XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'
XKeyscore gives 'widest-reaching' collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
The Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Lunch of 2013.
The most interesting lunch in the political world took place Monday at the White House, though officials said the chat between President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton was more personal than professional.
The president and his former secretary of state “have developed not just a strong working relationship, but also a genuine friendship,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
“So,” he added, “it’s largely friendship that’s on the agenda for the lunch today.”
Obama invited the former rival-turned-top-aide to a private lunch that took place on an outside patio near the Oval Office.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s contracts in limbo at Cumulus — MSNBC. Good riddance to some bad rubbish.
Cumulus Media is expected to drop Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s radio shows at the end of the year, according to an industry source who told POLITICO‘s Dylan Byers. Cumulus, the second largest radio network in the country, will no longer distribute the top two highest-rated talk radio shows that are broadcasted in 40 major markets
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All In : Fast food strikes spread across the nation: ""
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All In : Pope Francis and the gay lobby: ""
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Muslim Author Reza Aslan: I Knew ‘What I Was Getting Into’ By Going On Fox News | Mediaite
A discussion of just about the worst interview I have ever seen on T.V.
" “The philosophical backbone of [Green's] question is that it would be impossible for someone to write about Jesus without some kind of faith-based prejudice,” Aslan said Monday. “It’s weird to all of a sudden talk about it, that only practitioners of a faith can talk about that faith. If that were true, there would be a lot fewer books about Islam in America.”
The Blanks Slate: Living While Black: Anecdotes about Dealing with Police
Most countries have foundational myths that underlie the ethos of the national character. Much of our national myth involves freedom and Enlightenment liberalism: property rights, religious freedom, and the dignity of the individual are among the core values which under-gird our national identity. This narrative leads to national cliches like "If you work hard enough, you can do anything" and 'pulling oneself up by the bootstraps' is the key to success. The accompanying narrative overlooks what that actually looked like for much of our history including, inter alia, discriminatory legal regimes. This is important not, as many think, to enable a "victimhood" mentality among descendants. This is important to reaffirm that this country has only recently recognized that the "inalienable rights" explicitly assigned to all of mankind in our founding document apply to women and many people of color. This recognition is to understand that, since our country's inception, there have been parallel sets of rules and laws for marginalized people that are distinct from and harsher than those for the majority. It also means "dignity of the individual" doesn't apply equally.
How Black Families Are Destroyed, In Two Simple Charts | Black Politics on the Web
White people are still largely the beneficiaries of racism, whether they know it or not. As The Nation’s Mychal Denzel Smith explains, “Not every white person is a racist, but the genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils. If you’re white, you can be completely oblivious, passively accepting the status quo, and reap the rewards.” - See more at: http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2013/07/28/how-black-families-are-destroyed-in-two-simple-charts/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BlackPoliticsontheWeb+%28Headlines+from+BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com%29#sthash.7ezkPJ2Z.dpuf
Gordon Rynders/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
An aerial view of the ocean liner Mauretania as it arrived in New York, in January 1956.
OXFORD, England — SIXTY years ago I went to Manhattan for the very first time, on the ocean liner Mauretania from Liverpool, and annually since then, without a break, I have returned. This year is my Diamond Jubilee visit, and everyone, New Yorkers and outsiders alike, asks me how much the place has changed.
It has certainly changed me, I can tell you that! Look around the library at my home in Wales and you will see New York books impenetrably cluttering its shelves, including a couple I have impertinently written myself, file after file of articles, street plans and prints, and a Crumpled City map of contemporary Manhattan, printed on scrunchable fabric, which Twm, one of my three sons, has just given me as a Diamond Jubilee memento. Since 1953 New York has implanted itself irrevocably in my being and altered me forever.
City of Wonder, Then and Still - NYTimes.com: ""
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FISA court renews authority to collect phone records | Politics and Law - CNET News
A top-secret federal court has renewed the authority of the U.S. government to collect telephone records as part of its surveillance program. In other words: Let the federal spying keep on rolling.
The Court & the Right to Vote: A Dissent by John Paul Stevens | The New York Review of Books
The Court’s heavy reliance on the importance of a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty among the States,” while supported by language in an earlier opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, ignored the fact that Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution created a serious inequality among the states. That clause counted “three fifths” of a state’s slaves for the purpose of measuring the size of its congressional delegation and its representation in the Electoral College. That provision was offensive because it treated African-Americans as though each of them was equal to only three fifths of a white person, but it was even more offensive because it increased the power of the southern states by counting three fifths of their slaves even though those slaves were not allowed to vote. The northern states would have been politically better off if the slave population had been simply omitted from the number used to measure the voting power of the slave states.
Rand Paul Aide Resigns After Confederate Views Stir Controversy
It's about time. Rand Paul is running scared but he cannot run from his racist record.
Microsoft: U.S. Constitution is 'suffering' from NSA secrecy | Politics and Law - CNET News
Math Behind Leak Crackdown - 153 Cases, 4 Years, 0 Indictments - NYTimes.com
Is this the right way to respond to Bush Administration incompetence? I think not. Soon after President Obama appointed him director of national intelligence in 2009, Dennis C. Blair called for a tally of the number of government officials or employees who had been prosecuted for leaking national security secrets. He was dismayed by what he found.
Court Tells Reporter to Testify in Case of Leaked C.I.A. Data (July 20, 2013)
Guardian, via Reuters
The charges filed last month against Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, are the seventh leak-related prosecution brought by the
In the previous four years, the record showed, 153 cases had been referred to the Justice Department. Not one had led to an indictment.
That scorecard “was pretty shocking to all of us,” Mr. Blair said. So in a series of phone calls and meetings, he and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. fashioned a more aggressive strategy to punish anyone who leaked national security information that endangered intelligence-gathering methods and sources.
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All In : Profiling the presidentRick Scott Refuses To Budge On 'Stand Your Ground' After Meeting With Protesters. It is time for massive, civil disobedience in Tallahassee. Fill the jails and shut the city down. Never Again!
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All In : In North Carolina, a strategy to disenfranchise votersThe Secret Power Of Black Twitter - BuzzFeed Mobile
Last night Black Twitter killed a George Zimmerman trial juror’s book deal. But that’s not a surprise: The hive has become a swarm. It’s diffuse, powerful, and all around you.
