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Republicans’ Latest 2016 Savior? Mitt Romney!

by PenelopGisborne Posted on June 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wow, things sure have gotten dire for the supposed-moderate wing of the Republican Party. Over the weekend, just days after Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) lost his primary to a tea party upstart, a group of business-minded GOPers convened in Park City, Utah, where they pined for what might have been. Let the Mitt Romney Resurrection begin!

With a theme of “The Future of American Leadership,” the conference had been convened by Romney, and included a host of Republican officials who have been speculated to be the nominee in 2016: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. But despite the presence of those bigwigs, attendees were still looking to the past. Near the start of Friday, according to the Washington Post, MSNBC host and former congressman Joe Scarborough called for a Draft Romney movement. “This is the only person that can fill the stage,” Scarborough was quoted as saying.

Scarborough wasn’t alone; Romney’s major donors joined the chorus of calling for his return, and former Montana Gov. Brian Schweit­zer (himself a potential 2016er on the Democrats’ side) offered a lukewarm endorsement of the cause. “He would be a giant in a field of midgets,” Schweit­zer said. Romney’s supporters have tried to repair his image since his failed presidential bid, pointing to instances like Russia where they claim he was right all along.

Romney himself isn’t buying into his own renewed hype. “I think people make a lot of compliments to make us all feel good, and it’s very nice and heartening to have people say such generous things,” he told reporters. “But I am not running, and they know it.” And just to help remind people of why he’s not likely to run again, Romney rolled out one of his patented Mitticisms: “The unavailable is always the most attractive, right? That goes in dating as well.”

Still, the concept isn’t wholly far-fetched. Richard Nixon was a joke after the 1960 election, but eight years later he called the White House his home. As time passes distasteful memories fade to fond remembrances. Even George W. Bush has seen his approval ratings nudge back up. And the Chamber of Commerce Republican crowd have seen their other favorites fall by the wayside. Christie is still mired in Bridgegate. Jeb Bush is another crowd pleaser among this cohort, but he’s been tepid about a potential bid and has the slight problem of his baby brother’s legacy tarnishing the family name. Paul Ryan has given donors mixed signals about his intentions. Perhaps they need Romney—else they end up with Rand Paul or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

But lest his erstwhile supporters forget, Romney was a uniquely atrocious presidential contender, one who consistently put his foot in his mouth and alienated half of the country. With income inequality remaining one of the most salient issues for upcoming elections, a rerun of the the walking embodiment of the wealth gap wouldn’t do the GOP any favors. Romney lucked into the nomination last time around, facing off against a slipshod assortment of ill-suited candidates. Even as potential candidates like Christie struggle, Romney wouldn’t be so lucky the next time around.

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Republicans’ Latest 2016 Savior? Mitt Romney!

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What the Hell Is Happening in Iraq Right Now?

by Rosario38U Posted on June 12, 2014

Mother Jones

Iraq is rapidly slipping out of government control as an army of Al Qaeda-inspired militants storms toward Baghdad. Here’s what we know about who these fighters are and what drives them.

Who are these militants?

Some of the fighters are part of an Al Qaeda offshoot known as The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). A Sunni militant group led by an Iraqi named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS grew out of Iraq’s Al Qaeda faction. US troops fought with ISIS and its predecessor until the day they withdrew from Iraq in December 2011.

In the last year, according to the Washington Post, the group became “far more lethal, effective, and powerful” as it focused on controlling parts of war-torn Syria. “ISIS lured into its ranks the bulk of the thousands of foreign volunteers, some from Europe and the United States, who have streamed into Syria to wage jihad, further bolstering its numbers.” ISIS already controls parts of northern Syria along the Euphrates River and much of the arid western region of Iraq, from the Syrian border to Fallujah. As a result of ISIS’s increasing dominance, a rift opened between Al Qaeda and ISIS earlier this year.

ISIS has combined forces with other militants, including local Sunni groups; militias led by members of the Baath party, which ruled the country under Saddam Hussein; and at least one of Hussein’s former top military commanders. It’s not necessarily an ad hoc allegiance: One military leader has said that the planning for this strike began two years ago.

The size of ISIS is unknown. According to the Guardian, the group commands roughly 10,000 men. They are well-trained: “They’re like ghosts,” said one Iraqi officer. “They appear, strike, and disappear in seconds.” Also, there’s this scary paragraph, via the Guardian (emphasis ours):

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers — roughly 30,000 men — simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Why are they doing this?

ISIS is seeking to establish Sunni control over Iraq and the Levant region, which includes Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. In a video posted right after ISIS forces took Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, the group’s spokesman ordered ISIS forces to march on Baghdad, the seat of the country’s Shiite-led government. “We have a score to settle,” he says.

The militant groups assisting ISIS share the same goal, “which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region,” a high-ranking Baathist leader told the New York Times.

Where is this all going down, exactly?

ISIS has seized northern Iraq at breakneck speed. Militia forces first clashed with Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, a city in northern Iraq and the country’s second-largest city, on June 7, and controlled the city by June 10. By June 11, they had pushed south and taken Tikrit and Baiji, which supplies the cities of Kirkuk and Baghdad with electricity.

In Mosul, ISIS freed Al Qaeda fighters from prisons and Iraqi officers set fire to fuel and ammunition depots as they retreated. “Mosul now is like hell. It’s in flames and death is everywhere,” one refugee told Reuters.

The decisive battle will most likely take place in Baghdad. As ISIS converges on the city, hundreds of thousands of civilians are fleeing ahead of them.

In all, ISIS has some control or is fighting to take some two dozen large towns and cities across northern Iraq. Notable exceptions include Erbil and Kirkuk in the semiautonomous, oil-rich Kurdish region that borders Iran and Turkey. While reports indicate that Iraqi government troops have fled the area, Kurds say their pesh merga forces are in firm control of those key cities.

The New York Times has a useful map on where ISIS is gaining control in Iraq and Syria.

What is the Iraqi government doing about it?

The Iraqi army has skirmished with ISIS forces before, sometimes with the support of the country’s Shiite-aligned militia groups. But the Iraqi army has offered very little resistance to ISIS since this conflict kicked off last week. In Mosul, the site of the first major clash, many US-trained Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts and stripped off their uniforms to blend in with fleeing mobs. An Iraqi military officer described witnessing a “a total collapse of the security forces” in Mosul.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has requested emergency powers in response to the threat. The Iraqi parliament delayed voting on a request, which reportedly entails the power to impose curfews and censor news media.

What is the US doing?

On Thursday, President Obama said that he and his national security team are weighing all options for helping the Iraqi government respond to ISIS advances. “I don’t rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria,” Obama said when asked whether he is considering drone strikes. (Maliki’s government reportedly wants the Obama administration to conduct targeted air strikes.) The president has the authority to intervene in Iraq without congressional approval because the original war authorization hasn’t expired. However, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the administration is “not contemplating sending ground troops” to Iraq.

“It’s a rapidly deteriorating and grave situation in Iraq,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.

Is anyone else doing anything?

The UK has ruled out military intervention, but may provide humanitarian aid. Iran, on the other hand, deployed Revolutionary Guard forces to help Iraqi troops, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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What the Hell Is Happening in Iraq Right Now?

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Hurricane Cristina Just Set A Scary Record

by Myrna Posted on June 12, 2014

For the first time on record, the eastern Pacific basin has now had two Category 4 hurricanes before July. Hurricane Cristina off the coast of Mexico. NASA/Wikimedia Commons Two weeks ago in the eastern Pacific hurricane basin, we saw Category 4 Hurricane Amanda, which was too strong, too early. Amanda was the “strongest May hurricane on record in the eastern Pacific basin during the satellite era,” noted the National Hurricane Center. And right now, the basin is host to Category 4 Hurricane Cristina, which follows on Amanda’s record with a new one. The storm just put on an “extraordinary” burst of intensification in the last 24 hours, rocketing from Category 1 to Category 4 strength, with maximum sustaind wind speeds of 150 miles per hour. And now that it has gotten there, notes the National Hurricane Center, we have another new record: Cristina is the earliest 2nd major hurricane formation in the ern Pacific (reliable records since 1971) by 13 days, old record Darby 2010 — Natl Hurricane Ctr (@NHC_Pacific) June 12, 2014 Adds encyclopedic weather blogger Jeff Masters: This year is also the first time there have been two Category 4 hurricanes before July 1 in the Eastern Pacific. Prior to Cristina, the earliest second Category 4 hurricane was Hurricane Elida in 1984, which reached that threshold on July 1. As I’ve noted before, the eastern Pacific basin tends to be very active in El Niño years. We are not officially in an El Niño right now, but the forecast for one developing this summer is now 70 percent. In this case, maybe the eastern Pacific is ahead of the forecasters in responding to the state of the ocean and atmosphere. As of now, Hurricane Cristina is expected to travel westward, harmlessly, out to sea. Original article: Hurricane Cristina Just Set A Scary Record Related ArticlesWhy David Brat is Completely Wrong About Climate ScienceThis Is Why You Have No Business Challenging Scientific Experts9 Things You Need To Know About Obama’s New Climate Rules

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Hurricane Cristina Just Set A Scary Record

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No, Staying in Iraq Wouldn’t Have Changed Anything

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on June 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Iraq is close to being overthrown by a small Sunni insurgent force:

Sunni militants who overran the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as government forces crumbled in disarray extended their reach in a lightning advance on Wednesday, pressing south toward Baghdad….By late Wednesday there were unconfirmed reports that the Sunni militants, many aligned with the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, were battling loyalist forces at the northern entrance to the city of Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad.

So how did this happen?

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers — roughly 30,000 men — simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq’s second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Senior government officials in Baghdad were equally shocked, accusing the army of betrayal and claiming the sacking of the city was a strategic disaster that would imperil Iraq’s borders.

The developments seriously undermine US claims to have established a unified and competent military after more than a decade of training. The US invasion and occupation cost Washington close to a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis.

This is one of those Rorschach developments, where all of us are going to claim vindication for our previously-held points of view. The hawks will claim this is all the fault of President Obama, who was unable to negotiate a continuing presence of US troops after our withdrawal three years ago. Critics of the war will claim that this shows Iraq was never stable enough to defend regardless of the size of the residual American presence.

And sure enough, I’m going to play to type. I find it fantastical that anyone could read about what’s happening and continue to believe that a small US presence in Iraq could ever have been more than a Band-Aid. I mean, just read the report. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers turned tail in the face of 800 insurgents. That’s what we got after a decade of American training. How can you possibly believe that another few years would have made more than a paper-thin difference? Like it or not, the plain fact is that Iraq is too fundamentally unstable to be rebuilt by American military force. We could put fingers in the dikes, but not much more.

Max Boot, of course, believes just the opposite, and I might as well just quote myself from a few weeks ago on that score:

I’m endlessly flummoxed by the attitude of guys like Boot. After ten years—ten years!—of postwar “peacekeeping” in Iraq, does he still seriously think that keeping a few thousand American advisors in Baghdad for yet another few years would have made a serious difference there? In Kosovo there was a peace to keep. It was fragile, sure, but it was there. In Iraq it wasn’t. The ethnic fault lines hadn’t changed a whit, and American influence over Nouri al-Maliki had shrunk to virtually nothing. We had spent a decade trying to change the fundamentals of Iraqi politics and we couldn’t do it. An endless succession of counterterrorism initiatives didn’t do it; hundreds of billions of dollars in civil aid didn’t do it; and despite some mythologizing to the contrary, the surge didn’t do it either. The truth is that we couldn’t even make a dent. What sort of grand delusion would persuade anyone that yet another decade might do the trick?

If we committed US troops to every major trouble spot in the Mideast, we’d have troops in Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Lots of troops. The hawks won’t admit this outright, but that’s what their rhetoric implies. They simply refuse to believe the obvious: that America doesn’t have that much leverage over what’s happening in the region. Small commitments of trainers and arms won’t make more than a speck of difference. Big commitments are unsustainable. And the US military still doesn’t know how to successfully fight a counterinsurgency. (That’s no knock on the Pentagon, really. No one else knows how to fight a counterinsurgency either.)

This is painfully hard for Americans to accept, but sometimes you can’t just send in the Marines. Iraq may not have been Vietnam 2.0, but there was certainly one similarity: military success against an insurgent force has a chance of succeeding only if we’re partnered with a stable, competent, popular, legitimate national government. We didn’t have that in Vietnam, and that made victory impossible. We don’t have it anywhere in the Mideast either. For better or worse, the opposing sides there are going to have to fight things out on their own. This isn’t cynicism or fatalism. It’s just reality.

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No, Staying in Iraq Wouldn’t Have Changed Anything

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Chip-and-PIN Credit Cards Coming in 2015?

by SophiaGalvez Posted on June 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Sam’s Club has announced that it will soon be issuing a chip-based credit card. Hooray! However, it’s a chip-and-signature card, not one of the more secure, more logical, and more universal chip-and-PIN cards. But wait:

The other major security technology widely used on credit cards elsewhere i.e., every country on the planet except ours is PIN codes, which are more difficult to fake than a scribbled signature. The Sam’s Club cards will be PIN enabled but will primarily verify users by signature. The next generation of the cards, however, will primarily require PIN verification when they are issued next year.

Hold on. When did this happen? A few months ago, America’s credit card issuers were insisting that chip-and-signature was the way to go. The transition plans were all in place and it was what everyone had agreed to. Retailers didn’t have the technology for chip-and-PIN and consumers didn’t want it, because we were all too stupid to get used to using a PIN code with our credit cards.

Now, suddenly, chip-and-PIN is right around the corner? What’s going on?

UPDATE: I guess I haven’t been paying attention. In December Wells Fargo announced that it would offer chip-based cards on request. “Technically speaking, they are chip-and-signature,” says a Wells Fargo spox, “though the chip does have a PIN and can accommodate a PIN-based transaction if the situation required it (e.g. an unattended or offline kiosk.)” And JPMorgan Chase says it will be offering chip-and-PIN cards later this year. I guess the chip-and-PIN bandwagon is starting to gain momentum.

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Chip-and-PIN Credit Cards Coming in 2015?

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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

by PedroFljuqey Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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A woman with her 10-month-old twins outside a Home Depot in Texas on Saturday. Andy Jacobsohn/Courtesy Dallas Morning News

The last couple of months have been rough for proponents of open-carry gun laws. No fewer than seven restaurant chains have taken a stand against firearms being brought to their businesses, after activists in Texas conducted provocative demonstrations in which they toted semi-automatic rifles into various eateries. Texas law allows rifles (though not handguns) to be carried on display in public, but some patrons and employees were unnerved and angered by the demonstrations, and a national group advocating for reforms, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, pressured the companies using social-media campaigns. After Mother Jones published videos of the gun activists in action, Sonic and Chili’s Grill & Bar became the latest to officially reject guns on their premises.

There has also been a particularly dark side to the story of the gun activists: As I first reported in mid May, members of Open Carry Texas and their allies have used vicious tactics against people who disagree with them, including bullying and degrading women. Just last week they harassed a Marine veteran, pursuing him through the streets of Fort Worth on Memorial Day.

Evidently the National Rifle Association has come to realize that none of this is good for business. In an extraordinary move on Friday, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action—the organization’s powerful lobbying arm in Washington—issued a lengthy statement seeking to distinguish between “responsible behavior” and “legal mandates.” It told the Texas gun activists in no uncertain terms to stand down.

“As gun owners, whether or not our decisions are dictated by the law, we are still accountable for them,” the statement began. “If we exercise poor judgment, our decisions will have consequences…such as turning an undecided voter into an antigun voter because of causing that person fear or offense.” The NRA praised the “robust gun culture” of Texas—which recently has loosened laws as aggressively as any state—but then laid into those Texans “who have crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”

Recently, demonstrators have been showing up in various public places, including coffee shops and fast food restaurants, openly toting a variety of tactical long guns. Unlicensed open carry of handguns is legal in about half the U.S. states, and it is relatively common and uncontroversial in some places.

Yet while unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms.

Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.

The problem has been on the NRA’s radar at least since April. In a roundtable discussion hosted by a Texas podcaster on April 28, Charles Cotton, a long-serving member of the NRA board of directors based in Houston, and Alice Tripp, lobbyist and legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association (TSRA), squared off with CJ Grisham, the founder and president of Open Carry Texas. Cotton and Tripp, who have both been deeply involved in passing pro-gun laws in Texas for many years, warned Grisham that his group’s demonstrations were causing them major grief with their allies in the capitol.

“We do control a massive number of votes,” Cotton pointed out.

“I’m in the capitol three times a week,” Tripp added. “Every lawmaker’s office I went into today asked me, ‘Can’t you do something to stop the rifle demonstrations?'” One lawmaker told Tripp that he’d gotten a phone call from the Republican mayor of Arlington—the site of several provocative open-carry incidents—who’d been “absolutely incensed.” The demonstrations were seriously harming the overall mission to ease gun laws further, she said.

Grisham, whose group sees its demonstrations as a means to legalizing the open carrying of handguns in Texas, was having none of it. “I would like to vehemently disagree,” he said. He went off about “the two major foes” of his organization, the “ultraliberal gun control bullies” of Moms Demand Action—and gun rights defenders who don’t go far enough. “When you’ve got the TSRA and the NRA basically coming down on us for standing up for our rights, that’s where our problem is,” he said. “Because now you guys are siding with Moms Demand Action.”

“CJ, when you make a statement like, ‘We align ourselves with Moms Who Demand Action,’ or whatever the hell their name is, those are fighting words,” Cotton replied with growing exasperation. “You alienate the people that can get this done.”

He continued: “The New Black Panthers did exactly what you folks are doing. They marched on the convention center during the Republican convention here in Houston with their rifles and shotguns…No arrests were made, but the legislative response was, ‘We’re going to stop this.'” State law was watered down in the next session as a result, Cotton said, freeing local governments to ban the possession of firearms under some circumstances.

“They might not like our methods, but our methods are working,” Grisham told me in a recent conversation with regard to the NRA’s pushback. “We’re out there educating people on the street. We’re showing them firsthand that you can see a gun out on the street or at a restaurant and it’s not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let Open Carry Texas be beholden to anyone that doesn’t get our mission.”

For the NRA, furthering its agenda in state capitols may not be the biggest concern at this point. In light of the recent corporate backlash, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick proposed late last week that the war over gun policy may now be fought more in the crucible of the free market. The battleground has grown to include retailers: An open-carry rally at a Home Depot in suburban Fort Worth on Saturday drew roughly 150 armed citizens as well as some withering criticism, according to the Dallas Morning News. Home Depot, whose owner is deeply conservative, signaled that it was fine with the demonstration.

But other corporations are growing nervous and moving proactively to prevent gun activists from putting their brands in the crosshairs, says Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. A large restaurant chain and a major retailer, she told me, “have reached out to us to discuss what policies they could put in place to keep gun extremists out of their businesses.” (She asked that the two companies not be identified due to the sensitivity of the discussions.) “Gun extremists believe that when a company is silent they tacitly support open carry, which clearly isn’t the case.”

It may be that a broader cultural shift—or at least a strategic one—is stirring within the gun lobby. In its statement on Friday, the NRA also cracked open the door to so-called “smart guns,” which aim to improve safety through innovative technological features. Historically the NRA has vigorously opposed them as yet another catalyst for dubious government overreach, but now says: “In principle, the idea would seem to have merit, at least in some circumstances.” That pivot comes not long after a businesswoman in California and a gun dealer in Maryland spoke out about harassment and death threats for trying to sell the cutting-edge weapons.

The NRA has also backtracked recently from its long-held stance against laws meant to disarm domestic abusers—a major factor in gun violence against women—by quietly supporting recent such legislation in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The NRA’s ability to wield outsize political control may now be starting to change, too—at least with some of the hardcore base to which it has long catered. On Sunday, Open Carry Texas dismissed the criticism of its tactics: “The NRA has lost its relevance and sided with the gun control extremists and their lapdog media,” the group tweeted, adding, “We don’t fight for rights at the discretion of the NRA.”

For more of Mother Jones’ award-winning coverage of guns in America, see our special reports.

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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

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Snowden’s Odd Email to the NSA Deepens the Mystery

by KristieBarrera Posted on May 29, 2014

Mother Jones

So you’re in the middle of the biggest secrets-blowing caper in the history of the known universe. You’re one of a small number of people who have access to the most classified information about the most classified spying programs of the most powerful superpower—and you’re swiping tens of thousands of pages of these secrets and preparing to hand them over to journalists. You’ve already made contact with your recipients—and it was harder than you thought to do so. You’ve switched jobs, moving from one contractor to another, in order to snatch more of the documents you want revealed to the unknowing public. You’re scraping NSA servers. You’re watching your back. Oh damn, you are certainly watching your back. You know the people you work for can monitor who gets in and out of the system, and though you are one of the few with the keys to the crypt, you have to be worried—scratch that, paranoid, and rightfully so—that someone’s going to wise up. You make a slip—they might be watching right now—and the alarms go off. And it’s no more Hawaiian paradise. It’s federal prison. But you’re committed. You have your plan. You’re about to send a security kit to an American reporter who lives in Brazil and works for a British outlet so you can communicate via a safe and encrypted mechanism. You’re keeping all of this secret from your live-in girlfriend. You’re thinking about your getaway. Iceland, maybe Iceland. You know that you are engaged in risky business. You could end up changing the world. You could end up dead. Yes, dead. On the run, some times things happens. It’s possible. Oh, what was that sound? Did something weird just happen with your laptop? Did a strange car drive past the house not once but twice? Man, this is intense.

And in the middle of this adrenalin-laced stretch—on April 5, 2013, a mere weeks before you start slipping that journalist top-secret docs exposing the USG’s biggest secrets and then head to Hong Kong to meet him and his compatriots—you send an email to the NSA’s general counsel’s office, posing a rather prosaic query. One question: Why?

Today the NSA released an email Edward Snowden sent its general counsel on that date. The spy agency was responding to NBC News reporting that it had confirmed that the NSA had received an email from Snowden before he leaked all those documents expressing “policy and legal” concerns. This report seemed to bolster Snowden’s claim that he had alerted intelligence officials of his profound concerns about the NSA’s extensive surveillance programs before taking matters into his own hand and becoming a whistleblower. But when the NSA put out the email—claiming it was the only communication of this sort it had received from Snowden—there was a surprise: Snowden had not contacted the NSA’s top lawyers about possible abuses within the NSA. He had asked questions regarding information in a training course. The course had covered the “Hierarchy of Governing Authorities” for federal action. At the top of the chain was the US Constitution. Right below were federal statutes and presidential executive orders. Snowden wanted to know which of the two ranked higher. “My understanding is that EOs may be superseded by federal statutes, but EOs may not override statute,” he wrote. ” Am I incorrect in this?” And he had a similar question about Pentagon regulations and Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) rules.

That was it. A simple query about training material.

Someone in the general counsel’s office—the person’s name is redacted—replied quickly and informed Snowden that EOs cannot override a statute and that Defense Department and ODNI regs “are afforded similar precedence.” This NSA official helpfully added, “Please give me a call if you would like to discuss further.” Apparently, if the NSA is to be believed, Snowden was satisfied and did not follow up.

Why would a fellow currently mounting a significant penetration of an intelligence agency choose on his own to contact the lawyers for that agency and ask these questions? Why did he care about this? Why would he want to be on their radar screen at all at this time? Was he trying to establish some sort of paper trail? Was he worried that he had left a clue somewhere about his ongoing operation and thought such a note would divert attention?

This is a puzzler. Snowden comes across as a smart and thorough fellow who sure knows how to plan well. But how does this email fit into the plan? Marcy Wheeler suggests that Snowden was trying to get the NSA lawyers to admit that the agency saw EOs as top dogs (to prove, in a way, that the NSA was using one particular EO to trump laws that might limit its surveillance activities). Until Snowden explains this email himself, it’s hard to know if this is correct. If so, Snowden would be even a cooler cucumber. It’s hard to imagine a fellow who’s about to sabotage an entire intelligence community deciding that this is a good time to play mind games with the lawyers at the NSA and possibly draw notice. In all his interviews, Snowden hasn’t mentioned that he sought to squeeze this kind of secret out of the NSA as he was filling up disk drives with its most sensitive documents.

So here is a new question about Snowden. And the question remains: whether (and how) Snowden tried to go through channels before going to Greenwald and the Washington Post.

The ACLU, which represents Snowden, says of this email controversy, “This whole issue is a red herring. The problem was not some unknown and isolated instance of misconduct. The problem was that an entire system of mass surveillance had been deployed—and deemed legal—without the knowledge or consent of the public. Snowden raised many complaints over many channels. The NSA is releasing a single part of a single exchange after previously claiming that no evidence existed.” (Mother Jones asked the ACLU if it could share more of this email exchange, and it said it didn’t “have any other info.”)

Yes, the big picture is still there: How far over the line did the NSA go with its surveillance programs, and what ought to be done about that? But Snowden’s tale is also captivating, and the release of this email today adds to the mystery.

UPDATE: Several hours after the NSA released the Snowden email, Snowden told the Washington Post, “Today’s release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities—such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies—are sometimes concealed under EO 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.”

Snowden insisted that he had tried to work within the system: “If the White House is interested in the whole truth, rather than the NSA’s clearly tailored and incomplete leak today for a political advantage, it will require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA’s improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. It will not take long to receive an answer.”

Snowden said there were other relevant emails (presumably sent to the NSA) “not just on this topic. I’m glad they’ve shown they have access to records they claimed just a few months ago did not exist, and I hope we’ll see the rest of them very soon.” He maintained, “I showed numerous colleagues direct evidence of programs that those colleagues considered unconstitutional or otherwise concerning. Today’s strangely tailored and incomplete leak only shows the NSA feels it has something to hide.”

If Snowden did have more extensive correspondence with the NSA, he and/or the agency should be able to resolve the question of what he sought to do before revealing the NSA’s most important secrets..

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Snowden’s Odd Email to the NSA Deepens the Mystery

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This Pharmacist Is One of Greg Abbott’s Biggest Donors. Here’s Why.

by UBZJacelyn Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Greg Abbott, the Republican attorney general of Texas, has many of the usual suspects funding his gubernatorial campaign: Energy tycoons, construction company magnates, leveraged buyout moguls, sports team owners. But one of his biggest backers hails from an industry not typically known for bankrolling political campaigns. J. Richard “Richie” Ray is the owner of a compounding pharmacy, one of those loosely regulated entities that have been mixing up lethal injection drug cocktails for prisons as these pharmaceuticals have become harder and harder to obtain. According to a new report from the nonprofit Texans for Public Justice, Ray, the owner of Richie’s Specialty Pharmacy in Conroe, Texas, has given Abbott $350,000 to help him defeat democratic challenger Wendy Davis.

Ray’s big investment in Abbott comes as death row inmates and good-government groups are trying to force Texas to disclose the supplier of its lethal injection drugs, thought to be a compounding pharmacy. The pharmacies themselves are under fire for selling tainted and mislabled medicine that has killed dozens of people in recent years. During Abbott’s tenure as AG, he has already taken on one Texas compounder, ApotheCure, after three people in Oregon died after taking painkillers from the pharmacy that were eight times more potent than the label indicated. (In 2012, Abbott settled state civil charges against the company.) Last summer, tainted medicine from an Austin compounding pharmacy caused blood infections in 17 people; two deaths are suspected to be related to the products, which are still under investigation.

Abbott is also in the middle of a pitched legal battle over whether the state has to identify the supplier of its lethal injection drugs. Over the past several years, international pharma companies have started refusing to sell execution drugs, including pentobarbital, to US prisons for use in lethal injections, and the EU has banned their export. This has left state prisons desperate to find replacement drugs to continue moving the machinery of death. After several states were caught illegally importing the drugs from abroad, state officials have tried obtaining their execution drugs from compounding pharmacies, which can legally mix them up but that have been plagued with problems like those in Texas. Defense lawyers have argued that their condemned clients have a right to know what they’re going to be injected with to ensure that the executions will not violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and they’ve cited the well-documented problems with drugs produced by compounders in their challenges. The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma only reinforced those claims.

In October, in response to a formal request under the state’s open-records law, staff who handle such requests in the AG’s office said Texas law required disclosure of the execution drug supplier, a move that resulted in the exposure of Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy as the state’s lethal injection supplier. Woodlands promptly quit supplying execution drugs. As a result, the state is now fighting disclosure of the name of its new supplier, and Abbott is caught in the middle, with his lawyers arguing in state and federal court that the name of the pharmacy doesn’t have to be disclosed, even as his open-records staff say it does.

In the midst of all this controversy, Richie Ray has become a major donor Abbott’s campaign. He gave $100,000 in June 2013, just before the state bought several doses of compounded pentobarbital from a compounding pharmacy. (By comparison, Ray has given only a little more than $40,000 to Rick Perry’s campaigns.) Ray’s pharmacy is not supplying execution drugs to the state, according to the Texans for Public Justice report, apparently because his pharmacy isn’t certified as a “sterile” facility. However, Richie’s is a member of the Professional Compounding Centers of America (PCCA), a Houston-based national trade group that not only owns the lab that tested some of the state’s compounded execution drugs for purity but also sold Woodlans the raw materials to make one of the drugs.

Ray himself is active in fighting tougher regulation of compounding pharmacies. He’s the director of the Texas Pharmacy Association PAC and chairman of the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists’ federal PAC. His employees are the top donors to the campaign of Sen. John Barasso (R-WY), a doctor and the Senate’s leading defender of compounding pharmacies like ApotheCure.

Given the massive conflicts between his current job and one of his biggest campaign contributors, Abbott can only hope that defense lawyers manage to drag out the legal battles over lethal injection long enough for him to get elected in November.

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This Pharmacist Is One of Greg Abbott’s Biggest Donors. Here’s Why.

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Big Oil Won’t Let the Developing World Kick the Habit

by HannaDabney Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

In the 1980s, encountering regulatory restrictions and public resistance to smoking in the United States, the giant tobacco companies came up with a particularly effective strategy for sustaining their profit levels: sell more cigarettes in the developing world, where demand was strong and anti-tobacco regulation weak or nonexistent. Now, the giant energy companies are taking a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook. As concern over climate change begins to lower the demand for fossil fuels in the United States and Europe, they are accelerating their sales to developing nations, where demand is strong and climate-control measures weak or nonexistent. That this will produce a colossal increase in climate-altering carbon emissions troubles them no more than the global spurt in smoking-related illnesses troubled the tobacco companies.

The tobacco industry’s shift from rich, developed nations to low- and middle-income countries has been well documented. “With tobacco use declining in wealthier countries, tobacco companies are spending tens of billions of dollars a year on advertising, marketing, and sponsorship, much of it to increase sales in… developing countries,” the New York Times noted in a 2008 editorial. To boost their sales, outfits like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco also brought their legal and financial clout to bear to block the implementation of anti-smoking regulations in such places. “They’re using litigation to threaten low- and middle-income countries,” Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of the Tobacco Free Initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO), told the Times.

The fossil fuel companies—producers of oil, coal, and natural gas—are similarly expanding their operations in low- and middle-income countries where ensuring the growth of energy supplies is considered more critical than preventing climate catastrophe. “There is a clear long-run shift in energy growth from the OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of rich nations to the non-OECD,” oil giant BP noted in its Energy Outlook report for 2014. “Virtually all (95 percent) of the projected growth in energy consumption is in the non-OECD,” it added, using the polite new term for what used to be called the Third World.

As in the case of cigarette sales, the stepped-up delivery of fossil fuels to developing countries is doubly harmful. Their targeting by Big Tobacco has produced a sharp rise in smoking-related illnesses among the poor in places where health systems are particularly ill equipped for those in need. “If current trends continue,” the WHO reported in 2011, “by 2030 tobacco will kill more than 8 million people worldwide each year, with 80 percent of these premature deaths among people living in low- and middle-income countries.” In a similar fashion, an increase in carbon sales to such nations will help produce more intense storms and longer, more devastating droughts in places that are least prepared to withstand or cope with climate change’s perils.

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Big Oil Won’t Let the Developing World Kick the Habit

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Hillary’s Brain: A New Classic of American Sleazance Fiction from Karl Rove

by ShaniFitzgibbon Posted on May 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Steve Benen thinks that Karl Rove’s drive-by shot at Hillary Clinton has failed:

If Karl Rove hoped to generate some chatter with his cheap shot at Hillary Clinton last week, he succeeded — the political world has now been chewing on the “brain damage” story for nearly a week. But by all appearances, Rove has started a conversation that’s focused more on his propensity for sleazy tactics than the former Secretary of State’s health.

….Nearly all the major Sunday shows discussed Rove’s latest salvo, but the focus was on Rove, not Clinton and her 2012 illness. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) blasted Rove for “struggling to be relevant.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) dismissed Rove’s rhetoric as “stupid” and “pathetic.” Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) called Rove’s offensive “outrageous.”

Karl Rove wanted to manufacture a story about Hillary Clinton. He instead created a story about Karl Rove.

I disagree. The press has been talking about Rove’s sleazy tactics for more than a decade. Rove is used to that and obviously doesn’t care. There’s just nothing new on that front, and even if this did somehow damage Rove, it wouldn’t have any effect on the Republicans actually running against Hillary in 2016.

But there’s not much question that Rove has generated a lot of buzz about Hillary’s health. By itself, this isn’t a big deal, but as part of the nonstop mudslinging that Hillary will have to endure for the next couple of years, it’s perfect. Every one of these incidents will be designed to sow a small seed of doubt, and eventually one or two of these seeds might catch on and blossom into an acorn. And from tiny acorns, mighty oaks sometime grow. Mission accomplished!

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Hillary’s Brain: A New Classic of American Sleazance Fiction from Karl Rove

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