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Want More Oversight? Hire More Spox.

by SherlynEnderby Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Via Paul Waldman, USA Today has a quickie analysis of the evolution of committee staff in the House:

Since Republicans took control of the U.S. House in January 2011, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has led a cost-cutting effort that has trimmed staff for House committees by nearly 20%, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. But the number of committee staff responsible for press and communications work has increased by nearly 15% over the same period, according to House spending records.

….Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said the numbers are “completely unsurprising. We promised responsible oversight of the Obama administration, and effective oversight requires communicating with the American people.“

I love that response from Steel. If you had asked me to defend the indefensible here, I would have spent a few minutes starting at the ceiling and drooling before quietly slinking away in shame. But not Steel! He’s a pro. He instantly comes up with something, and apparently manages to say it with a straight face. It’s completely ridiculous, but that doesn’t matter. It kinda sorta makes sense if you don’t actually think about it, and that’s good enough.

Anyway, there you have it. Effective oversight requires sending ever more outraged email bombs to your tea party base about Benghazi/IRS/Solyndra/Fast & Furious/Bergdahl/Syria/etc. That’s oversight, baby. Jeebus.

This article – 

Want More Oversight? Hire More Spox.

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Number of Backdoor Searches of NSA Data Too High to Keep Track Of

by KirkGroomawqml Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few days ago I mentioned that the House had voted to end “backdoor” searches. These are queries of the NSA’s surveillance database that are targeted at American citizens who were “inadvertently” spied on during surveillance of foreigners, and the NSA would like you to know that these queries are totally legal; not based on any loopholes; and very definitely not “backdoor.”

Be that as it may, Sen. Ron Wyden still wanted to know just how many of these queries take place. In the case of the NSA and the CIA, backdoor queries are allowed only if the goal is related to foreign intelligence gathering. The FBI, however, has no such restriction. They can query all those inadvertent US persons for pretty much any reason at all related to a suspected crime. So how many queries of the NSA database have they made?

There you have it. The FBI has no idea how many time it’s queried the NSA database, though it’s “substantial.” In fact, those records are automatically included every single time the FBI’s database is queried. Nonetheless, nobody should be alarmed because the FBI receives only a “small percentage” of the NSA’s trillions of records, which means they’ve probably received no more than a few billion records.

Nothing to see here, folks. You may go about your business.

See more here:  

Number of Backdoor Searches of NSA Data Too High to Keep Track Of

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