSA is not acting in good faith.

James Clapper, who lied to congress; will pick panel to review if he is lying to congress

In practice — not theory — Clapper gets to chop the draft of the interim and final reports, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would — again, in practice — assist in selecting the members of the review group

How is this in any way oversight?

Why Did Milton Friedman Think a Modern Economy Needed Heavy-Handed Government Regulation in the Liquidity Services Industry and Nowhere Else?

he was confident that someday he or somebody else–maybe even me–would find a good, concise, convincing way of proving the point that a modern economy needed very heavy-handed government intervention in regulating the commercial banking industry but nowhere else. It was, he thought, something about the social waste of unnecessary bankruptcy, the catastrophic consequences of bank failures, debt deflation, and the fact that the price of liquidity services was intimately tied up with the units of account that we used to denominate our web of debt.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Ending Michael Bloomberg’s Racist Profiling Campaign

Coates finds the part of the opinion where the law’s bias is explained.

Obama: New oversight but no change to spying power

The NSA has been lying to congressional oversight committees since 2006. Why would new oversight prevent this?

NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens’ emails and phone calls

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA’s dragnet surveillance programs.

Basically, everything we have heard from the NSA about the scope of their activity since 2006 has been a lie.