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Here’s How Texas Republicans Will Crush the Wendy Davis Abortion Filibuster

by y3kyabkl Posted on June 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Update, 5:22 PM EDT: A spokeswoman for Gov. Perry confirmed to Mother Jones that he has called a special session that will begin on July 1. Perry said in a statement, “I am calling the Legislature back into session because too much important work remains undone for the people of Texas. Through their duly elected representatives, the citizens of our state have made crystal clear their priorities for our great state. Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn.”

Donning pink tennis shoes, Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Forth Worth) waged an almost 11-hour filibuster Tuesday to thwart a GOP-backed bill that would have shuttered most of the abortion clinics across Texas. The bill was killed, despite efforts by Texas Republicans to throw the rule book at Davis for adjusting her back brace. GOPers also staged a vote approving the bill minutes after deadline, but the vote was too late and didn’t count. But Republicans are not accepting defeat, and an expert on Texas electoral law says the state’s GOPers know that Texas Gov. Rick Perry still has an opportunity to put an identical anti-abortion bill to the floor, in another special session that could be held any time. If that happens, even a state senator as heroic and unwilling to sit down as Davis might not be able to stop the bill from passing.

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, says, “Republican Senate leaders realized they were on very shaky legal ground” when they declared victory on Senate Bill 5 a couple minutes after midnight—going so far as to change the time stamp on the Legislature’s official web page. “The practical route for them to follow is recognize defeat here, and focus on getting identical legislation passed in the second special session where time will not be an issue like in the first…Davis would need to filibuster for two weeks.”

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Here’s How Texas Republicans Will Crush the Wendy Davis Abortion Filibuster

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The Big Problem With the Supreme Court’s Prop. 8 Decision

by 85138uz Posted on June 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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In today’s other decision on gay marriage, the Supreme Court declined to allow supporters of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, to appeal their case in federal court. Supporters could defend Prop 8 in the initial suit in California, the court said, because California recognized their standing, but they aren’t allowed to appeal their loss because they don’t have appellate standing according to federal rules. Since a district court had previously ruled Prop. 8 unconstitutional, this means the issue has been decided. Gay marriage is legal in California.

But this decision bothers me. The problem is that both the executive and legislative branches in California declined to defend Proposition 8 in court. This left it to the proponents of Prop. 8 to do so, but the Supreme Court decided today that they don’t have a “personal stake” in the law, no matter how deeply they feel about it. I think the dissent gets at the core problem here:

The Court’s reasoning does not take into account the fundamental principles or the practical dynamics of the initiative system in California, which uses this mechanism to control and to bypass public officials—the same officials who would not defend the initiative, an injury the Court now leaves unremedied. The Court’s decision also has implications for the 26 other States that use an initiative or popular referendum system and which, like California, may choose to have initiative proponents stand in for the State when public officials decline to defend an initiative in litigation.

In California, it’s routine for the people to pass initiatives that neither the governor nor the legislature supports. In fact, that was the whole point of the initiative process when it was created. In cases like these, of course the governor and legislature are going to decline to defend the law in court. With today’s decision, the Supreme Court is basically gutting the people’s right to pass initiatives that elected officials don’t like and then to defend them all the way to the highest court in the land.

To me, this has neither the flavor of justice nor of democratic governance, regardless of whether I like the outcome.

UPDATE: I originally wrote that the California Supreme Court had ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional. It was actually a federal district court that did that. Apologies for the error. The text has been corrected.

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The Big Problem With the Supreme Court’s Prop. 8 Decision

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Supreme Court Rules on DOMA and Prop 8: A Great Day to Be Gay

by Magdalynamez Posted on June 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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More Mother Jones coverage of gay rights and marriage equality


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Here Are the 7 Worst Things Antonin Scalia Has Said or Written About Homosexuality


Which Politicians Supported Gay Marriage and When?


What the Gay-Marriage Ruling Means for Immigration Reform


VIDEO: The 5 Most Comically Bad Anti-Gay Ads, Ever


Mac McClelland on Gay Rights in Uganda


Gay by Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity


Gay by Choice? Yeah, What If?

In a pair of decisions on Wednesday, the Supreme Court handed marriage equality supporters major victories, striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act and paving the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California.

The 5-4 decision in the DOMA case deemed the 17-year-old measure that President Bill Clinton signed into law unconstitutional because it denies equal protection rights to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law. The case, Windsor v. United States, involved Edith Windsor, a lesbian whose partner of 40 years died in 2009. Under DOMA, the federal government didn’t recognize their marriage, which meant Windsor was unable to claim tax benefits provided to heterosexual couples and was left with a large estate tax bill. (See Adam Serwer’s explanation of the case.)

“DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities,” Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in the majority opinion.

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Supreme Court Rules on DOMA and Prop 8: A Great Day to Be Gay

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NSA Yanks Fact Sheet Containing Dubious Information About PRISM

by rakil23 Posted on June 25, 2013

Mother Jones

In the wake of revelations from intelligence contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency has collected massive amounts of phone and internet data on millions of Americans, the NSA posted a fact sheet online about what it was and wasn’t doing. Titled “Section 702,” the fact sheet outlined “Procedures for Targeting Certain Persons Outside the United States Other Than United States Persons” under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was meant to assuage fears that the NSA was breaking the law with its far-reaching PRISM operation.

But on Monday, two US senators called out the NSA for the contents of the fact sheet, saying that the agency was misleading the public about what it was really doing with the program. Then, on Tuesday, the fact sheet mysteriously disappeared from the NSA’s website. (Instead, you can see it here.)

“We were disappointed to see that this fact sheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the U.S. government,” Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote in an open letter to NSA’s director, General Keith Alexander. “In our judgment this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.”

They didn’t get specific, instead identifying the inaccuracy in a classified attachment to the letter. And they underscored that the NSA is facing a credibility problem. “As you have seen, when the NSA makes inaccurate statements about government surveillance and fails to correct the public record, it can decrease public confidence in the NSA’s openness and its commitment to protecting Americans’ constitutional rights,” they wrote.

The letter also says the NSA is “somewhat misleading” people when it says that any “inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorized purpose nor evidence of a crime.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the URL for the NSA’s posted fact sheet led to this:

The NSA didn’t reply to questions from Mother Jones about when and why the document was taken off the site, or about the issues brought up by Wyden and Udall. Instead, it emailed this cryptic statement in response:

“Given the intense interest from the media, the public, and Congress, we believe the precision of the source document (the statute) is the best possible representation of applicable authorities,” said NSA spokeswoman Judith Emmel.

UPDATE: The NSA responded to Wyden and Udall Tuesday, saying that “the fact sheet … could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act” and pointing out several limitations to the law, all beginning with the phrase “may not intentionally” (full letter below). Considering that Wyden and Udall’s basis for saying the NSA had made inaccurate statements in the original fact-sheet is classified, it’s hard to know what the NSA is responding to in the June 25 letter.

Trevor Timm, a digital rights analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the senators’ letter points to the fundamental problem with excessive secrecy.

“This is a perfect example of why this secrecy is so bad for the country, that the NSA or director of national intelligence or executive branch can issue misleading statements or outright falsehoods and it’s impossible for the American people to fact-check them,” Timm said. “If it wasn’t for Ron Wyden or Mark Udall, the NSA possibly could have kept this up forever.”

Here’s the full letter:

Wyden and Udall Letter to General Alexander on NSA’s Section 702 Fact Sheet Inaccuracy

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Ron Wyden and Mark Udall NSA letter (PDF)

Ron Wyden and Mark Udall NSA letter (Text)

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NSA Wyden Udall Response June 25 (PDF)

NSA Wyden Udall Response June 25 (Text)

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NSA Yanks Fact Sheet Containing Dubious Information About PRISM

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Obama: “We Don’t Have Time for a Meeting of the Flat-Earth Society”

by w0ujpysd Posted on June 25, 2013

Mother Jones

President Obama laid out a detailed plan to address the causes and impacts of climate change in a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday. “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing,” he said.

A thread throughout Obama’s plan is the idea that addressing climate change is a “moral obligation” to our children. The two-page outline of the plan sent to reporters Monday evening came with the subhead “Taking Action for Our Kids,” and mentioned “kids” or “future generations” a total of four times. The theme carried throughout his speech on Tuesday. “Your children’s children will have to live with the consequences of our decisions,” he said.

Here are the key components of the plan aimed at reducing US emissions:

Directs the EPA to issue draft emission rules for existing power plants by June 2014, to be finalized by June 2015.
Asks the EPA to “work expeditiously” on finalizing rules for new power plants that the agency issued in March 2012 (though does not appear to include a due date for that).
Pledges that the federal government will draw 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.
Sets a goal of permitting an additional 10 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2020.
Sets a goal of putting 100 megawatts of renewable energy on federally subsidized housing by 2020.
Creates a new, $8 billion loan guarantee program for advanced fossil fuel projects at the Department of Energy (think clean coal, etc.).
Directs the EPA and the Department of Transportation to work on fuel economy standard for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and vans for after 2018 (following up on the 2014-18 rules they rolled out in 2011).
Sets a goal of cutting at least 3 billion tons of carbon pollution by 2030 through improvements in energy efficiency standards.
Calls for an end to US funding for fossil fuel energy projects overseas unless they include carbon capture technology.

The rules for existing power plants could be huge news, as old, dirty plants account for 40 percent of all emissions in the United States. But there are scant details on what exactly those rules will entail. The EPA has missed deadlines on emissions, and other important rules have been stuck at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for months.

While Obama did not explicitly endorse or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, a major issue for climate activists, he did state in the speech that the pipeline should only be approved if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” “The pipeline’s effect on climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project will go forward,” he said.

The draft environmental impact analysis the State Department released in March found that it wouldn’t dramatically increase emissions, prompting environmentalists to worry about what that means for the administration’s decision. The EPA, however, has said that State’s evaluation of the greenhouse gas impact of the pipeline isn’t good enough. A senior administration official told reporters on Monday night that the State Department is still awaiting a final environmental analysis. “This proposal is not yet ready for a decision,” the official reiterated.

Environmental groups rushed to respond to the plan, putting out largely complimentary statements. Maggie Fox, CEO of the Climate Reality Project, called it a “muscular plan” in a statement Tuesday morning.

What was perhaps most interesting about Obama’s climate plan is the weight it gave to not only mitigating carbon pollution, but also planning for and adapting to changes that are already underway. The plan notes that superstorms, record heat, asthma rates, and drought are already taking a toll. In 2012 alone, the plan notes, extreme weather caused $110 billion in damages.

“The planet will continue slowly warming for some time,” said Obama. “The seas will continue rising…It’s going to take some time for the climate to stabilize.”

The climate-adaptation portion of the plan does the following:

Directs federal agencies to identify and support “climate resilient investments” and remove policies that increase vulnerabilities.
Establishes a Task Force on Climate Preparedness that includes state, local, and climate leaders, which will help identify ways the federal government can help support localities.
Creates seven Regional Climate Hubs through the Department of Agriculture that will work with farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners as well as universities and other research organizations to support climate resilience.
Launches a National Drought Resilience Partnership that will work across agencies to help address drought-related risks.
Directs federal agencies to update flood-risk standards for all federally funded projects to account for sea level rise and extreme weather.
Sets up a Climate Data Initiative that will be used to share federal climate data. This, the administration says, will allow federal and private partners access to data that can be used create appropriate response plans and tools (like sea-level-rise calculator or mobile apps.).

Obama had tough words for those who would deny that climate change is a problem. “I am willing to work with anybody…to combat this threat on behalf of our kids,” he said. “But I don’t have much patience for anybody who argues the problem is not real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat-Earth Society.”

He also chastised Senate Republicans for holding up the nomination of Gina McCarthy to serve as the new EPA administrator, calling on them to confirm her “without any further obstruction or delay.”

The nearly 40-minute speech concluded with yet another appeal for future generations. “We may not live to see the full realization of our actions,” he said. “But we will have the satisfaction of realizing the world we leave for our children will be better off for what we do.”

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Obama: “We Don’t Have Time for a Meeting of the Flat-Earth Society”

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Message to Republicans: Don’t Mess With Texas Women on Abortion

by Jeff Howard Posted on June 25, 2013

Mother Jones

Texas Democrats launched a 13-hour filibuster in the state Senate on Tuesday to block a GOP-backed bill that would dramatically limit abortion access in the Lone Star State. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks gestation, even in cases of rape and incest, and creates strict new building codes for abortion clinics that threaten to shut down nearly all of the state’s providers.

The bill passed through the House on Monday despite a 12-hour delay by Democrats and a citizens’ filibuster that brought hundreds of protesters to the State Capitol in Austin. “I saw the future of Texas last night, and it is not apathetic,” Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, told The Huffington Post. “It is ready for a change.”

State Sen. Glenn Hegar (R-Katy) introduced Senate Bill 5 in a special 30-day session that Texas Governor Rick Perry called, in which only a simple majority is needed to send the bill to the floor instead of the usual two-thirds majority. Today is the last day of the session, so filibustering past midnight will kill the legislation, unless Perry decides to call another session. The bill caps abortion access at 20 weeks, even though the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade allows abortions up until the point that a fetus can live outside the womb (which is usually considered to be 24 weeks gestation). A dozen other states have already passed laws banning abortion after 20 weeks, but the laws have been struck down as unconstitutional in Arizona and Idaho.

The bill also requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. Finally, the bill requires clinics to comply with building codes designed for out-patient surgery centers found in hospitals, a provision that the bill’s opponents say would force most of the state’s remaining abortion providers to close. Only five of the state’s 42 clinics are expected to be able to comply with the new standards—in a state of 26 million people where women already travel an average of 43 miles to get an abortion. Texas clinics have already taken a heavy financial hit in the last two years, as legislators slashed state funds and refused federal Medicaid money in an attempt to shut down Planned Parenthood providers.

Last Thursday, more than 700 protesters, many of them women who had traveled from other parts of Texas, showed up to protest the bill and waited in line to testify for hours. When the chairman tried to end the public testimony, this happened:

State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) is leading Tuesday’s filibuster (in pink sneakers) and is expected to hold the floor and speak—without bathroom breaks—until the Senate adjourns at midnight. This isn’t her first rodeo: In 2011, Davis temporarily stalled a plan from Governor Perry that would have slashed $5.4 billion from public schools, turning her into something of an overnight celebrity. That filibuster, however, was only a little over an hour. According to the Texas Observer, Texas Democrats knew that the abortion bill would pass through the House, but they delayed it Sunday night so that Democrats in the Senate would have time to launch a filibuster.

Senate rules require a 24-hour waiting period before the Senate can debate the bill. So House Democrats hoped to delay SB 5 long enough to give Senate Democrats a chance to filibuster the bill

“There’s an assault on women in this state and this legislation is a prime example of that,” the Senate’s Democratic leader, Kirk Watson (D-Austin) told The Star-Telegram. “It’s important that a woman like Davis who’s the mother of two daughters will be the one standing. We will all be there providing assistance and help.”

The protesters plan to continue to camp out in the capitol building throughout the filibuster.

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Message to Republicans: Don’t Mess With Texas Women on Abortion

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The Best Lines From Ginsburg’s Dissent on the Voting Rights Act Decision

by Aaron Duff Posted on June 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Best Lines From Ginsburg’s Dissent on the Voting Rights Act Decision

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a fiery dissent to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Tuesday striking down the part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that determines which cities, counties, and states need to seek approval from the Department of Justice before changing their voting laws. The provision was designed to focus attention on areas with a history of discrimination. “Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” Ginsburg wrote.

Here are five key excerpts from her dissent:

“When confronting the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination, and the most fundamental right in our democratic system, Congress’ power to act is at its height.”

“Demand for a record of violations equivalent to the one earlier made would expose Congress to a catch-22. If the statute was working, there would be less evidence of discrimination, so opponents might argue that Congress should not be allowed to renew the statute. In contrast, if the statute was not working, there would be plenty of evidence of discrimination, but scant reason to renew a failed regulatory regime.”

“Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake­ proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination.”

“Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story. See supra, at 18–19. Without even identifying a standard of review, the Court dismissively brushes off arguments based on “data from the record,” and declines to enter the “debate about what the record shows”…One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation.”

“Given a record replete with examples of denial or abridgment of a paramount federal right, the Court should have left the matter where it belongs: in Congress’ bailiwick.”

Ginsburg’s dissent also rattled off these eight examples of race-based voter discrimination in recent history:

“In 1995, Mississippi sought to reenact a dual voter registration system, ‘which was initially enacted in 1892 to disenfranchise Black voters,’ and for that reason was struck down by a federal court in 1987.”

“Following the 2000 Census, the City of Albany, Georgia, proposed a redistricting plan that DOJ found to be ‘designed with the purpose to limit and retrogress the increased black voting strength…in the city as a whole.'”

“In 2001, the mayor and all-white five-member Board of Aldermen of Kilmichael, Mississippi, abruptly canceled the town’s election after ‘an unprecedented number’ of AfricanAmerican candidates announced they were running for office. DOJ required an election, and the town elected its first black mayor and three black aldermen.”

“In 2006, the court found that Texas’ attempt to redraw a congressional district to reduce the strength of Latino voters bore ‘the mark of intentional discrimination that could give rise to an equal protection violation,’ and ordered the district redrawn in compliance with the VRA…In response, Texas sought to undermine this Court’s order by curtailing early voting in the district, but was blocked by an action to enforce the §5 pre-clearance requirement.”

“In 2003, after African-Americans won a majority of the seats on the school board for the first time in history, Charleston County, South Carolina, proposed an at-large voting mechanism for the board. The proposal, made without consulting any of the African-American members of the school board, was found to be an ‘exact replica’ of an earlier voting scheme that, a federal court had determined, violated the VRA…DOJ invoked §5 to block the proposal.”

“In 1993, the City of Millen, Georgia, proposed to delay the election in a majority-black district by two years, leaving that district without representation on the city council while the neighboring majority white district would have three representatives…DOJ blocked the proposal. The county then sought to move a polling place from a predominantly black neighborhood in the city to an inaccessible location in a predominantly white neighborhood outside city limits.”

“In 2004, Waller County, Texas, threatened to prosecute two black students after they announced their intention to run for office. The county then attempted to reduce the avail ability of early voting in that election at polling places near a historically black university.”

“In 1990, Dallas County, Alabama, whose county seat is the City of Selma, sought to purge its voter rolls of many black voters. DOJ rejected the purge as discriminatory, noting that it would have disqualified many citizens from voting ‘simply because they failed to pick up or return a voter update form, when there was no valid requirement that they do so.'”

Read the full dissent here.

This article has been revised.

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The Best Lines From Ginsburg’s Dissent on the Voting Rights Act Decision

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Ecuador’s Edward Snowden Problem

by jackman0022 Posted on June 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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As of Monday afternoon (Eastern time), the whereabouts of on-the-run NSA leaker Edward Snowden remained unknown. But it seemed the onetime contractor might be headed to Ecuador. There’s little doubt that the country’s president, Rafael Correa, would relish the chance to welcome Snowden and irritate Washington. Correa has been a leading purveyor of anti-United States rhetoric in Latin America, reviving the down-with-gringos banner-waving once so popular in the region. But Correa’s embrace of Snowden—if it comes to be—could produce blowback for the heavy-handed Ecuadorean leader by focusing global attention on his own, far-from-laudable policies regarding transparency, press freedoms, and refugees.

Just two weeks ago, his party passed a law in the National Assembly that, according to Human Rights Watch, “undermines free speech.” HRW official José Miguel Vivanco notes, “This law is yet another effort by President Correa to go after the independent media. The provisions for censorship and criminal prosecutions of journalists are clear attempts to silence criticism.”

Here’s how HRW describes the law:

It prohibits so called “media lynching” which is defined as “the dissemination of concerted and reiterative information, either directly or by third parties, through media outlets, with the purpose of undermining the prestige” of a person or legal entity or “reducing their credibility.” The provision would allow the authorities to order the media outlet to issue a public apology and states that they are also subject to criminal and civil sanctions, imposed by the courts.

It requires media outlets to issue their own codes of conduct to “improve their internal practices and their communications work” based on a series of requirements such as to “respect people’s honor and reputation.” Although self-regulation of this nature is not in itself problematic, the law provides that any citizen or organization can report that a media outlet violated the requirements, and government authorities can issue a written warning, or impose sanctions.

It says that journalists must “assume the subsequent administrative consequences of disseminating content through the media that undermines constitutional rights, in particular the right to communication, and the public security of the State.” Journalists deemed to violate this responsibility could be subject to civil, criminal or other sanctions.

The law would essentially allow Correa’s government to criminalize journalism that inconveniences the president and his allies. HRW points out that human rights advocates generally oppose granting government the power to charge journalists with a crime for publishing derogatory information about public figures: “International bodies from the Inter-American, European, and United Nations human rights systems have long criticized the use of criminal charges to respond to media allegations made against public officials, as contrary to the interest of promoting vibrant public debate necessary in a democratic society.” But that’s what Correa’s party has sought to do. Vivanco puts it this way: “Giving the government the power to decide whether or not information is ‘truthful’ will open the door to unlawful censorship. This is an especially alarming provision in a country where the president has a track record of using his powers to target critics in the press.”

This is not Correa’s first stab at media intimidation. In July 2011, an Ecuadorean court sentenced a reporter for El Universo, a newspaper based in Guayaquil, and three members of the paper’s board to three years in prison for defamation because the paper criticized Correa. The reporter, Emilio Palacio, had written an opinion piece that referred to the president as a “dictator” for having considered pardoning people involved in a police rebellion that included an attack on a hospital. The criminal case was triggered by a defamation suit filed by Correa.

With the suit and the recent law, Correa has shown he’s no fan of a free media and a vibrant national debate—at least not when he and his actions might be the focus. In its most recent ranking of international press freedoms, Reporters Without Borders scored Ecuador toward the bottom: “Ecuador fell 15 places to 119th after a year of extreme tension between the government and leading privately-owned media.” In its annual report on Ecuador, Amnesty International notes that “there were concerns that laws dealing with the crime of insult were being used against journalists in violation of the right to freedom of expression and could deter other critics of government authorities from speaking out” and that “indigenous and community leaders faced spurious criminal charges aimed at restricting their freedom of assembly.” And HRW has also assailed Correa for not respecting the due process rights of asylum seekers. (Snowden’s standing as a persecuted refugee is far from certain.)

Correa might boost his anti-Yankee creed by sheltering Snowden and seek to portray himself as a protector of the persecuted. “Human rights will take precedence over any other interests or pressure that some might want to exert,” Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said on Monday regarding the possibility Snowden would find asylum in Ecuador. But by bear-hugging Snowden, Correa would draw attention to his own history of opposing a robust press that dares to challenge the powers that be.

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Ecuador’s Edward Snowden Problem

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6 Mind-Blowing Stats on How 1 Percent of the 1 Percent Now Dominate Our Elections

by siteforme Posted on June 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Here’s a statistic that should jolt you awake like black coffee with three shots of espresso dropped in: In the 2012 election cycle, 28 percent of all disclosed donations—that’s $1.68 billion—came from just 31,385 people. Think of them as the 1 percenters of the 1 percent, the elite of the elite, the wealthiest of the wealthy.

That’s the blockbuster finding in an eye-popping new report by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan transparency advocate. The report’s author, Lee Drutman, calls the 1 percent of the 1 percent “an elite class that increasingly serves as the gatekeepers of public office in the United States.” This rarefied club of donors, Drutman found, worked in high-ranking corporate positions (often in finance or law). They’re clustered in New York City and Washington, DC. Most are men. You might’ve heard of some of them: casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Texas waste tycoon Harold Simmons, Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Those are a few of the takeaways from Sunlight’s report. Here are six more statistics (including charts) giving you what you need to know about the wealthy donors who dominate the political money game—and the lawmakers who rely on them.

(1) The median donation from the 1 percent of the 1 percent was $26,584. As the chart below shows, that’s more than half the median family income in America.

Economic Policy Institute

(2) The 28.1 percent of total money from the 1 percent of the 1 percent is the most in modern history. It was 21.8 percent in 2006, and 20.5 percent in 2010.

Sunlight Foundation

(3) Megadonors are very partisan. Four out of five 1-percent-of-the-1-percent donors gave all of their money to one party or the other.

Sunlight Foundation

(4) Every single member of the House or Senate who won an election in 2012 received money from the 1 percent of the 1 percent.

Orham Cam/Shutterstock

(6) For the 2012 elections, winning House members raised on average $1.64 million, or about $2,250 per day, during the two-year cycle. The average winning senator raised even more: $10.3 million, or $14,125 per day.

Dawid Konopka/Shutterstock

(6) Of the 435 House members elected last year, 372—more than 85 percent—received more from the 1 percent of the 1 percent than they did from every single small donor combined.

Sunlight Foundation

So what are we to make of the rise of the 1 percent of the 1 percent? Drutman makes a point similar to what I reported in my recent profile of Democratic kingmaker Jeffrey Katzenberg: We’re living in an era when megadonors exert control over who runs for office, who gets elected, and what politicians say and do. “And in an era of unlimited campaign contributions,” Drutman writes, “the power of the 1 percent of the 1 percent only stands to grow with each passing year.”

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6 Mind-Blowing Stats on How 1 Percent of the 1 Percent Now Dominate Our Elections

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WikiLeaks: We Know Where Snowden Is, But We’re Not Telling You

by NatishaFe Posted on June 24, 2013

Mother Jones

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Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has been officially indicted by the United States under the Espionage Act, is en route to Ecuador, one of at least two countries in which he is seeking asylum, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said today on a call with reporters. Assange would not provide further details on Snowden’s current whereabouts. The whistleblower arrived in Moscow on Sunday, fleeing Hong Kong after China urged his departure in order to avoid a messy extradition battle with the United States, according to Reuters. Snowden was scheduled to fly to Havana early Monday morning, but he never boarded the plane.

Assange blasted the Obama administration for seeking Snowden’s extradition and interfering with his quest for asylum, which WikiLeaks is assisting with. He said that focusing on Snowden distracts from the sweeping surveillance program that he exposed.

“Snowden has issued an asylum application to Ecuador and possibly other countries,” Assange said from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he is himself avoiding extradition by Sweden and potentially the United States. “We are aware where Mr. Snowden is. He is in a safe place and his spirits are high, but due to the bellicose threats coming from the US administration, we cannot go into further details at this time.” Kristinn Hrafnsson, a WikiLeaks spokesman, added that Snowden is also formally seeking asylum in Iceland, but wouldn’t name other potential countries that he is petitioning for safe haven.

After Snowden arrived in Moscow on Sunday, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino Aroca, tweeted that Ecuador had received an asylum request from Snowden. Assange says that the application is being carefully considered.

National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden issued a statement Monday morning urging Russia to send Snowden back to the United States: “Given our intensified cooperation after the Boston marathon bombings and our history of working with Russia on law enforcement matters—including returning numerous high level criminals back to Russia at the request of the Russian government—we expect the Russian Government to look at all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the U.S. to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged.”

Michael Ratner, an attorney for WikiLeaks and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said on the call that it’s troubling to see the United States trying to block asylum for someone who is a “clear whistleblower.” He added, however, that “maybe it’s not so surprising,” given the Obama administration’s history of cracking down on whistleblowers.

Questions have been raised about Snowden’s whistleblower status, particularly since, after disclosing the NSA’s domestic surveillance efforts, he revealed sensitive national security information about US cyberattacks in China, alleging that the NSA hacked the text messages of Chinese mobile phone users. In an online chat with the Guardian, Snowden claimed: “I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets.” According to CNN, Snowden told Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa in a letter that he fears that if he is sent back to the United States, it is “unlikely that I will have a fair trial or humane treatment.”

“The Obama administration was not given a mandate by the people of the United States to hack and spy upon the entire world,” Assange said. “To now attempt to violate international asylum law by calling for the rendition of Edward Snowden further demonstrates the breakdown in the rule of law by the Obama administration, which sadly has become familiar to so many.”

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WikiLeaks: We Know Where Snowden Is, But We’re Not Telling You

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