Tag Archives: citizen

Buying Plan B Will No Longer Require an ID or a Prescription

by Mstyslava7ju Posted on June 11, 2013

Mother Jones

The Obama administration did an about-face on emergency contraception Monday evening, announcing that it will allow women to obtain Plan B One-Step over the counter without age restrictions or ID requirements.

Last month, the Department of Justice had appealed an April 5 ruling by US District Court Judge Edward R. Korman, who said the Food and Drug Administration should make all forms of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception, or EC, available over the counter to all women, regardless of age. Here’s the letter the DOJ sent Korman on Monday:

We write to advise the Court that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have complied with the Court’s April 10, 2013, judgment in the above-referenced case by granting the 2001 Citizen Petition and making Plan B One-Step (PBOS) available over-the-counter (OTC) without age or point-of-sale restrictions as described below. It is the government’s understanding that this course of action fully complies with the Court’s judgment in this action. Once the Court confirms that the government’s understanding is correct, the government intends to file with the Circuit Court notice that it is voluntarily withdrawing its appeal in this matter.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which had sued the administration to force universal availability of EC, welcomed the change, but noted that it still does not go far enough. “Now that the appeals court has forced the federal government’s hand, the FDA is finally taking a significant step forward,” said the group’s president, Nancy Northup. “But the Obama Administration continues to unjustifiably deny the same wide availability for generic, more affordable brands of emergency contraception.”

Northup added that CRR “will continue to fight for fair treatment for women who want and need more affordable options.”

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Buying Plan B Will No Longer Require an ID or a Prescription

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Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance

by nortom23 Posted on June 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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More on the NSA’s electronic surveillance program.


NSA Spying: An Obama Scandal?


The Domestic Surveillance Boom, From Bush to Obama


Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance


Judge at Center of NSA Spying Controversy Attended Expenses-Paid Terrorism Seminar


What Is the NSA Doing With All Those Phone Records?

In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week’s disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:

* On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

* I believe that the government’s implementation of Section 702 of FISA the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.

For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. The FISA court Wyden referred to oversees the surveillance programs run by the government, authorizing requests for various surveillance activities related to national security, and it does this behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Wyden’s statements led to an obvious conclusion: He had seen a secret FISA court opinion that ruled that one surveillance program was unconstitutional and violated the spirit of the law. But, yet again, Wyden could not publicly identify this program.

Enter the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest group focused on digital rights. It quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department for any written opinion or order of the FISA court that held government surveillance was improper or unconstitutional. The Justice Department did not respond, and EFF was forced to file a lawsuit a month later.

It took the Justice Department four months to reply. The government’s lawyers noted that they had located records responsive to the request, including a FISA court opinion. But the department was withholding the opinion because it was classified.

EFF pushed ahead with its lawsuit, and in a filing in April, the Justice Department acknowledged that the document in question was an 86-page opinion the FISA court had issued on October 3, 2011. Again, there was no reference to the specific surveillance activity that the court had found improper or unconstitutional. And now the department argued that the opinion was controlled by the FISA court and could only be released by that body, not by the Justice Department or through an order of a federal district court. In other words, leave us alone and take this case to the secret FISA court itself.

This was puzzling to EFF, according to David Sobel, a lawyer for the group. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union had asked the FISA court to release an opinion, and the court had informed the ACLU to take the matter up with the Justice Department and work through a district court, if necessary.

So there was a contradiction within the government. “It’s a bizarre catch-22,” Sobel says. On its website, EFF compared this situation to a Kafka plot: “A public trapped between conflicting rules and a secret judicial body, with little transparency or public oversight, seems like a page ripped from The Trial.”

Before EFF could get a ruling on whether this opinion can be declassified and released, it had to first sort out this Alice in Wonderland situation. Consequently, last month, it filed a motion with the FISA court to resolve this aspect of the case. “We want the FISA court to say that if the district court says the opinion should be released, there is noting in its rules that prevents that,” Sobel says. Then EFF can resume its battle with the Justice Department in federal district court for the release of the opinion. The Justice Department was ordered by the FISA court to respond by June 7 to the motion EFF submitted to the FISA court.

Currently, given the conflicting positions of the Justice Department and the FISA court, Sobel notes, “there is no court you can go to to challenge the secrecy” protecting an opinion noting that the government acted unconstitutionally. On its website, EFF observes, “Granted, it’s likely that some of the information contained within FISC opinions should be kept secret; but, when the government hides court opinions describing unconstitutional government action, America’s national security is harmed: not by disclosure of our intelligence capabilities, but through the erosion of our commitment to the rule of law.”

As news reports emerge about the massive phone records and internet surveillance programs—each of which began during the Bush administration and were carried out under congressional oversight and FISA court review—critics on the left and right have accused the government of going too far in sweeping up data, including information related to Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. There’s no telling if the 86-page FISA court opinion EFF seeks is directly related to either of these two programs, but EFF’s pursuit of this document shows just how difficult it is—perhaps impossible—for the public to pry from the government information about domestic surveillance gone wrong.

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Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance

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Obama is Bad on Civil Liberties, But That Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

by Aale Thomas Posted on June 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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I turned on Fox for a few minutes and heard Megyn Kelly talking to someone who claimed that Democrats would all abandon President Obama en masse over the latest leaks about NSA spying. Maybe so. But I’m curious about something: Is anyone really surprised by the recent revelations of NSA surveillance programs? Actually, let me rephrase that. You might be surprised to learn about details of the programs themselves, but are you surprised to hear that Obama approved them?

I can’t figure out why anyone would be. Obama voted for the 2008 FISA amendments, a position that outraged liberals at the time. He continued the Bush-era surveillance of communications networks. He ramped up the war in Afghanistan. He vastly increased drone use overseas. He’s declared a war on leakers. He participated in the assault on Libya. He’s approved the assasination of American citizens abroad. His DOJ has aggressively made use of the state secrets privilege. He’s fought relentlessly to block lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.

Basically, Obama’s record on national security and civil liberties issues has been crystal clear for a long time: He falls squarely into the mainstream of the elite, bipartisan, Beltway consensus on this stuff. He always has, just like every president before him. This isn’t the fourth term of the George Bush presidency, as so many people like to put it, but more like the 16th term of the Eisenhower presidency.

Will the public finally rebel after learning about the latest way their government is keeping tabs on them? I doubt it. As near as I can tell, most of the public is willing to sell their innermost secrets for a free iTunes coupon. Until we figure out a way to change that, none of this stuff is going to stop.

UPDATE: At the same time, maybe we should still be surprised to hear Obama say something like this:

But I know that the people who are involved in these programs… They’re professionals. In the abstract you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance.

Sure. And it’s possible, even likely, that these professionals aren’t abusing the data they’ve collected. Yet. But does Obama really think that a government that collects this kind of stuff won’t abuse it eventually? That’s vanishingly unlikely.

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Obama is Bad on Civil Liberties, But That Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

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NSA Has Been Hoovering Up Your Phone Records For Over a Decade

by Sandford Beech Posted on June 6, 2013

Mother Jones

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The NSA surveillance that Glenn Greenwald revealed last night has been in place since 2006:

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told reporters Thursday. The surveillance “is lawful” and Congress has been fully briefed on the practice, she added.

Her Republican counterpart, Saxby Chambliss, concurred: “This is nothing new. This has been going on for seven years,” he said. “Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this. To my knowledge there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint. It has proved meritorious because we have collected significant information on bad guys, but only on bad guys, over the years.”

Neither Feinstein nor Chambliss said this, but the obvious inference from their statements is that this program isn’t limited to Verizon. It’s almost certainly a universal dragnet that applies to every phone service provider in the country. What’s more, we’ve known since 2005 that a similar program was put in place by President Bush in 2002. Basically, then, NSA has been hoovering up all the telephone metadata in the United States for the past 11 years.

So what now? Republicans loved this program back when Bush approved it. Congress basically gave it its official blessing in 2007. President Obama thinks it’s a great idea. And congressional leaders, who have known about this for a long time, mostly seem to be fine with it. I don’t know what the public thinks, but we’ll probably find out soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if public support is up around 70 percent or higher once everyone figures out what this program really does.

It’s disheartening as hell that we’ve come to this. But the problem is that, like it or not, it probably works. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) certainly thinks so, telling reporters today that the surveillance program helped thwart a “significant” case of domestic terrorism “within the last few years.” That’s going to be hard to fight. The vast majority of the American public seems to think this is a fair tradeoff, and aren’t really concerned with spy agencies having access to their phone records. (If it were the contents of their calls, that would probably be a different story.)

What we really need to know is whether there’s any evidence that NSA has abused the program. I’m not even sure what “abuse” would mean in this context, since they seem to have free rein in what they do with the data, but more information on that score could—maybe—turn public opinion around. Where’s the whistleblower who will fill us in on this?

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NSA Has Been Hoovering Up Your Phone Records For Over a Decade

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The Protests in Turkey, Explained

by testdonekAQW Posted on June 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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Turkey is experiencing its largest and most violent riots in decades as tens of thousands of young people voice opposition to the moderate Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Hundreds of protesters and police have been injured as authorities try to quell the fourth day of demonstrations with tear gas, water canons, beatings, and a tightening grip on the media. Today, Erdogan accused the protesters of “walking arm-in-arm with terrorism.” Yet his defiant response is only making the crowds larger. In an echo of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, the movement has been galvanized by images disseminated on social media, such as a picture of a policeman spraying tear gas at a young woman in a red summer dress, her long hair swept upward by the blast. “The more they spray,” reads a popular Twitter caption, “the bigger we get.”

Click here to go directly to the latest updates.

Why are people protesting? Nominally, the protests were sparked by a government plan to replace Istanbul’s leafy Taksim Gezi Park with a touristy shopping mall—what the country’s leading historian, Edhem Eldem, sardonically derides as a “Las Vegas of Ottoman splendor.” Trees are especially precious in Istanbul, where only 1.5 percent of land is green space (compared to 17 percent in New York). But the protests quickly became symbolic of much broader concerns about Erdogan’s autocratic and socially conservative style of government.

Istanbul’s secularists chafe at the way he has rammed through development projects in this cosmopolitan cultural crossroads with little regard for the European and non-Muslim aspects of its history; a 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church may be destroyed as part of an overhaul of a port. What’s more, Erdogan has placed new restrictions on the sale of alcohol and availability of birth control. And he has jailed political opponents and members of the media.

How widespread are the protests? Since Friday, there have been demonstrations in 67 of Turkey’s 80 provinces, according to Turkey’s semi-official Andalou News Agency. At least 1700 people have been arrested.

What about damage and injuries? Photos show fires in the street and overturned and burned-out cars. One protestor was killed on Sunday night when a taxi slammed into a crowd, but the government’s press office claims the death was accidental. According to CNN, 58 civilians remain hospitalized and 115 security officers have been injured.

Is Erdogan just another Islamist dictator? Not according to Washington, which holds up Turkey as a shining model for democracy in the Islamic world. Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has twice returned to office with large pluralities of the vote. In recent years, Erdogan has kept up the pace of democratic reforms in Turkey by enshrining individual rights in its laws and placing the military under civilian control. “Yet even as the AKP was winning elections at home and plaudits from abroad,” writes Foreign Policy‘s Steven Cook, “an authoritarian turn was underway…”

In 2007, the party seized upon a plot in which elements of Turkey’s so-called deep state—military officers, intelligence operatives, and criminal underworld—sought to overthrow the government and used it to silence its critics. Since then, Turkey has become a country where journalists are routinely jailed on questionable grounds, the machinery of the state has been used against private business concerns because their owners disagree with the government, and freedom of expression in all its forms is under pressure.

How bad is the crackdown on the press? Pretty bad. At the same time CNN International was broadcasting live from Taksim Square on Friday, CNN Turk, the network’s Turkish-language affiliate, was showing a cooking show and a documentary about penguins.

Manolo88/Reddit

In 2009, Turkey’s tax ministry levied a whopping $2.5-billion fine against CNN Turk’s parent company, Dogan Yayin, in a move that was widely viewed as punishment for its critical coverage of the government. Some journalists who’ve written negative stories about the government and its allies have been fired or imprisoned. See this year-old CNN report on retaliation by the Turkish government:

So how are people in Turkey learning about the protests? Mostly through social media. “Revolution will not be televised; it will be tweeted,” reads a popular Istanbul graffiti scrawl. According to an analysis by NYU’s Social Media and Political Participation Lab, the Twitter hashtag #direngezipark had been used in more than 1.8 million tweets as of this morning—far more than the Egyptian hashtag #Jan25 was used during the entire Arab Spring uprising. And about 85 percent of those tweets that are geocoded have come from within Turkey.

Here’s a taste of what people are sharing:

Facebook has also emerged as a major source of viral Turkey content as citizen journalists use it to post videos of violent protest scenes. The Daily Dot‘s Joe Kloc has compiled some of the most widely shared street scenes:

A tear-gassed protester getting brutally kicked and beaten by police:

This morning, Erdogan called social media “the worst menace to society,” saying it has been used to spread lies about the protests and the government’s response. That’s probably not the best way to look like you care about what the protesters are saying.

What do hackers think about this? Over the weekend, Anonymous launched #OpTurkey, an anti-government hacking and DDoSing operation that resembles its work in Egypt and other countries during the Arab Spring. It has also given activists tools to skirt government internet censorship.

So is this the next wave of the Arab Spring? Not exactly. For one thing, most Turks are not “Arabs,” and they don’t necessarily view their nationality through an ethnic or religious lens. Compared to Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, or Syria, Turkey is much more Western-oriented, stable, prosperous, and egalitarian. From 2002 to 2011, the Turkish economy tripled in size. Per capita income in Turkey is $15,000 (compared to $6,600 in Egypt), and income inequality is less pronounced than it is in the United States. For now, at least, the protests seem less likely to spark a revolution than simply pull the rug out from Ergodan’s political agenda and electoral prospects. That said, Turkey’s last coup was just a little more than 30 years ago. The power dynamic could change quickly if Ergodan overreacts.

Who do I follow for more news about the protests? The blog What Is Happening in Istanbul has been rolling out updates. The leading Twitter hashtags are #direngezipark and #occupygezi. The Guardian is live-blogging the protests. Check back here for updates.

UPDATE 6/3/2013 5:15 ET: During a press briefing on the Turkey protests today, White House spokesman Jay Carney voiced “serious concerns” about the violent crackdown on protesters, whom he characterized as mostly “peaceful, law-abiding citizens exercising their rights.” That’s a far cry from how they’ve been painted by Erdogan.

UPDATE 6/3/2013 5:55 ET: Using a crowd-funding website, Turkish protestors have raised enough money to publish this letter to Erdogan as a full-page ad in the New York Times.

UPDATE 6/3/2013 6:54 ET: Turkish media is reporting that 22-year-old Abdullah Comert, a member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, died tonight of wounds to the head. Turkey’s Star Gazette reports that security forces are investigating the incident. Activists on Twitter immediately blamed police for the shooting, which, if true, would mark the first instance of security forces killing an #occupygezi protestor. However, the allegation hasn’t been independently confirmed.

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The Protests in Turkey, Explained

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Cigarette Maker Funded Dark-Money Conservative Groups

by 7GrittonMaine146 Posted on May 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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When we use the term “dark money,” we’re usually referring to politically active nonprofit groups—like the kind at the center of the recent IRS scandal—that spend millions on political campaigns yet don’t disclose their funders. Think Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and pro-Democrat Patriot Majority. Rarely, if ever, does the public learn who bankrolls these organizations.

This week, though, we got one such glimpse. As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Reynolds American Inc., the corporation behind Camel and Winston cigarettes, funded several high-profile dark money groups in 2012. Reynolds doled out $175,000 to Americans for Tax Reform, conservative activist Grover Norquist’s anti-tax group. The company also gave $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity, $45,000 to the US Chamber of Commerce, and $100,000 to the Partnership for Ohio’s Future, an Ohio Chamber-backed group that supported restricting the worker bargaining rights.

Here’s more from CPI‘s Dave Levinthal:

The tobacco company’s donations are just a fraction of the nearly $50 million that those two groups reported spending on political advocacy ads during the 2012 election cycle, almost exclusively on negative advertising. Federal records show that Americans for Prosperity alone sponsored more than $33 million in attack ads that directly targeted President Barack Obama.

But the money, which Reynolds American says it disclosed in a corporate governance document at the behest of an unnamed shareholder, provides rare insight into how some of the most powerful politically active 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits are bankrolled.

Reynolds American is the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, which makes Camel and Winston brand cigarettes.

“The shareholder specifically requested that we disclose information about 501(c)(4)s, and in the interests of greater transparency, we agreed,” Reynolds American spokeswoman Jane Seccombe said.

Large corporations—tobacco companies or otherwise—almost never release information about their giving to such groups, and it’s most unusual for the groups themselves to voluntarily disclose who donates to them.

After the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which freed corporations to pump vastly more money into American campaigns, businesses faced two options. They could donate to super-PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money but must disclose their donors. Or they could fund politically active nonprofits, which can dabble in politics but don’t name their donors. In the wake of Citizens United, we heard countless warnings about a “flood” of corporate cash into politics through big-spending super-PACs. But that flood never quite materialized: For-profit corporations accounted for just over $1 of every $10 raised by super-PACs in the 2012 election cycle. Instead, it was a small band of millionaires and billionaires that gave super-PACs most of their dough.

What the relatively small Reynolds American Inc. donations suggest is that corporations chose the nonprofit route and so avoided scrutiny of their political giving in today’s big-money era. In this case, Reynolds’ donations were disclosed only because a pesky shareholder asked for them to be. That’s not the case for most corporations, whose giving remains a secret.

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Cigarette Maker Funded Dark-Money Conservative Groups

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Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China?

by KetaHeadraf Posted on May 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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The small number of companies that dominate global meat production is about to get smaller. The Chinese corporation Shuanghui International, already the majority shareholder of China’s largest meat producer, has just bought US giant Smthfield, the globe’s largest hog producer and pork packer, in a $4.7 billion cash deal. (It still has to get past Smithfield’s shareholders and the US Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews takeovers of US companies.)

Now, I hope this merger of titans doesn’t provoke a xenophobic reaction. Shuanghui has strong ties to China’s central government, but it also counts Goldman Sachs among its major shareholders. And the US meat industry is already quite globalized. Back in 2009, a Brazilian giant called JBS had already barreled into the US market, and now holds huge positions in beef, pork, and chicken processing here. And true, as China has ramped up its food production—and rapidly reshaped hog production on the industrial US model—it has produced more than it share of food safety scandals, including recent ones involving hogs.

But as I have pointed out, the US pork industry is no prize either—it pollutes water as a matter of course, hollows out the rural areas on which it alights, relies heavily on routine antibiotic use, recently inspired a government watchdog group to lament “egregious” violations of food safety and animal welfare code in slaughterhouses, and uh, has an explosive manure foam problem.

So forget about where HQ is for the vast conglomerate that ultimately profits from running Smithfield’s factory-scale hog farms and slaughterhouses. The real question is: What does this deal telling us about the global food system and the future of food? Reuters offers a hint:

The thrust of the deal is to send the U.S. made pork to China, a factor that one person familiar with the matter said would help during Shuanghui’s CFIUS Committee on Foreign Investment review.

If Reuters is right that deal’s purpose is to grease the wheels of trade carrying US hogs to China and its enormous domestic pork market, then we’re looking at the further expansion of factory-scale swine farming here in the US: all of the festering troubles I listed above, intensified. For Smithfield itself, the deal is savvy, because Americans are eating less meat. In order to maintain endless profit growth, the company needs to conquer markets where per capita meat consumption is growing fast, and the China market itself represents the globe’s biggest prize in that regard.

As for China, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed in a blockbuster 2011 report, the central government strived for years for self-sufficiency in pork, even as demand for it exploded, by rapidly industrializing production along the model pioneered by Smithfield. By essentially buying Smithfield, the government may be throwing in the towel—saying, essentially, let’s just offshore our hog production, or at least a huge part of it, to the US.

In an ironic twist, China appears to be taking advantage of lax environmental and labor standards in the US to supply its citizens with something it can’t get enough of. Industrial pork: the iPhone’s culinary mirror image.

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Is the US About to Become One Big Factory Farm for China?

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Worse Than Watergate? The Ultimate White House Scandal Matrix

by Amy R. Eddy Posted on May 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Worse than Watergate. That’s the refrain coming from the Obama administration’s critics as it scrambles to tamp down a growing pile of scandals. “The Obama administration’s cover-up of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack surpasses Watergate,” states Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The IRS-tea party scandal “is far worse than Watergate,” according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). And Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Paul Babeu maintains that Fast and Furious “is a much larger scandal than Watergate.” And of course there is a hashtag: #WorseThanWatergate.

Comparing the scandal du jour to Watergate is an easy way to score political points. (Conservatives aren’t the only guilty ones here.) But if you’re interested in making a more subtle and perhaps accurate comparison, you need only refer to the United States’ long history of White House scandals, starting in the first days of the republic.

To help you keep track of them, we’ve plotted more than 25 on this matrix, organized by their relative seriousness and their place in our current collective memory. (The current crop of Obama scandals aren’t on there since it’s not yet clear where they fall on the continuum between, say, Billygate and Iran-Contra. See a missing scandal? Suggest it in the comments.)

The SCANDALs

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Watergate: The mother of all White House Scandals. It had everything but sex: A burglary, spying on political opponents, secret tapes, an enemies list, obstruction of justice, campaign-finance shenanigans, onimous-sounding acronyms (CREEP), memorable denials (“I am not a crook”), congressional investigations, crusading journalists, articles of impeachment, and the first resignation of a sitting president. Beat that, Benghazi.

Spiro Agnew: Before Richard Nixon stepped down, he was preceded by his alliteration-prone vice president, who had been charged with taking bribes and evading taxes. Agnew insisted until the very end that the “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history” had gotten it all wrong.

Iran-Contra: High-ranking officials in the Reagan Administration made an end-run around federal law by secretly selling missiles to Iran in order to help free American hostages in Lebanon and fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels. What could go wrong?

Missing Iraqi WMD: President George W. Bush and top members of his cabinet insist that Saddam Hussein is definitely almost nearly developing and or amassing weapons of mass destruction which he might probably absolutely use against us. The United States launches a preemptive invasion of Iraq. Ten years, tens of thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars later, the search for the elusive WMDs continues.

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Plamegate: After former ambassador Joe Wilson blew the whistle on the Bush White House’s claims of Saddam’s pursuit of nuclear materials, his wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA agent. The subsequent investigation leads to the conviction (and pardon) of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby.

Abu Ghraib, torture memos: Prisoner abuse at American military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and the CIA’s extradition and torture program were authorized by Bush and top administration officials. But that’s all behind us now.

NSA spying on US citizens: After 9/11, Bush authorized the National Security Agency to covertly surveil Americans’ email and phone calls—in violation of federal law.

Pentagon Papers: A secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War leaked by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the Johnson administration had been lying about the true scope and of the war. The Nixon White House tried to prevent their publication

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Teapot Dome: Before Watergate, there was Teapot Dome, the early 1920s scandal that led to President Warren G. Harding’s secretary of the interior being convicted for accepting bribes from oil companies to lease Navy petroleum reserves in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

DNC campaign finance scandals: In 1996, Vice President Al Gore attended an event at a California Buddhist temple that illegally funneled $65,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Eventually, the party had to return nearly $3 million in forbidden gifts, some from foreign donors such as James Riady, an Indonesian businessman who was fined $8.6 million.

Johnson impeachment: Disputes between President Andrew Johnson and Radical Republicans in Congress spun into a constitutional crisis when the House voted to impeach him in 1868. He survived in the Senate—by one vote.

Teddy Roosevelt’s corporate cash: After winning election as a trust-buster in 1904, Roosevelt and the Republican Party are revealed to have quietly courted big corporate donors.

The Grant administration: President Ulysses S. Grant’s terms were marred by a succession of high-level scandals, including the Whiskey Ring, Belknap affair, the Delano Affair, the salary grab, and the Cattelism scandal. The administration’s endemic corruption became known as “Grantism.”

Wikimedia Commons

LBJ’s mystery money: In 1963, Life magazine was preparing a bombshell exposé on how Vice President Lyndon Johnson had amassed a fortune through his connections to Texas oil barons. The article, which biographer Robert Caro says would have linked LBJ to the Bobby Brown Scandal, was set to drop in late November. Kennedy’s assassination killed the story and a planned Senate investigation.

XYZ Affair: A diplomatic kerfuffle led to an undeclared “Quasi War” between the United States and France in the late 1790s. Back home, it led to passage of the draconian Alien and Sedition Acts and fueled the growing split between President John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Hamilton’s affair and insider trading: In 1797, former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton revealed that he had carried on an affair with a married woman—while bribing her husband to let it to continue. He also defended himself against accusations of having used his position to engage in insider trading.

US attorney firings: In 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned amid an investigation into whether the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006 was politically motivated.

Pardongate: As he left the White House in January, 2001, President Bill Clinton hastily pardoned Susan McDougal (for contempt of court during the Whitewater case), his brother Roger (for old drug charges), and Marc Rich, a fugitive tax cheat whose wife had been a major Clinton donor.

Library of Congress

Lincoln Bedroom: The Clinton White House provided perks to big donors including stays in the Lincoln Bedroom as well as coffees, golf outings, or morning jogs with the president.

Whitewater: Failed Arkansas land deals involving Bill and Hilary Clinton spawns a wide-ranging investigation into several -gates: Filegate, Travelgate, and Troopergate (and eventually Ken Starr’s probe of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair).

“Ma, ma, where’s my pa?”: “Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!” This catchy slogan followed Grover Cleveland after he won election in spite of reports that he had fathered an illegitimate child.

Clinton-Lewinksy affair and impeachment: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” the hug, the blue dress, Ken Starr, “it depends on what the meaning of is is.” Good times.

Fast and Furious: A botched ATF operation birthed a conspiracy theory that

Jefferson-Hemings affair: Thomas Jefferson was dogged by rumors that he had fathered children with a slave who served as his “concubine.” Jefferson never addressed the allegations, but it is now known that Sally Hemings had six of Jefferson’s children.

SNAP/Entertainment Pictures/ZUMAPRESS.com

Petticoat Affair, a.k.a. the Eaton Affair: Ridiculous by modern standards, this scandal rocked Washington when Andrew Jackson’s secretary of war married a widow too soon after the death of her husband. It led to the resignation of most of the cabinet and was immortalized in the 1936 film, The Gorgeous Hussy, starring Joan Crawford.

Skeetgate: After President Obama says that “at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” skeptics demand proof. A photo of the president shooting is produced; the skeptics insist it’s faked.

Andrew Jackson adultery scanal: Forty years after he wed his wife Rachel, presidential candidate Jackson was attacked for marrying her before her divorce from her first husband was finalized, making Old Hickory an adulterer and the First Lady a bigamist. He blamed the smear campaign for causing her death shortly after he took office.

Solyndra: The federal government gave more than $500 million to a solar firm that went belly up. Even congressional inquisitor Rep. Darryl Issa (R-Calif.) eventually had to concede there was no there there.

Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS.com

Billygate: President Jimmy Carter took major heat when it was revealed that his ne’er-do-well brother Billy had received payments from the Libyan government.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s price “flub-dubs”: When Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency, the first lady set about remodeling the White House, but went over budget by $7,000. As complaints of her profligacy spread, the president wrote, “It would stink in the nostrils of the American people to have it said that the President of the United States had approved a bill overrunning an appropriation of $20,000 for flub-dubs for this damned old house when the soldiers cannot have blankets.”

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Worse Than Watergate? The Ultimate White House Scandal Matrix

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Obama Kinda Sorta Narrows the Scope of the War on Terror

by Claudette Posted on May 23, 2013

Mother Jones

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A couple of hours ago I had a choice to make: spend the next hour writing a reaction to President Obama’s big national security speech, or go to lunch. I went to lunch.

That was all for the best, since I had mixed reactions to the speech and wasn’t quite sure what to say about it. It was long and thoughtful, and in a lot of places its tone was welcome: Al-Qaeda is on the run, Obama said, and the danger we now face is of a much smaller scale than it was 12 years ago. So it’s time to rethink just how we want to prosecute our eternal war against terrorists:

America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society. What we can do — what we must do — is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger, and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. To define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear, but hard-earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the threat we face.

Afterward, administration officials told reporters that Obama had announced a new drone policy in his speech, though you could be excused for missing it: in the future, “strikes will be authorized only against militants who pose ‘a continuing, imminent threat,’ aides said, instead of ‘a significant threat,’ which had been the previous standard.” That’s a mighty thin difference, especially with no external oversight to ensure that it’s followed. And aside from that there were damn few specifics. Generally speaking, Obama defended drone attacks, defended the targeting of U.S. citizens abroad, and defended his aggressive prosecution of leakers. And while he suggested he was open to both more executive oversight and to a change in tactics, I think Dave Weigel was shrewd to highlight Obama’s insistence that he couldn’t do this on his own. Ed Kilgore summarizes:

Obama four times shifted responsibility for current dilemmas at least partially to Congress: on drones (where he insisted the appropriate congressional committees have known about every single strike); on embassy security; on the 9/11-era legal regime that still governs anti-terrorist efforts; and on Gitmo (where Republicans have repeatedly thwarted effort to transfer detainees to U.S. prisons). And a fifth: a media shield law to protect journalists who report classified information. –ed.

Is this a reflection of reality or an example of buck passing? I’m not sure we know yet. As someone who has consistently highlighted the power of Congress over policy—even foreign policy—I’m inclined to say the former. But it all depends on exactly what Obama does going forward. If Congress takes him up on his offer to rein in executive power and provide more oversight, will he cooperate or fight? He didn’t say enough today to make that clear. He just said he was ready for a conversation.

So let’s have it. As Heather Hurlburt points out, Obama’s speech was a beginning, not an end. David Corn has more here.

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Obama Kinda Sorta Narrows the Scope of the War on Terror

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Mitch McConnell’s Friends Are Being Oppressed By Liberal Thugs

by p9zyztu Posted on May 23, 2013

Mother Jones

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Ed Kilgore is impressed with the flexibility of Mitch McConnell’s mind:

You have to hand it to Mitch McConnell. While other scandal-mad Republicans are off on a wild goose chase that could well end in 1998, McConnell’s focused on exploiting scandals to promote his very favorite cause, and his special gift to the corruption of American politics: hiding the identity of big campaign donors. His op-ed in today’s Washington Post aims at convincing us that conservative donors obviously need anonymity because they will otherwise be persecuted by Obama-inspired bureaucrats and union thugs.

In fairness, this has actually been the conservative party line ever since they did an abrupt U-turn after Citizens United and decided that disclosure of donors’ identities wasn’t something they approved of after all. From the very beginning, their claim has been that America’s right-wing millionaires need to keep their political affiliations private because otherwise liberals will hound them into….something. Even now, McConnell can’t really provide any specifics of just what would happen if donors had to make their donations public, and is instead reduced to muttering vaguely about Chicago thuggery, a “culture of intimidation,” and favoritism in awarding government contracts:

These tactics are straight out of the left-wing playbook: Expose your opponents to public view, release the liberal thugs and hope the public pressure or unwanted attention scares them from supporting causes you oppose. This is what the administration has done through federal agencies such as the FCC and the FEC, and it’s what proponents of the Disclose Act plan to do with donor and member lists.

I’ll give him this much: supporting political causes does indeed expose you to pressure from people who don’t like your causes. This goes both ways, of course, and conservatives are just as fond of boycotts and picketing and demagoguery as lefties are. The question is why McConnell thinks not just that speech should be free of government interference, but should also be free of any consequences whatsoever. The marketplace of ideas is weak tea indeed when no one has any idea of just who’s saying what.

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Mitch McConnell’s Friends Are Being Oppressed By Liberal Thugs

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