Tag Archives: citizen

Why Darrell Issa Should Hold Hearings on Space Aliens

by Hadwin Partize Posted on May 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Roscoe Bartlett is pissed.

“It’s outrageous!” thunders the recently retired 10-term Republican congressman from Maryland. “It’s outrageous!”

The source of his ire is a stack of newspaper clippings about 20 feet away from where he’s standing in the wood-paneled ballroom of National Press Club in downtown DC. For the last three days, Bartlett and five other retired members of Congress have been holding hearings on the “truth embargo”—that is, the government’s decades-long silence on unidentified flying objects. Next to the empty bottle of Honest Tea orange–mango Honest Ade, which he has been drinking out of a wine glass, Bartlett has a pile of stories from mainstream news sources that have dismissed the privately organized hearings. On top is a New York Daily News story featuring a photo of a woman with a headband featuring a “third eye” that, she maintains, allows her to contact beings in other dimensions. (It includes this caption: “Ex-Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (center) and ex-Sen. Mike Gravel (right) listen to testimony without cracking a smile.”)

The hearings are being sponsored by the Paradigm Research Group, the nation’s only organization dedicated to lobbying Washington on UFO disclosure. Its president, Stephen Bassett, is a full-time lobbyist on this front.

(MoJo readers might remember Bassett for his theory that alien technology recovered at Roswell holds the secret to stopping climate change, and for his endorsement of the Exopolitics Institute, which contends that the Iraq War was a ruse to recover an ancient inter-stellar portal that had been buried in Mesopotamia.)

In addition to Bartlett, Bassett recruited former Reps. Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.), Merrill Cook (R-Utah), and ex-Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) to come to DC to hear testimony about aliens.

Bassett doesn’t have much influence in Congress, but his organization apparently does have some money. The former members will receive $20,000 apiece for five days work.

“It helped,” Woolsey says, of the honorarium. “It was nice, and I think…let’s put it that way.” As she puts maintains, it’s standard operating procedure for retired politicians to make money on the speaking circuit; learning about UFOs is kind of like getting paid to speak to a trade association. Cook says the money was a big part of Bassett’s pitch, but it’s not why he’s here. “Even though the fee was offered up first thing, that still didn’t convince me,” the barrel-chested former talk radio host says. “It really didn’t.” Kilpatrick called the honorarium “miniscule,” adding, “And I’m appalled that someone would even raise that.” Bartlett is likewise appalled that anyone would associate his participation in the hearings with the appearance fee. “It’s an insult to infer that that’s why I’m here.” Hooley insists she’s actually losing money by taking a week off from her consulting firm.

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Why Darrell Issa Should Hold Hearings on Space Aliens

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What the NRA’s Millions Do—And Don’t—Buy

by gammak Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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In the days leading up to last month’s crucial votes on the most significant gun control legislation to come before the Senate in nearly two decades, polls showed that about 90 percent of Americans supported background checks for all gun purchases. But when the clerk called the roll, the centerpiece amendment—requiring background checks for firearm sales at gun shows, through classified ads and on the Internet—got just 54 yeas, six votes short of the 60 vote super-majority required.

Just four months after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and President Obama promised tougher gun laws, the vote proved to be the latest in a long-running string of victories for gun rights activists, the firearms industry, and particularly the National Rifle Association, the nation’s pre-eminent gun lobby.

The power of the gun lobby is rooted in multiple factors, among them the pure passion and single-mindedness of many gun owners, the NRA’s demonstrated ability to motivate its most fervent members to swarm their elected representatives, and the lobby’s ability to get out the vote on election day. But there’s little doubt that money, the political power it represents, and the fear of that power and money, which the NRA deftly exploits, have a lot to do with the group’s ability to repeatedly control the national debate about guns. Whether that fear is justified is an intriguing question—but it clearly exists. That has, perhaps, never been clearer than it was last month on Capitol Hill.


NRA’s School Security Plan Cites Phony Shooting


This Collection of NRA Ads Reveals Its Descent Into Crazy


Investigators Discover NRA Materials in Newtown Killer’s House


The NRA Myth of Gun-Free Zones


Gunmakers and the NRA Bet Big on Silencers. What Could Go Wrong?


EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA’s Inner Circle


Meet the NRA’s Board of Directors


The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys


How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Big money, big gaps

For starters, the dollars and cents disparities are nothing short of staggering. The NRA and its allies in the firearms industries, along with the even more militant Gun Owners of America, have together poured nearly $81 million into House, Senate and presidential races since the 2000 election cycle, according to federal disclosures and a Center for Responsive Politics analysis done for the Center for Public Integrity.

The bulk of the cash—more than $46 million—has come in the form of independent expenditures made since court decisions in 2010 (especially the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision) essentially redefined electoral politics. Those decisions allowed individuals, corporations, associations and unions to make unlimited “independent” expenditures aimed at electing or defeating candidates in federal elections, so long as the expenditures were not “coordinated” with a candidate’s actual campaign.

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What the NRA’s Millions Do—And Don’t—Buy

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This Website Will Help You Outsmart the Supreme Court’s Anti-Transparency Ruling

by hu7vfd0 Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have no constitutional obligation to honor public records requests from non-residents. Journalists, who frequently rely on freedom of information laws to expose corruption and break open stories, fear that the decision may make it harder for them to access public records.

MuckRock, a website that files public records requests on behalf of activists, journalists, and private citizens for a small fee and posts the resulting records online, has a solution. The website has been helping out-of-staters seeking public records in Virginia and seven other states with similar laws—Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Tennessee—by pairing them with locals willing to co-file the requests. After Monday’s decision, MuckRock began offering free website subscriptions to citizens of those states to help keep that information flowing.

MuckRock cofounder Michael Morisy, who also works for the Boston Globe, says he “fully expects more states to at least look into adding these laws as they look for ways to cut down on costs for complying with public records requests and generally decrease the amount of people accessing this tool.”

That more states might move to block out-of-staters from filing open-records requests was apparent long before the Supreme Court’s decision, Morisy says. In the decades since federal and state Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, laws were first passed in the 1960s, states have added numerous exemptions limiting who can request information and narrowing the types of information that can be disclosed. But the court’s decision, he adds, is a “major step back.”

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This Website Will Help You Outsmart the Supreme Court’s Anti-Transparency Ruling

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Ed Markey Is On Track to Replace John Kerry—With the Help of the "Green Billionaire"

by olekdd3 Posted on May 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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Congressman Ed Markey is one step closer to replacing Secretary of State John Kerry in the US Senate. On Tuesday, he cruised past John Lynch, a fellow Democratic congressman, in the special Democratic primary in Massachusetts to fill Kerry’s vacated seat. With nearly all precincts reporting, Markey held a commanding lead of 57 percent to 43 percent over Lynch.

Markey will face ex-Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez in a special general election to be held in late June. Gomez is a political newcomer. His only prior run for office was an bid to win a seat on the board of selectmen in tiny Cohasset, Mass. (He lost.) That didn’t stop Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super-PAC, from describing Gomez as “Mitt Romney Jr.,” a businessman-turned-politician who wants to cut benefits for senior citizens and lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Gomez, for his part, has pledged to “reboot” Congress by instituting, among other changes, term limits for politicians and a lifetime ban on lobbying.

Markey has carved out a liberal record during his 20 terms in the House—a long political career that his opponents will no doubt use against him. Over those years, he has established a reputation as one of Congress’ leading advocates for protecting the environment and fighting climate change. He co-authored one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation to address climate change, the American Clean Energy and Security Act in 2009, which failed to make it through Congress.

Markey’s strong environmental record helps explain why he got an assist in his win over Lynch from the San Francisco hedge fund investor and environmentalist Tom Steyer. Despite Markey and Lynch agreeing to a “People’s Pledge” to keep outside money out of their race, Steyer’s NextGen super-PAC spent more than $400,000 on online ads and microtargeting, often hammering Lynch over his support for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Steyer’s involvement added some drama to a off-year primary with a lackluster turnout.

Steyer says he will use his fortune, estimated at $1.4 billion, to drag the issue of climate change into the spotlight in American politics and to combat the influence of climate change deniers and the oil lobby. He’s taking a similar approach to the climate issue that New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg takes on gun control: supporting candidates who see things his way and attacking those who do not. “Really, what we’re trying to do is to make a point that people who make good decisions on this should be rewarded, and people should be aware that if they do the wrong thing, the American voters are watching and they will be punished,” Steyer told the Hill.

Long active in California politics, the Markey-Lynch race was Steyer’s first big foray as an outside spender into a marquee Congressional race. He drew howls with an open letter giving Lynch a deadline of “high noon” to flip his position on the Keystone pipeline. But by the end of the campaign, Steyer’s spending appeared to have boosted Markey (even if the veteran congressman didn’t really need the help to win Tuesday’s primary). And a dedicated environmentalist is now on the cusp of filling John Kerry’s old seat—exactly what Steyer wants.

Steyer has yet to say if he’ll go after Gabriel Gomez in the general election. But he’s one for one so far, and given every indication he plans to spend a lot more money in the months and years ahead.

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Ed Markey Is On Track to Replace John Kerry—With the Help of the "Green Billionaire"

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Senators Take Another Swing at Dark Money Disclosure

by pawel Posted on April 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Late last year, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) penned a Washington Post op-ed taking aim at Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that helped open the floodgates for political nonprofits spending cash in the dark to influence elections. “At minimum, the American people deserve to know before they cast their ballots who is behind massive spending, who is funding people and organizations, and what their agendas are,” the senators wrote.

Now Murkowski and Wyden have followed up by introducing a bill that would require any group that spends at least $10,000 on an election to disclose all of its donors who donated $1,000 or more. Currently, tax-exempt 501(c) groups that engage in political spending have no legal obligation to reveal their donors. (That’s not the case with super-PACs, as the AP erroneously reported, although many super-PACs skirt disclosure by accepting donations funneled through affiliated nonprofits.) Super-PACs and dark-money groups spent more than $1 billion during the 2012 election.

Murkowski first hinted she supported shining more sunlight on dark-money groups last summer when the Senate was debating the DISCLOSE Act, which is similar to her new bill. (She voted against DISCLOSE for not being strong or bipartisan enough.) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filibustered DISCLOSE twice, deriding it as “nothing more than member and donor harassment and intimidation.” His continued opposition to campaign finance reform means that the Wyden-Murkowski bill will also face a GOP filibuster.

If it managed to defy McConnell’s opposition and pass the Republican-led House, the Wyden-Murkowski bill would also enact some smaller campaign finance reforms: It would require Senate candidates to file disclosure reports directly with the Federal Election Commission so they can be posted online more quickly and replace the FEC’s quarterly reports with a real-time reporting system. And while it would require greater transparency for big donors, it would ease requirements for small donors by lifting the disclosure threshold for gifts to candidates from $200 to $1,000.

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Senators Take Another Swing at Dark Money Disclosure

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It’s a Monday, So Unemployment Checks Are Being Slashed Somewhere

by london Posted on April 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Last week, Congress took quick and decisive action to restore funding to the Federal Aviation Administration that had been cut as part of sequestration. The move, which is expected to be signed into law by President Obama, comes as welcome news to America’s frequent fliers. The long-term unemployed, on the other hand, are still totally screwed.

On Monday, New Hampshire residents receiving new emergency unemployment benefits—designed to assist people who have been without work for more than 26 weeks—will see their checks shrink by about 17 percent due to sequestration cuts. (Per the Associated Press, between 150 and 180 New Hampshire residents apply for emergency unemployment benefits every week.) Also laying down the sequestration hammer on the long-term unemployed on Monday: Utah, which will cut its benefits by 12.8 percent. The move is expected to impact roughly 4,000 citizens, according to the Deseret News. Alabama’s 12.8-percent cuts (affecting about 16,500 people) and Rhode Island’s 12.2-percent cut (affecting about 8,000 people) both go into effect this week as well.

As tough as these cuts are, they only get steeper the longer states wait. States that wait to make cuts will have a shorter period of time in which to enact them. As the National Journal explains, “If California waits until June 30 to reduce the checks, for instance, it will have to cut benefits by 22.2 percent between then and Sept. 30 in order to meet the sequester’s requirements.”

This could be averted if Congress restored full funding for the emergency unemployment benefits program. But don’t expect Congress to act fast this time—people on emergency unemployment assistance generally don’t fly business class.

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It’s a Monday, So Unemployment Checks Are Being Slashed Somewhere

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This Libertarian Presidential Hopeful Wants Your Bitcoin Donations

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on April 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Darryl W. Perry says he’s running for president in 2016 as a libertarian, and he’s pledging to be the first White House hopeful to accept Bitcoin, the online currency currently en vogue in tech and libertarian circles.

Bitcoin appeals to libertarians who are skeptical of the Federal Reserve and other central banking institutions. As Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, recently told Mother Jones, “There are types like me, libertarian gold-buggish folks,” for whom “inflation is a constant worry” and who “see the cryptography in Bitcoin as insulation against inflation.” The US Libertarian Party accepts Bitcoin donations on its website, and the Libertarian Party of Canada joined the Bitcoin bandwagon in March.

Perry laid out his decision to accept Bitcoin in a recent open letter to the Federal Election Commission, the nation’s beleaguered elections watchdog. The Darryl W. Perry for President campaign, he said, will not accept any donations “in currencies recognized by the federal legal tender laws.” The only currencies going into Perry’s campaign war chest are Bitcoin, Litecoin (another online currency), and precious metals. “I am attempting to put into practice a belief that I hold that we should get rid of the Federal Reserve, which is a central bank,” he recently explained. “And unlike some who want to get rid of the Fed, I don’t want the government stepping in to fill the void.”

Believe it or not, refusing to accept actual money may not be Perry’s biggest obstacle to running for president. Unlike the Libertarian Party, Perry disavows the very existence of the FEC and denies its authority to regulate campaigns. Perry says he will not file any paperwork with the commission establishing his presidential campaign, nor will he disclose whom his bitcoin/litecoin/gold contributors are or how he spends their money. He ends his letter by writing, “I intend this to be the last communication I have with this commission as part of my campaign.”

How serious is Perry’s candidacy? His website is, well, far from inspiring, and there’s one brief mention of him on the US Libertarian Party’s website. But he’s nonetheless one of the early Bitcoin adopters in politics, following candidates in North Dakota, Vermont, and New Hampshire who decided to accept the online currency. Provided Bitcoin doesn’t bottom out in the months or years ahead—the price of a Bitcoin is vulnerable to wild swings, evidenced by a 60-percent drop a few weeks ago, quickly shedding $115 in value—I wouldn’t be surprised to see more libertarian types embrace Bitcoin donations.

Therein lies a challenge: Explaining Bitcoin to the average voter is hard enough. If the FEC ever tried to regulate it, well, good luck.

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This Libertarian Presidential Hopeful Wants Your Bitcoin Donations

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Four Republicans Who Don’t Understand the Constitution They’ve Sworn to Defend

by heloltiki554 Posted on April 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Members of Congress swear an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, but that doesn’t mean they understand it. Over the past week, several Republican lawmakers have expressed outrage over the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston marathon bombings, was read his rights and reportedly stopped talking to interrogators. These GOPers have accused President Barack Obama of making a grave error by recognizing the constitutional rights of a suspected terrorist.

The Obama administration, however, didn’t have a choice in the matter. Tsarnaev was read his rights by a magistrate judge during an initial appearance that was required by the federal rules of criminal procedure, which are rooted in the constitutional right to due process under the law. The Supreme Court has held that, barring exigent circumstances, a criminal suspect has to be brought before a judicial officer within 48 hours, give or take, at which point the suspect is informed of his rights no matter what.

The interrogation priorities of law enforcement officials don’t count as exigent circumstances, because the point of the rule is to prevent secret detention and to inform suspects of the charges against them. The public safety exception to reading suspects their rights affects whether suspects’ statements can be used in court. It does not affect the requirement that a suspect see a judge within 48 hours. These Republicans don’t seem to understand that distinction.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY): The former chairman of the House homeland security committee told CNN the fact that Tsarnaev was read his rights was “disgraceful” and said “It is the matter of life and death. I don’t know of any case law which says that magistrate has a right to come in to a hospital room and stop an interrogation.” Rep. King, let me Google that for you.

Senator Dan Coats (R-Ind.): On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Coats said that he “was very surprised that they moved as quickly as they did. We had, I think, legal reasons and follow-up investigative reasons to drag this out a little bit longer…I think the AG, attorney general, should have sent a signal basically saying we’re within our legal bounds in doing this for the public safety exemption.” This seems to be a popular misconception. Again, the public safety exception affects the admissibility of statements in court. It does not magically eliminate a suspect’s constitutional right to a speedy trial.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas): Rep. McCaul is the current chairman of the House homeland security committee, and a former federal prosecutor, so it’s difficult to believe he doesn’t know the federal rules of criminal procedure. “The only other avenue we had to get this intelligence is through this emergency exception to the Miranda warning,” McCaul told CNN. “But in my judgment, the FBI was cut short in their interrogations when the magistrate judge decided to Mirandize him within 16 hours…I think that cost us dearly in terms of valuable intelligence.” Yes, that’s a former federal attorney mangling not only the nature of the public safety exemption and the requirement to bring the suspect before a judge, but also constitutional separation of powers. The FBI does not get to tell judges when they should see suspects.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich): Probably the only thing more embarrassing than being a federal prosecutor who doesn’t understand the federal rules of criminal procedure is being a former FBI agent who doesn’t understand them. Enter Rep. Rogers, chair of the House intelligence committee, who in an interview with MSNBC last week slammed the judiciary for “interceding” in an interrogation, referring to Tsarnaev being read his rights as “confusing” and a “horrible, God-awful policy” that is “dangerous to the greater community.” It’s not that confusing: The public safety exemption does not allow interrogators to indefinitely detain and interrogate suspects in violation of their constitutional rights.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has gone a different route and argued that Tsarnaev should have been held in military detention as an “enemy combatant.” But federal law specifically defines those who can be detained militarily as individuals who are play an operation role in foreign terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, and so far the evidence indicates the Tsarnaevs acted alone. It’s also possible that holding an American citizen like Tsarnaev in military detention after apprehending him on US soil would be unconstitutional even if some tie to foreign terrorist organizations were discovered.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is accused of doing horrible things. But he is an American citizen who is entitled to all the rights due him under the Constitution, none of which would mean anything if the government could pick and choose when they apply. Then they wouldn’t be rights at all.

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Four Republicans Who Don’t Understand the Constitution They’ve Sworn to Defend

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The Media’s "Tinsel Age" and Subsequent Failure

by Isaiah McKenna Posted on April 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Everyone knows this story, though fewer and fewer read it on paper. There are barely enough pages left to wrap fish. The second paper in town has shut down. Sometimes the daily delivers only three days a week. Advertising long ago started fleeing to Craigslist and Internet points south. Subscriptions are dwindling. Online versions don’t bring in much ad revenue. Who can avoid the obvious, if little covered question: Is the press too big to fail? Or was it failing long before it began to falter financially?

In the previous century, there was a brief Golden Age of American journalism, though what glittered like gold leaf sometimes turned out to be tinsel. Then came regression to the mean. Since 2000, we have seen the titans of the news presuming that Bush was the victor over Gore, hustling us into war with Iraq, obscuring climate change, and turning blind eyes to derivatives, mortgage-based securities, collateralized debt obligations, and the other flimsy creations with which a vast, showy, ramshackle international financial house of cards was built. When you think about the crisis of journalism, including the loss of advertising and the shriveled newsrooms—there were fewer newsroom employees in 2010 than in 1978, when records were first kept—also think of anesthetized watchdogs snoring on Wall Street while the Arctic ice cap melts.

Deserting readers mean broken business models. Per household circulation of daily American newspapers has been declining steadily for 60 years, since long before the Internet arrived. It’s gone from 1.24 papers per household in 1950 to 0.37 per household in 2010. To get the sports scores, your horoscope, or the crossword puzzle, the casual reader no longer needs even to glance at a whole paper, and so is less likely to brush up against actual—even superficial— news. Never mind that the small-r republican model on which the United States was founded presupposed that some critical mass of citizens would spend a critical mass of their time figuring out what’s what and forming judgments accordingly.

Don’t be fooled, though, by any inflated talk about the early days of American journalism. In the beginning, there was no Golden Age. To be sure, a remark Thomas Jefferson made in 1787 is often quoted admiringly (especially in newspapers): “If it were left to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.”

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The Media’s "Tinsel Age" and Subsequent Failure

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Will the Boston Bombings Kill the Public Police Scanner?

by Sheeritwern Posted on April 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Tens of thousands of people were tracking the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects on Friday morning when the police scanner went dark.* City officials had taken to Twitter to chide social-media users for publicizing unverified reports and key details, such as the location of police units. But the decision to shut the scanner down ultimately fell to Broadcastify, a company that offers a free online scanner app. “Boston area law enforcement feeds are temporarily offline to protect law enforcement resources and their efforts during the manhunt underway in the Boston Metro area,” a statement on the firm’s website informed users.

p.mininav-header-text background-color: #000000 !importantMore MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings


How the FBI in Boston May Have Pursued the Wrong “Terrorist”


READ: Here Are the Federal Charges Against Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev


The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Tsarnaev Brothers Did


What We Know About the Tsarnaev Brothers’ Guns


What These Tweets Tell Us About Dzhokhar Tsarnaev


Stunned Reactions From Former Classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev


Did Boston Bombing Suspect Post Al Qaeda Prophecy on YouTube?


Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Charged With Using WMD

The suspension of the scanner feed was temporary, and by no means comprehensive; it was just a little bit harder to find. But that could soon change. Over the last few years, an increasing number of municipalities have ditched their old scanners for encrypted channels. That, in turn, has left reporters and transparency advocates scrambling to keep up. Given the post-manhunt focus on scanner traffic, Watertown could be the beginning of a big switch. As Breaking News‘ Cory Bergman tweeted, “Safe bet that every major police force in the country will encrypt their radios after this is over.”

Police scanners have been accessible to private citizens and shortwave hobbyists for years, but things have come to a head over the last decade, as technological advancements have made it possible for almost anyone to listen in—and from anywhere.

For now, regulation is fairly weak. In 1997, after a Florida couple secretly recorded a meeting of top House Republicans, Congress considered the Wireless Privacy Enhancement Act, which would have made it illegal for reporters to use scanners to monitor police and fire activity. (The bill passed the House but died in the Senate.) A handful of states, such as Indiana, prohibit the possession of police scanner smartphone apps due to concerns that criminals will use them to better avoid detection when they’re on the run—somewhat redundant, given that it’s already a crime to use police scanner information to aid and abet a crime.

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Will the Boston Bombings Kill the Public Police Scanner?

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