Probably. I think it's important to raise hell when these things first happen, because once the executive gets away with something the next President is going to do more of the same.

I hope congress takes Obama's advice from yesterday and rescinds the AUMF, but I can't really imagine that happening.

I think it might be argued - as a hypothetical - that McCain might have actually been more reluctant to use them in the first place. He would have likely been the subject of more backlash (as you suggest) and honestly I don't trust him to have had the good sense to use them if it cost him too many political points.

Yeah, as expected, I'm exceptionally comfortable with the practice as described here ... although the pollsters haven't called me to ask.

Holy shit.

That's just asinine. There's plenty of places to cut budget. That's not a good option and does nothing to eliminate their real problem.

No.

I dunno whether it's because you're a libertarian or what, but you seem overly eager to reduce everything to D/R.

I believe that most people are fine with drone killings because "those people attacked America." It doesn't matter the political party of the President authorizing them. Not EVERYTHING is about that.

Surprised?

Sorry DT everything political is about D and R. Go to the comments section of any article, listen to any liberal or conservative friend of yours, watch any news show, read any two page stretch in this thread. I know you aren't that naive either. Anything Obama does good or bad is bad, anything Bush did good or bad was bad. The support or non support really comes down to that.

For stupid people, yes. I like to think that smarter people are capable of evaluating individual actions/policies on their own merits without resorting to partisan-goggles immediately.

Absolutely agree with everything you just said and I will let you throw out a percentage for stupid and uninformed about politics and then tell me why I was wrong at all in my initial post.

Oh yes, the vast majority are stupid and/or uninformed about politics. But I think you do yourself a disservice when you begin a conversation making those assumptions. They're quite likely true, but it's (a) disrespectful to the person you're talking to, and (b) makes you look similarly uneducated/uninformed.

Take the higher road, and then you can roll your eyes and shake your head righteously when the person you're conversing with demonstrates they're on the lower road.

Except the only point I was making in my original post way up the page was that had McCain won the election more of the electorate would be up in arms with the drone strikes. (Which would be a good thing for me. Not the McCain win, which would have been horrible, but more people in favor of due process) I wasn't attacking people for D/R mindset(and I definitely wasn't being critical on anyone on this board) I was saying that this would be an instance where the D/R mindset would be a positive thing.

But see I disagree. I don't think if McCain won anymore people would have been up in arms. I think that's an instance of a case where you're misattributing partisan bias. I don't think that people give Obama a pass on drones because he's a Democrat, I think they (on both sides of the aisle) give him a pass because "brown people attacked us on 9/11...brown people are bad."

Obama, good to see him as typical teen (but I did grimace some).

Obama's Prom Photos | TIME.com

Re: Austerity

Here's something to chew on from the latest issue of Businessweek (part of my Sunday morning reading).

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the economy is operating about 6% below it's potential (that's about $1 trillion per year).

According to budget policy analysts at the Economic Policy Institute (also nonpartisan), every dollar that the economy operates below its optimal level increases the defecit by 37 cents due to cyclical factors such as lower tax receipts, etc.

If only we had projects to do, people to do them and historically low borrowing rates. Oh well...

Although pro Obamacare, not sure if I'm convinced based on one state and its possible that CA insurers have underestimated (e.g. got it wrong). Let's see what happens in an update in a couple years ... but I'll take the good news.

California Obamacare premiums: No ‘rate shock’ here

Interesting numbers. A single person at 150% of FPL makes what? Just over 17k?

The silver plan premiums may work - the question is how much do they subsidize the rest of the cost sharing because the silver plans I have seen have 3k deductibles before coinsurance.

Secret Service busts $6 billion money laundering scheme | Fox News

What does Bitcoin or any digital currency have to do with the gold standard?

Michelle Bachmann announces she will not seek re-election (H/T to Politico).

The idea of pegging your currency value to any single commodity.

A Pakistani AQ #2 which might make him a #3 or #4 level overall.

Waliur Rehman Dead: Pakistan Taliban No. 2 Reportedly Killed In U.S. Drone Strike

Bitcoin is more like our fiat currency. It is not pegged to anything tangible. It is a digital algorithm which the founders say has a limited or finite amount. But they can really have as many as they want made.

Gold is a tangible object. You can find more through mining, which would introduce more into the market and impact the price. The Bitcoin people try to make it sound like their product is similar because you can "find" some through gimicks. But, they have control over the amount and how it is introduced.

The whole Bitcoin thing is a giant firecracker waiting to blow up. Mostly because Governments will use their monopoly on force to make it eventually go away. The whole value of a product like Bitcoin is the anonymous nature of the currency.

Man, you really gotta love Fox news.

WTF!??!!?

All-Male Fox Panel Laments Female Breadwinners - YouTube

The death of Sen. Lautenberg marks the end of an era. There are no more WW2 vets serving in the senate.

Despite Megyn Kelly's eventual rant, the lamenting of the trend actually matches the responses to the poll that prompted the subject in the first place.

Hard to believe recession officially ended 4 years ago. Housing market is only just recovering in the past year.

Recession ended 4 years ago: How far have we come? - Economy

We are in such a transitional time in both the country & the world I believe. We are literally not doing things because we have impossible stagnation in the government. And thats due to corruption & useful idiots to the corrupted.

I'd like to think we'll see a major uptick of jobs in the near future but not so long as we continue to keep the construction industry on the sideline waiting to build houses or something else we dont need. Thats the sector of employment that was hit the hardest when the economy tanked & its the sector that has the most to contribute in my view still. Maybe we'll actually get of our asses & do something about it...or not.

What the actual fuck is this shit:

Report: Gov't collecting millions of phone records under top secret order - POLITICO.com

"IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or "telephony metadata" created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries. Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information,. including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call. Telephony metadata does not include the substantive content of any communication, as defined by 18 U.S.C. ? 2510(8), or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer."

Its called living under a federal government that no longer cares about the 4th amendment. (and hasn't for some time this is not an Obama thing) But I what do I know I am just a nutcase Libertarian conspiracy nut? Anyways the people get exactly what they vote for so they have no one to blame but themselves.

And remember this is just the shit that is being reported on or the press (British) is figuring out. The top story in the American press right now is whether or not the pro ball players used drugs to give them an advantage.

Trying to parse the mumbo jumbo language, I think it says they have a record of every connection made involving at least one end of the call in the U.S., time, date, duration, etc. The content of the conversation is not included.

Speculating, or even just wag'ing, about a possible use would be something like a tapped phone call where the NSA was privvy to the contents of the conversation, this would allow them to readily see who the other (i.e. non-tapped) party in the call was.

This, along with the IRS scandal, isn't going to help Obama's popularity and negotiating position.

Also, I like how it was British newspapers that broke this latest story.

American press is too busy worrying about if the spotlight is too much for Michael Jackson's kid by putting her and her story in the spotlight.

This story is probably the worst of all of what's come out of late in my opinion. People just being listened to for the hell of it and the idea they aren't listening is BS.

I thought this was established practice under Bush, and that Obama has (sadly) made it clear he was not going to do anything to change it.

Is there something different about this particular instance?

Bush had the same program and openly defended it, where Obama continued it in secret for 5 years. I don't think it's been reported previously that Obama had continued this particular program, collecting massive amounts of private phone records from private carriers.

I feel a little guilty that I can't bring myself to care about either administration doing this. And I'm not sure how much of a reasonable expectation of privacy you have about numbers you call and how long the conversations are, when you know that information is logged by the phone companies. A couple of years ago, Obama made the argument that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in cell phone tower data records - i.e, where your phone is at all times. That one's a tougher call to me.

What's humorous is that people think this is only happening with Verizon. I would be more shocked if there was a phone company/internet provider it was not happening with. You get what you vote for... who knows maybe it is keeping us more safe? My opinion is that it is not but until enough people stop reelecting politicians on both sides of the aisle that renew the Patriot Act then they have nobody to blame but themselves when someone decides to take it a step further than Obama or Bush and start doing to Americans what we already do to a lot of innocent people all over the world.

It's interesting to me that the dividing line about whether stuff like this is OK isn't right/left or Democrat/Republican, it seems to be whether you're in power or not. Bush and Obama agree it's cool, most others say its not. Maybe that just shows how power corrupts. But being super-4th-amendment-protector seems like an easy position to take when you're not in the position of being responsible for national security. I'm at least willing to be open minded about it and to try to understand it from the position of someone in power - even though that's pretty impossible to do when we don't have access to a lot of the information that they're basing decisions on. I'd be more concerned if it's something that had a practical impact on u.s. citizens or regular criminal law enforcement.

And I forgot to mention Benghazi.

No doubt. Bush, Obama, future presidents don't want a 9-11 type body count on their hands with questions about what they didn't do to stop it. I completely understand the political motivation and the people for the most part don't seem to care either so it really isn't a losing proposition for them.

I just fear when enough is enough. Every new person employed by the NSA, FBI, CIA, TSA, DEA, ATF, DOD is currently adding to our debt. There is no doubt some of the great empires in the history of the world were not undone by military losses but by economic collapse. Who knows maybe Al-Queda is smarter than we think and realize that putting a scapegoat on an airplane with a bomb in his shoe or with a truck full of explosives in Times Square costs the United States billions of dollars a year and at some point we're going to go broke. I think paying someone to keep track of panerd's calls to his wife and friends is a waste of my tax money no matter how small a cost it really is. It's like searching the 90 year old white grandma getting on a plane, waste of resources that could be spent actually keeping us safe or paying down the debt.

.

I find it interesting that the Democrats, who were critical of Bush for this program, are okay with it now.

I find it interesting that any Republicans, that were ok with it under Bush, would be critical of this.

Is anybody really surprised by this? Obama did vote to give AT&T protection back when Bush was President and has always voted for, and supported, efforts to keep this kind of thing going. I would say that anybody surprised by this has not been paying attention. It also is yet another reason to laugh at "conservatives" who foam at the mouth about how much Obama is changing things. Overall, very little has changed. Obama is not pushing a major progressive agenda and was never going to. He is much more like Reagan than many would be happy to admit (on both sides of the aisle).

Who are you referring to?

The simple fact is, its been going on for 2 administrations now, its not recording content (no matter what you paranoid gits think that would be way more data than even the NSA could collect regularly) its nothing more than the records that all carriers ALREADY KEEP ON FILE FOREVER.

When there is a warrant issued for phone records, this is the info they receive. The NSA is simply stockpiling such records for ease of access involved with tracking possible terrorist threats (granted probably a lot more too but the end result is the same)

Collecting the data en-masse simply cuts out the time delay when an actual need for the data emerges.

From one of the paranoid gits:

It's been going on for 2 administrations? Thanks goodness its all for my safety! No constitutional issues here whatsoever. Wonder why this had to be done in secret? Nah, why question its for our safety! Terror! Safety! Please keep me updated on what else the government is doing to keep us safe.

-Paranoid git

Lawmakers Defend U.S. Collecting Verizon Phone Records - Bloomberg

Typical political posturing by both sides. Just a matter of who is doing the action and the standard reaction to the outrage to the American people, as if they had no clue to what was going on.

Well, at least this wont get worse

It's all for your safety! Again though I am more amused by a facebook user who thought that linking themselves to all of their friends and acquaintances, showing their interests and political leanings, often showing where there are at any given time would be of any interest to a national spy agency. It says it right in their agency title. Of course they aren't supposed to be spying on Americans. Except of course for terror and safety and terror.

NSA taps data from 9 major Net firms | FLORIDA TODAY | floridatoday.com

Yes, because circumventing the constitution in the name of expediency is such a good idea.

Because everyone who decides the law doesn't need to apply to them because it's "faster this way" has our best interests at heart.

Because there's no precedence in history for what happens when governments sieze power they were never meant to heave.

NSA doesn't stand for National Spy Agency.

LOL, the lovely world of government doublespeak. Stasi: Ministry for State Security. KGB: Committee for State Security. Shin Bet: General Security Service

You're right Cartman! The S stands for security and the NSA is not a spy agency!!!

I didn't say they weren't a spy agency. My uncle used to work for the NSA so I'm well aware of what they do. You were the one who said it was in the agency's title.

It is. Only a fool thinks security means anything but spying for any of the government "intelligence" agencies. But you got me!

No Such Agency!

Did you guys know that Hitler and Obama don't have any letters in common in their last name.

You think that's a coincidence.

Don't be fooled.

Yep. It wasn't until the late 70s when my uncle could actually say who he worked for. I remember that whenever he would come to visit, we'd always get phone calls verifying who we were. My dad was taking Russian classes and was once practicing speaking with my uncle, when a voice came on the line and said 'Speak English'.

I think there's a lot of putting the cart before the horse here. The relevant debate isn't whether a government should break the law. I understand why people want to phrase it like that, but you're ignoring the tougher question. The test for constitutionality isn't "do I like what the government is doing?"

Pretty sure this passes as an unreasonable search.

I would like to think that, but then there was a recent decision that said cellphone users have no expectation of privacy.

Federal Judge: Only Powered-Off Cell Phones Deserve Privacy Protections | American Civil Liberties Union

What do you mean by "passes"? I think this just your subjective opinion about reasonableness.

My point is, people are making assumptions based on arguments that not everyone shares. It's not the position of the government that they are breaking a law because they have to. They would say that this IS constitutional. People can disagree with that, but I think we're being premature if we just skip all that, assume unconstitutionality, and then try to start this entirely separate debate about when its OK to break the law. That's some kind of argument fallacy that probably has a name that I'm not familiar with.

Ya, this is what I'm talking about, you can agree with the ACLU and think that ruling was out to lunch, or that the government as a matter of policy shouldn't do this, but you can't fairly say that the government is making a choice to violate the law in the interest of public safety when they're not actually violating the law, or when the law is unclear.

well, it is a good thing that judges never break the law.

And they always make the correct decision and never disagree on what is constitutional.

We are a country of laws and not men though, or something. We could all just follow our own version so the constitution and expect the government to be bound to that, but that's probably unworkable. Maybe Al Gore should have just disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision and moved into the white house. Maybe bring some of the army if he feels like anyone will try to stop him.

If people think this is such a huge disaster that the government has basic phone records, they can elect Ron Paul and like-minded legislators. Then eventually, we can all live in a country where most government activity is unconstitutional. Though, I feel like in that world Verizon might assume the responsibility for national security and would gain even more power. Except that we'd have less means of being a check on their behavior.

It is what it is. If it ever makes it to SCOTUS, it won't have to be a unanimous decision to be the law of the land.

Are we even talking about the same thing? What they are doing is wrong.

Molson is talking about a legal basis. The question of whether the meta-data is subject to privacy concerns (or whether looking at meta data is 'unreasonable' is a good discussion to have and I don't think it may be as cut and dried as people seem to believe.

Personally I don't like the NSA having this power and I didn't like it back in 2005/6 when it started, but the legal issues are a bit stickier than just "I don't like it".

Here is where your soul gets destroyed. There are a whole lot of "wrong" things that are perfectly legal and are done everyday.

Correct, judges are just people like you and me. They don't always get it right, which is why there are historical examples of changes in the interpretation of what is constitutional and what is not.

There are a few threads on the guy who shot the hooker who stole his cash. If that happens 10 times, the result will not be the same 10 times. I realize that was a jury decision, but you get the point.

It does not destroy my soul, I'm just saying if enough people don't stand for it, it will trend in a specific direction.

Yes. I don't like it. I never have. Is it illegal? I don't know, but seems likely that it isn't.

What happens if the judgments come down against it? The House/Senate will rally together and revise the law to fit nicely in some loophole provided by the judgment. They will give Verzion, et al, ass coverage so they can't get fucked by the masses who are seeking legal remedy. The band will play on.

I don't disagree with your general point... that at this moment the law states that this is all legal. Your second paragraph is a bit of a slippery slope in the other direction. You say that we (those of us outraged by PRISM and the NSA mining phone data) are leaping from government collecting phone records to something more sinister but then turn around and say the solution to this is a country where most government activity is unconstitutional. I agree with Grammiticus... why can't the government be wrong on this one (even the judges) without bringing schools, roads, welfare, the armed forces, college benefits, etc into the equation?

They already have that, based on the 'Protect America Act of 2007'.

Theoretically, this is true. But there is a machine that is already in motion. When it comes to "security" at a national level, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to do everything possible and less willingness to sunset any of it.

I was allowing for the possibility that this was found to be outside of that, but your point is taken. Either way, there will be a lot of bipartisan work done to make sure nobody pays a price for this, and that the program continues regardless of what some Judge(s) think(s).

There are way too many people who would blame an administration for not doing enough to combat terrorism if this program was ended and then an attack occurred.

Yes, we sometimes deserve the government we get.

They can be wrong on a policy, ethical, or strategic level, sure. There's just some inner personal pet peeve for me that emerges when people make the conclusory statements that this is illegal and violates the 4th amendment, and when they then base all other points on that assumption. You can't start a debate by just assuming the thing that is the critical dispute in the debate. I mean, you can, I guess, but I think that's an argument fallacy.

Slippery slope arguments are tough when it comes to the government because you can apply them to anything the government does and get terrible hypothetical results. To me, saying, "well, if they can do this, then what's stopping them from doing something that actually negatively effects anyone in some way," is just the mirror image of the schools/roads/welfare anti-libertarian argument. Government can obviously do too much or too little.

Edit: I got into this when were talking about infrastructure, but I think this is one of the mindsets that really holds us back, when you fight just on ideology instead of practical results and execution. Every battle in Washington is about ideology and momentum instead of problem solving. Except the people, like in the executive branch, whose job it is to actually do things. They're not looking at ideology, or at least not as much. They're looking at what they can legally do to promote national security, and what the practical positive and negative impacts of that will be. Nobody's made the persuasive case that this is illegal, and nobody's really identified any negative effects from this activity. It's just ideological arguments against it. The government can still be "wrong" to do it, or anything else, but I totally get how the decision-making is a completely different kettle of fish when you're in that position.

I'm more annoyed about Massachusetts (and probably every other state) paying welfare to 1200 dead people. The only real debate at the state houses though is whether welfare is good or bad, whether there should be more or less. Whatever it is, let's at least give it exclusively to people who are living.

My Way News - Authorities: Texas actress arrested in ricin case

Apparently she tried to set up her husband to take the fall for the ricin letters sent to Obama & Bloomberg. Her roles include "zombie" in The Walking Dead.

Resume here (all bit parts basically)

Did I miss some memo about ricin and setting someone up? That is now twice that has happened over the past couple of months.

That's too bad. In the Boston case a couple of months ago, it seemed fairly obvious in hindsight that the brothers were going to take some action at some point. And they had been flagged by a government that really doesn't share all that much with us. Yet whatever we do with all this data didn't come into play in preventing what's pretty much an unpreventable type of attack, nor did it lead us to the attacker.

I don't see the point of keeping this information unless it's more actively analyzed. And if it's more actively analyzed, I don't want it kept in the first place.

And now we can safely assume the government doesn't always have good intentions. We already have a couple of scandals going that make Watergate look like amateur hour.

It seems like we're forever in react mode with respect to terrorism. The solution isn't in living our lives in such a manner to appease potential terrorists, because they can't be appeased and it's not what America supposedly is all about. Nor can we can put a prophylactic on the country and prevent every possible type of attack. This isn't some hokey CBS procedural.

I guess I don't know what to do. I don't want to accept these bombings as part of life, nor do I think it's particularly wise or effective to go to this type of extreme to prevent exactly the same type of it-once-happened attack.

The older I get, the less certain I am of how to run the entire country. But I know what I don't like, and it's where we're headed right now with all this spy stuff and action-by-reaction.

Well there's certainly nothing resembling the national will needed to be consistently proactive, so I'm not sure there's a big choice left there.

Ya, I'd love to know what "proactive" means in terms of fighting terrorism and how many people would actually be in favor of it.

In the Boston marathon thread the government was simultaneously criticized for not stopping the bombers ahead of time, not catching them fast enough after it happened, and the techniques they used during the manhunt. With regard to the first one, it would seem like people are saying the government should spy more, and at detain people upon less suspicion. But they'll never actually argue that separately, only when it's tied to a specific event like this. So basically, people are OK with the PATRIOT Act, and spying, and searching, but only when its directly used to stop an actual terrorist act. But of course it's not that clean and tidy in practice. What do you do when there's thousands of potential threats?

I'd rather be in react mode than the type of "thought police" mode necessary to stop everything.

But sometimes react mode is overreact mode. Yes, I get it, we can't put a price on the life of someone killed or maimed in an attack. But the airline response was too much. Stronger cabin doors, better baggage security and effectively using the armed marshall policy was enough. The extra resources used could better be spent examining other possible means of causing great harm.

We're very lucky that the people who seem to believe that terrorism is warranted have absolutely no idea how to best mess with us. One intelligent leader who understands our society could do a lot of damage with very little risk.

+1

I've made that same basic observation for, oh, about 20 years now.

The leader of a rival terror group should take out a few celebrities or sports stars blame it in another terror group and watch as the entire populace demands vengeance in a style that JiMGa would be proud of. :)

Obama: "China can't spy on Americans, only their own government can do that!"

Obama: US, China in 'uncharted waters' on cyber - Yahoo! News

Full story is not out set with some contradictory claims. I would like to know who in congress were briefed specifically about this and let's hear their side of the story.

NSA Surveillance Program Oversight: White House, Congress Point Fingers At Each Other

when are they going after that whistleblower and leaker?

Can't find the link & I'm about to head out the door but I saw a headline on that somewhere about an hour ago.

As they should.

Would be nice to find another Gorbachev-Reagan relationship but doubtful. I think the public image is to play nice etc. but think we should be realistic and aggressively counter China.

Obama, China Make Climate Change Agreement

He outed himself.

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance | World news | guardian.co.uk

Good thing Booz Allen is not a public company. I would have predicted a steep drop off as majority of their business is government.

NSA leaker comes forward, warns of agency's 'existential threat' - CNN.com

"We trained him to froth at the mouth on command and throw himself into a gibbering fit, in which he is only able to scream NO at intensifying volumes"

"In other words, we've found the treatment to make someone into a Republican?"

Meme's get old quick.

Edit: And not to grammar nazi, but "Food Stamp ROLES up 70%"? ;)

S&P Warns that if the tea party attempts to slash expenditure or hold the debt ceiling hostage are successful, the US Credit rating will be downgraded (again, although it just went back up)

S&P | United States of America 'AA+/A-1+' Ratings Affirmed; Outlook Revised To Stable On Receding Fiscal Risks | Americas

Note to S&P: Go fuck yourselves.

Sounds like some of the more sensational claims by Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian in the NSA whistleblower story aren't standing up to closer scrutiny.

The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism | ZDNet

The S&P thing is such a publicity stunt. No one is afraid of the U.S. not paying their bills.

What I don't get is if we cut expenditure (reducing the growth of our debt), our rating will be reduced?

Stop speaking Sputnik.

They're talking about something like another sequester where the cuts would almost certainly reduce growth and tax revenue which, like in Europe, could cause the deficit to rise.

I don't think this has anything to do with a medium/long term deal on entitlements.