Stable Genius Liberal

Untitled

panasonicyouth: y’all should follow jamelle on twitter. he’s great.

Snowden thought leakers should be ‘shot’

Snowden’s online history shows him to be a bit of a typical uninformed yet condescending right winger.

War on coal: A pretty good idea.

the only way to consider new coal-fired plants a remotely plausible undertaking is to completely ignore the social costs of burning the coal. By the same token, simply throwing all my garbage into my neighbor’s back yard could look like a cheap and appealing alternative to proper trash disposal if I were allowed to completely ignore the costs to my neighbor.

Getting rid of direct subsidies and then attacking indirect subsides is all that is need to make wind and solar competitive.

NSA Surveillance Leaks Prompt Legislation

One of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — allows the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies. Lawmakers have repeatedly voted to prevent the act from expiring. The government only needs to show that the information pertains to an “authorized investigation.” No connection to a terrorist or spy is required. Under today’s proposal, the act would be amended to require “the government to show relevance to an authorized investigation and a link to one of three categories of a foreign agent, power, or group.” Another provision would demand the government “to provide a statement of the facts and circumstances” to the court to justify the surveillance, lawmakers said.

This is an trivial reduction in FISA court power and yet it is far from certain to pass. Undoing the damage of the patriot act will take a generation.

EFF: Multiple New Polls Show Americans Reject Wholesale NSA Domestic Spying

Two-thirds of Americans think the NSA’s role should be reviewed. The poll also showed Americans demanding accountability and more information from public officials

The story is getting out despite of the media rather than because of it.

Edward Snowden tells South China Morning Post he took Booz Allen job to collect NSA information

That qualifies as espionage.

Glenn Greenwald Takes Apart David Gregory for Trying to Criminalize Journalism

GREENWALD: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalist should be charged with felonies.

Worth watching. David Gregory, are you serious?

Senators say NSA phone records played little role in stopping terror plots

“saying ‘these programs’ have disrupted ‘dozens of terrorist plots’ is misleading if the bulk phone-records collection is actually providing little or no unique value.”

Worth a read.

Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant

Newest Greenwald scoop.

Evidence that the NSA Is Storing Voice Content, Not Just Metadata

I thought that voice was too costly to store, but it just might be that a large set of phone calls are stored to be collected later by court order.