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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Americans Are Expecting to Retire Much Later
Too bad that there will neither be retirement benefits nor jobs for those folks when they become seniors. And Social Security only if they fight like hell now to defend it.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
No, I implied that administrative subpoenas are not warrants granted by a judge to whom one has to provide probable cause. At least the phone company got an administrative subpoena, eh. Instead of a national security letter.
I found it interesting that there were four bipartisan grandstanders.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
Seems that a bipartisan group of members of Congress (Amash, Polis, Mulvaney, and one other) is introducing a bill to require warrants for the subpoenaing of phone logs. My guess is that it goes nowhere in this Congress.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
The Obama supporters are defending it in two ways at the moment: 1. The leak and AP’s action in contacting the CIA for confirmation (go figure) caused the CIA to scramble to shut down an ongoing operation, which resulted in the loss of information about an AQAP bombmaker. Fear. 2. This is just another bogus [...]
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
Thanks for the correction. I saw the article about Strongbox and its connection to Aaron Schwartz on Boing-Boing. I’m curious as to whether someone can break the anonymity. It looks simple enough to make a technical solution difficult. It also looks like it avoids the capability of a human being being able to break the [...]
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
He hasn’t lost it completely. This is the early stages. It took from the beginning February to the end of March for LBJ to decide that he had lost it. President Obama could do a 180 on this and start working to restore the Constitution. That effort is within his power, should he decide to. [...]
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
Gossip columnists don’t investigate (well, Winchell’s protege Jack Anderson wound up doing some investigation, the exception). What they do is peddle rumors in gussied up stylings. And they function in DC (and NY in the old days) as enablers of careers and destroyers of rivals. Anne Marie Coxe (Wonkette) was the terror of a lot [...]
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
When you’ve lost Mark Fiore and Bill Moyers, you’ve lost the argument.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘…and I did Not Speak Out, but Then They Came for… the AP’ by wendydavis.
What some of the PATRIOT Act cheerleaders in the media are realizing is that the seizure of the phone records of AP personnel was completely legal–and authorized under a law passed in 1986. And they know that the authorizations passed since 9/11 are worse. Among the progressive bloggers, emptywheel and digby have been all over [...]
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post My oh my!! Major McJobs Momentum in Milwaukee by Antipanglossian.
I understand that in Detroit when the manager of a fast food restaurant hired scabs, the scabs went out and joined the picket line within the first day and were scabs no more.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records
On Dems “rejecting Obama’s right wing pivot”, you are more optimistic than I am.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records
It is really simple. When Republicans want to harass an inconvenient element of the Wall Street media that has gotten out of line, they have the cover of Obama having set the precedent. Just as Obama has the precedent of Bush doing warrantless wiretapping, which continues to this day.
As for MSNBC, Ezra Klein, and Rachel Maddow, they know what preserves their revenues and jobs and what doesn’t. We will have to watch and see what they do. IMO, the credibility of all commentators is conditional. They either make sense or they don’t. They either provide verifiable facts or they don’t.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records
There’s no incentive for the GOP in pursuing this. But it makes a nice precedent the next time it’s their turn in power.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records
There are two points of concern for me.
1. The targeting of the press in order to get information to plug leaks in the government. There are freedom of speech abuses on multiple levels in that.2. The use of the para-Constitutional authority to go directly to phone companies and collect information on AP reporter contacts without a warrant. And then the nature of the notification letter to AP along the lines of “Guess what we’ve done?” This warrantless search and seizure is far from “reasonable”.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records
Excellent job, Kevin.
The key point that I saw in the reporting is that Rep. Spencer Bachus apparently asked the AG whether he had memorialized his recusal in a email or a letter. Holder’s answer reportedly was that he had not. This sounds like he made a verbal recusal and delegation to his deputy. I thought these guys were lawyers. I guess they are no longer sensitive to what appearances communicate.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post ‘Govts taking our rights away, not Al-Qaeda’ by CTuttle.
Well, that’s the whole logic behind asymmetric warfare. Let the bigger power destroy themselves because of the low-budget attack that you pulled off. Bush was the first sucker for it and the logic continues. Just amped up because Democrats have to show they’re not national security wimps, ya know.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post The Denigration of Stephen Hawking Reveals the Intense Dishonesty of Current Zionism by EdwardTeller.
Boycott and divest. That’s the way to deal with apartheid regimes.
Excellent. ET
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post Attorney General Eric Holder’s Contemptible Defense of the DoJ’s Seizure of AP Phone Records
The Department of Justice is free to seek Constitutional warrants in spite of any extra-Constitutional powers Congress might have given them. In this case, they did not seek warrants but used broad and controversial powers against the established press, with whom they nod-nod-wink-wink leak secrets all the time. T’would be ironic if some of Holder’s nod-nod-wink-wink leak information turned out to be “sensitive”. Someone should ask him what information he leaked.
This allows the espionage act to be used against Bradley Manning without the contradiction of the established press not being prosecuted or persecuted. The seeming distinction between established media and others just evaporated.
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TarheelDem commented on the blog post The Justice Department’s Seizing of AP Phone Records: A Continuation of Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Think of some of the arguments in the Bradley Manning case about how what Wikileaks did in no different from established media. Well, the DOJ just took that “established media” argument away.
But there might also be some heavy duty internal political struggle going on in this story as well.
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TarheelDem commented on the diary post What’s Missing ? by cmaukonen.
Excellent, cmaukonen. What’s missing? Real public space-you tried to find a venue for a meeting recently. People with enough time between jobs to do stuff, or not scrambling not to be unemployed, or not depressed and giving up. Ability to have a parallel child care venue. Folks with a long-term attention span in social interaction. [...]
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