The Commentariat -- Aug. 1, 2013

BBC News: "US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has left the Moscow airport where he has been staying since June after being granted temporary asylum. He left unobserved after receiving, his lawyer said, the necessary papers to enter Russian territory from Sheremetyevo Airport's transit zone." ...

... The New York Times story, by Andrew Kramer, is here.

XKeyscore. Glenn Greenwald: "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its 'widest-reaching' system for developing intelligence from the internet." Read this short presentation, & you can be an NSA analyst, too. It's easy. ...

If a 29-year-old school dropout could come in and take out massive, massive amounts of data, it's obvious there weren't adequate controls.... Has anybody been fired? -- Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Judiciary Committee Chair ...

... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Officials from the President on down keep talking as if the only issue was whether the N.S.A. was listening in on phone calls. The XKeyscore presentation shows how empty those words are. The N.S.A., it appears, doesn't just turn to its metadata library to see who's been calling a terrorist; it uses it in a coördinated way as one of the magnets to draw people's identities from the Web and gather information about them.... The XKeyscore presentation, again, is five years old. The Administration ought to answer -- clearly -- questions about how much of this is still going on. The safeguards we have been told are in place are not here." ...

... Spencer Ackerman & Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "The bipartisan leaders of a powerful Senate committee questioned the truthfulness of the US intelligence community in a heated Wednesday morning hearing as officials conceded that their controversial bulk phone records collection of millions of Americans was not 'the most important tool' -- contradicting statements they previously gave to Congress. Two senators [Al Franken {D-Minn.} & Richard Blumenthal {D-Conn.}] said they now planned to introduce new legislation before the August recess that would significantly transform the transparency and oversight of the bulk surveillance program." ...

... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as a newly leaked N.S.A. document surfaced showing how the agency spies on Web browsing and other Internet activity abroad. Together, the new round of disclosures shed even more light on the scope of the United States government's secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and debate by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden." ...

     ... Story has been updated with a joint byline -- Savage & David Sanger -- & a new lede: "Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency's collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world." Plus: "Patrick J. Leahy ... accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of 'terrorist events' detected through surveillance, and it did not show that 'dozens or even several terrorist plots' had been thwarted by the domestic program. 'If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I'm not convinced by what I've seen,' Mr. Leahy said, citing the 'massive privacy implications' of keeping records of every American's domestic calls." ...

... Sari Horwitz & Ellen Nakashima write the Washington Post's story. ...

... Patricia Zengerle & Alina Selyukh of Reuters: "President Barack Obama scheduled a meeting for Thursday with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence Committees, to discuss programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a White House official said on Wednesday." ...

... Robert O'Harrow, Jr., of the Washington Post: Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, appeared before "a standing-room-only crowd Wednesday ... [at] Black Hat, the annual hacker conference. For a few days every year, it takes center stage in the topsy-turvy worlds of cyberspace, network computing and digital security. The conference serves as a platform for hacking seminars, partying and -- more and more -- policy discussions about what the government and corporate worlds ought to be doing to confront problems like cyber-espionage and cyberattacks, growing threats with no clear-cut remedies." ...

... New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration released narrowly selected and heavily censored documents and sent more officials to testify before Congress on Wednesday in an effort to defend the legality and value of the surveillance of all Americans' telephone calls. The effort was a failure."

Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "From New York to several Midwestern cities, thousands of fast-food workers have been holding one-day strikes during peak mealtimes, quickly drawing national attention to their demands for much higher wages.... The national campaign, underwritten with millions of dollars from the Service Employees International Union, aims to mobilize workers -- all at once -- in numerous cities at hundreds of restaurants from two dozen chains."

If you nominate someone who is a life-committed deregulator to be in a regulatory position, and if you believe regulation is necessary to prevent fraud, abuse, manipulation and so forth, then there's a lot of questions to be asked: Why is this person appropriate? -- Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), on Larry Summers' possible nomination to chair the Federal Reserve

Don't believe everything you read in The Huffington Post. -- President Barack Obama, to members of Congress who questioned Summers' fitness to chair the Federal Reserve

Peter Kasperowicz of the Hill: House "Members passed the Senate-approved the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, H.R. 1911, in a 392-31 vote. Only six Republicans and about two dozen Democrats voted against it.

Meredith Shiner of Roll Call: "Democrats and their allies lobbied Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for more than an hour Wednesday to change her vote on the nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the pressure worked. Murkowski flipped and voted to advance the nomination of B. Todd Jones to be the ATF's new director. With her vote change, Murkowski both averted a filibuster, and perhaps more importantly, staved off Democratic threats to end the minority's ability to filibuster executive branch nominees.... The other GOP 'yes' votes were: [John] McCain, [Susan] Collins, Mark S. Kirk..., Lindsey Graham ... and Kelly Ayotte...." The vote was held awaiting the return of Washington of Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, who said she would vote yes. ...

... Jonathan Bernstein, in the Washington Post: "... this one is a key test of whether the Senate deal will hold beyond the initial seven agreed-upon nominees.... So the deal holds.... As I've been arguing, everyone would be better off if the Senate simply switched to simple majority cloture, which could be done under the regular rules if all the Republicans who have joined the tag-team at least once combined with all the Democrats who were prepared to go nuclear. Without that, the Senate deal is a lot less stable than it could be."

Curtis Tate of McClatchy News: "Who needs a pipeline when you have a railroad? ... Until last month's deadly derailment of a crude-oil train in Quebec, pipelines dominated the debate about moving oil. But rail shipments of North American crude oil already have matched what Keystone XL was proposed to carry, and more is on the way. What started as a stopgap has become the go-to for transporting crude. 'A big part of the popularity of rail is that the president can't veto it,' said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane University Energy Institute."

Quote of the Day. One of the least attractive legacies of Barack Obama will be the way he empowered freshman senators to believe they were only one or two good speeches away from the presidency. -- Gail Collins ...

Runner-Up. You know, Texas is a big, successful state. He's a long-term governor. I can't remember the third one, but, uh. -- Rand Paul, on Rick Perry's chances in a 2016 presidential run ...

Gail Collins on "the show horses of the United States Senate are Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. All preparing for a 2016 presidential bid. All making visits to Iowa. They're the new faces of the Republican Party. Really, really new. The three of them have an average age of 45 and an average tenure in Washington of 1.9 years." Droll, even as said show horses obligingly write her best lines. ...

... Jim Fallows on the he-said/she-said reporting on Tea Party debt-ceiling showdown: "... it's nihilistic; and to reduce it to gridlock amounts to 'defining deviancy down.' We're hearing that phrase, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's, a lot these days in honor of Anthony Weiner. But it applies to current debt-ceiling threats as well." ...

... CW: I forgot to run a link to this yesterday, but if you want to know what John McCain thinks about these "wacko birds" & other stuff, Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic interviewed him. Most talked-about tidbit: McCain wouldn't say who he'd vote for in a Hillary Clinton-Rand Paul match-up. My guess: HRC - Her Royal Clintoness. ...

     ... Why, yesterday McCain even made a brief, and perhaps mistaken, appearance at President Obama's Wednesday meeting with Congressional Democrats. ...

... Nate Cohn of the New Republic on why the next GOP presidential nominee is screwed: "When asked [in a Pew Research survey] about the party's current stance on gay marriage, immigration, government spending, abortion, and guns, at least 60 percent of Republicans said they thought the party was about right or too moderate.... In the Pew poll, 49 percent of Republicans who participate in every primary support the tea party -- just 22 percent consider themselves moderate. In last year's primaries, evangelical Christians represented more than 40 percent of the electorate in just about every major contest, including relatively moderate Romney states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida." ...

... It's worse than Cohn suggests. Ed Kilgore: the survey participants include "Republican 'leaners,' who probably boost the number of self-identified 'moderates' in the survey, and also the number of those who don't regularly participate in Republican primaries." ...

... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: the Pew results show why it's smart for Ted Cruz to bash his own party. ...

... Dana Milbank: Ramblin' Randy is the anti-hero as Republicans battle it out on the Senate floor. ...

... Where Paul Ryan is the Voice of Moderation, Part 1. Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "... during a bilingual listening session on Friday, Ryan said he wanted all components of immigration reform to be brought up for a floor vote, regardless of whether they ultimately received majority Republican support or not. 'We don't know if we have a majority until we vote on it,' Ryan explained. He also said he'd been in close consultation with Speaker Boehner about how to proceed with the bill." CW: Speaker Boehner has said he won't bring up any bills (of any nature) unless they have the support of a majority of Republicans. ...

... Where Paul Ryan is the Voice of Moderation, Part 2. Scott Keyes: "... Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) ... have said they will try to undermine Obamacare by purposefully not helping constituents who come to them with questions about navigating Obamacare. However, Ryan ... isn't going along with this strategy. ThinkProgress ... asked [him] whether his office would be helping constituents who had questions about the program. 'We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government,' Ryan declared." ...

... Well, the Voice of Moderation Except for that Budget Thingee. THUD! Russell Berman & Erik Wasson of the Hill: "Long-running Republican tensions over the Ryan budget's deep spending cuts boiled over Wednesday as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee [Hal Rogers {R-Ky.}] accused his party of being unable to support them.... '... the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted just three months ago,' Rogers said. 'Thus, I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration -- and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts -- must be brought to an end. And, it is also clear that the higher funding levels advocated by the Senate are also simply not achievable in this Congress.' ... 'The collapse of the partisan Transportation and Housing bill in the House proves that their sequestration-on-steroids bills are unworkable, and that we are going to need a bipartisan deal to replace sequestration,' Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, portrayed the move as the latest example of 'chaos' in the GOP-led House." ...

... CW: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor claimed the leaders pulled the THUG bill because they didn't have time for it. But -- ha ha -- Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post lists the nonsense bills the House did schedule for debate & votes on Wednesday. ...

... House of Cards. Brian Beutler of TPM: "... many close Congress watchers -- and indeed many Congressional Democrats -- have long suspected that [House Republicans'] votes for Ryan's budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts. Today's Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion.... Ahead of the deadline for funding it, [Republicans'] plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it -- to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible. But they can't do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget's parameters, they don't come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass." ...

... David Rogers of Politico (CW: one of the few Politico reporters I trust for analysis) has more on the sausage-making. ...

... Greg Sargent: "[Today] the Senate is set to vote on whether to end debate on the big transportation and housing bill that has been working its way through the Senate. The vote is a key test as to whether Mitch McConnell is truly losing control of his caucus as a bloc of Republican Senators indicates a willingness to break with the GOP leadership and join with Democrats in governing." ...

... Norm Ornstein argues in the National Journal that Speaker John Boehner's "passive-aggressive style heightens [the] risk of [a] government showdown.... By encouraging the extremists through his rhetoric, and by not looking to compromise spending at all in the House process, Boehner has bought some time and averted some criticism and any chance of a revolt. But that also means that if he endorses a compromise that will fund the Affordable Care Act, move spending levels back at least to the sequester numbers, and extend the debt limit without preconditions, a sizable share of his caucus will go ballistic. Can he do that before we face a shutdown for days, weeks, or months? Can he do it before we actually breach the debt ceiling and suffer the consequences of the destruction of American economic integrity?"

Democrats put together an excellent video on false GOP claims that the White House was behind IRS workers' political plot to target conservative groups. Via Greg Sargent:

Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post on how Republicans actually could derail ObamaCare. Includes a helpful map of where states stand on implementing Medicaid expansion, a key component of Obamacare & the one the Supreme Tenthers (including Justice Kagan) ruled could not be made mandatory.

Bozeman, Montana, gun-owner & veteran Bob Waters in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: "We need Sen. Baucus to support Manchin-Toomey when it comes up again. I ask my fellow Montanans to join this gun owner in urging Sen. Baucus to join Sen. Tester in his support for universal background checks." (Baucus voted against Manchin-Toomey, false claiming that "Montanans saw the legislation as an infringement on their Second Amendment rights.") Via Greg Sargent.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) remembers former Rep. Lindy Boggs (D-Louisiana) in a Time column.

Gene Robinson in Time: "... a closer look at the Pope's statement reveals little change in the church's stance on being gay. When Francis says gay people should be forgiven their sins like other people, he means that acting on their feelings for someone of the same gender is still a sin that requires forgiveness -- a point the Vatican made clear shortly after his remarks. Francis' more open tone may mean the most for gay Catholic priests." Robinson was the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, & the first openly gay bishop of that denomination.

Local News

Prof. Charles Ogletree, in a New York Times op-ed, on the death sentence of Duane Buck in Harris County, Texas. Buck was sentenced to death based partly on a psychologist's testimony that blacks were more likely than whites to commit violent crimes. When he was Texas's attorney general, now-U.S. Senator John Cornyn "acknowledged then that Texas' exploitation of racial fears and stereotypes was unconstitutional and he promised that all six men -- including Mr. Buck -- [sentenced following race-based testimony by the same "expert"] would be given new sentencing hearings free of racial discrimination. Texas kept its promise in five of the six cases, but for no discernible reason it has reversed course and pursued Mr. Buck's execution." In addition, "at the time of Mr. Buck's trial, the Harris County district attorney's office was over three times more likely to seek the death penalty against African-American defendants ... than against similarly situated whites, and Harris County juries were twice as likely to impose death sentences on African-Americans...."

... CW: Texas is where the criminal justice system makes you feel sorry for murderers.

Washington Post Editors: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's strategy in the gifts-for-services scandal is "to obfuscate and split legal hairs while dodging responsibility for his role, and that of his wife, in what has become his administration's disgrace. Until he levels with Virginians about his actions and motives, the scandal will not go away."

Ed Kemp of the Hattiesburg (Mississippi) Clarion: "Johnny DuPree will remain mayor of Hattiesburg after Judge William Coleman declared a mistrial Tuesday night in the lawsuit filed by former City Councilman Dave Ware, who lost the election to DuPree by 37 votes." ...

... Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Mr. DuPree's supporters have countered that Mr. Ware's efforts amount to little more than a courtroom campaign to disenfranchise black voters in the city, where 53 percent of 47,000 residents are black. Mr. DuPree is black; Mr. Ware is white."

Senate Races

Caitlan Huey-Burns of Real Clear Politics: Arkansas "Republican Tom Cotton plans to announce his bid for the [U.S. Senate], where he grew up on his family's cattle farm. The freshman congressman -- a 36-year-old Harvard law graduate and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- is GOP recruiters' dream challenger to take on Democrat Mark Pryor, considered among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country."

Mead Gruver of the AP: "U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney and her husband were more than two months late paying property taxes on a $1.6 million home they bought last year in the tony northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole, according to Teton County records." CW: this sounds like an actual misunderstanding, but since Cheney is using this house as the basis for her pretense that she is a Wyoming resident, you would think she would be sure to pay her local taxes. In any event, the story again calls attention to the fact that Cheney just bought the house & hasn't lived in Wyoming since she was a child.

Gubernatorial Race

Alex Rogers of Time: "E.W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia, is a running mate without a visible partner.... Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP candidate for governor, has largely avoided public appearances with Jackson, and rarely discusses him on the record.... The reason for the Republican disunity can be traced to the litany of controversial statements Jackson has made that could hurt Cuccinelli's efforts to court moderate voters.... Meanwhile, the Democratic ticket, including Terry McAuliffe for governor, Norfolk state senator Ralph Northam for lieutenant governor and Loudoun state senator Mark Herring for attorney general, has been running as a single package." CW: also maybe Li'l Kenny doesn't want his Civil War re-enactors base to notice his running mate is black.

News Ledes

CNN: "A terror threat prompted the State Department on Thursday to direct its embassies in key Middle East nations, including Egypt and Israel, to close on Sunday with the possibility they could remain idle longer. A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter called the threat 'credible and serious.'"

Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Ariel Castro went to prison for the rest of his life today insisting he is 'not a monster,' and that there was 'harmony' in the home where he imprisoned three women for more than 10 years. His sentencing by Judge Michael Russo followed emotional statements from Michelle Knight, the first person abducted by Castro in 2002, as well as family members of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus." Includes video of Knight making her statement.

AP: " U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz, said Thursday that the two countries will resume high-level negotiations over security issues."

AP: "Three months after an Ohio woman kicked out part of a door to end nearly a decade of captivity, a onetime school bus driver [Ariel Castro] faces sentencing for kidnapping three women and subjecting them to years of sexual and physical abuse."

Yahoo! News: "Men are more than five times more likely to be killed by lightning strikes in the United States than women, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control." CW: could be because men are five lives less likely than women to know to come in out of a thunderstorm.

Online Sex and the Single Girl

In an essay for today's New York Times, feminist Susan Jacoby tries to fathom “why hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women apparently derive gratification from exchanging sexual talk and pictures with strangers.” She does not come up with much of an answer, but she does offer her view of what's wrong with virtual sex:

Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography.... Twentieth-century feminism always linked the social progress of women with an expanding sense of self-worth — in the sexual as well as intellectual and professional spheres. A willingness to engage in Internet sex with strangers, however, expresses not sexual empowerment but its opposite — a loneliness and low opinion of oneself that leads to the conclusion that any sexual contact is better than no contact at all.

I assume Jacoby did her homework for her Times piece and read some of the transcripts of the text messages between Anthony Weiner and Sydney Leathers. Having read the transcripts myself (okay, I skimmed them), what I found most striking was not the “diminution” or “loneliness” or “low opinion” Leathers might have of herself but of the numbing banality of the exchanges with Weiner.

I am sure there are millions of couples who have fulfilling sex lives in which verbal communication does not play a big part. They have, after all, other, physical ways to express themselves. But in an online relationship – beyond supposedly erotic photos – the word is all there is. So the word ought to be damned good. But the writings of Weiner and Leathers are just boilerplate pathetic: Weiner: “would you let me cum on those perfect tits? Leathers: “I would let you cum anywhere you want.”

I would guess that this kind of drivel is commonplace in online sexting. Right now, another couple is probably tweeting exactly what Weiner & Leathers wrote. Twitter is a perfect medium, because people who have little to say don't need more than 140 characters. Jacoby is troubled by the anonymous nature of sexting, which ignores the “specialness of individuals.” But it seems to me the real misfortune for women and men in online "relationships" is not so much the relative anonymity of the partners as it is the aridity of the exchanges. Weiner's and Leathers' fantasies are boring.

We all have sexual fantasies about people we don't know or aren't likely to actually hook up with, and those dreams are beyond anonymous. There's no there there except our own ability to conjure up a perfect partner (or partners, I guess). But if the fantasies are vapid, like those of Weiner and Leathers, then sex itself – the inspiration, the source, the lifeblood of our being – is a meaningless animal instinct. Thoreau wrote that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Weiner and Leathers don't seem to have the song in them. They can't even hum a few bars.

Perhaps their failing is a reflection of modern society in which sex is relatively easy to come by – at least for people like Weiner and Leathers – and letter-writing has been reduced to thumb-callused texting and tweeting. I'm not sure which comes first – the chicken/insipid writing or the egg/shallow writers – but the result is wretched. No wonder people are miserable. In a world rich in stimuli, their imaginations are stunted.

Somewhere I have a file of love letters, and perhaps some of my old lovers do, too. The letters are long, and intricate and exciting. They are about who we were. We were thoughtful and hungry and real. The letters and the writers had substance. I thought they were probably not so much different in quality from what other couples wrote to each another. Okay, maybe they weren't Joycean, but they revealed in them the unique characters and longings of the writers. That millions of people live out their lives without knowing such intimacy, or experiencing such self-expression, may be the real tragedy of our times.

The Commentariat -- July 31, 2013

Philip Elliott of the AP: "A deal that gives college students and their parents lower interest rates for loans is heading toward its final vote. The House was expected Wednesday to take up a bipartisan compromise that links student loan interest rates to the financial markets. Immediately, borrowers would see lower rates for classes this year than last, although the costs are expected to climb in coming years if the economy improves as expected."

Patricia Zengerle of Reuters: "President Barack Obama has asked two senior Republican senators to travel to Egypt to meet with its military leaders and the opposition, as Cairo's allies struggle with how to address the turmoil convulsing the country. Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, hope to travel to Egypt next week, Graham said...." CW: Excellent idea. They can make friends with Egypt's military coupsters the way they did with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi a few years back.

Alan Fram of the AP: "The Senate voted Tuesday to fill all five seats on the National Labor Relations Board and prepared to consider President Barack Obama's picks for top diplomatic and law enforcement posts as the chamber whittled down a pile of stalled nominations. Tuesday's votes included the last of the seven nominees that were part of a bipartisan deal earlier this month in which some Republicans agreed to end stalling tactics. Democratic leaders hope to also push other nominations through the Senate before Congress begins its summer recess this weekend, but some face uncertain fates."

New York Times Editors: "Lurking just behind a military court's conviction of Pfc. Bradley Manning, on charges that included multiple violations of the Espionage Act, is a national-security apparatus that has metastasized into a vast and largely unchecked exercise of government secrecy and the overzealous prosecution of those who breach it.... The government should satisfy itself with a ... moderate sentence and then do something about its addiction to secrecy." ...

... Sari Horwitz & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration on Wednesday made public a previously classified order that directed Verizon Communications to turn over a vast number of Americans' phone records, senior U.S. officials said. The formerly secret order was unveiled along with other documents by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. as top Obama administration officials were preparing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." The order, at least the part that's not redacted, is here. ...

... Tal Kopan of Politico: "Sen. Ron Wyden said Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies' violations of court orders on surveillance of Americans is worse than the government is letting on.... On Tuesday, he told Andrea Mitchell..., 'We had a big development last Friday when Gen. [James] Clapper, the head of the intelligence agencies, admitted that the community had violated these court orders on phone record collection, and I'll tell your viewers that those violations are significantly more troubling than the government has stated.'" ...

... John Naughton, in the Guardian, details what we've learned as a result of Ed Snowden's leaks. He adds, "Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.... No US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data." ...

... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic: "As long as they operate in U.S. territory and under U.S. laws, companies like Google or Facebook had no choice but to comply. But people around the world who have a choice about where to store their data, may understandably choose to avoid leaving it with companies subject to the way America now defines its security interests.... The real threat from terrorism ... comes from the over-reaction, the collective insanity or the simple loss of perspective, that an attack evokes. Our government's ambition to do everything possible to keep us 'safe' has put us at jeopardy in other ways." ...

... Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal: "The Justice Department acknowledged for the first time in a terrorism prosecution that it needs to tell defendants when sweeping government surveillance is used to build a criminal case against them. The about-face, contained in a Tuesday court filing, marks another way in which the Obama administration is adjusting to revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about phone and Internet surveillance by the NSA.... The filing suggests a new potential avenue for legal challenges to the surveillance programs." CW: the link may not work for you because of the WSJ firewall; if not, copy & paste part of the first sentence into Google search. ...

... Jerry Markon of the Washington Post: "The FBI tried to enlist the father of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to fly to Moscow to try to persuade his son to return to the United States, but the effort collapsed when agents could not establish a way for the two to speak once he arrived, Snowden's father said Tuesday....In a wide-ranging interview, the elder Snowden offered a vehement defense of the young man some have labeled a traitor. He said that Edward, who is holed up at an airport in Moscow, grew up in a patriotic family in suburban Maryland, filled with federal agents and police officers, and that he 'loves this nation.'" There's video of the interview here.

Ginger Gibson & Burgess Everett of Politico: "President Barack Obama arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday morning as part of an effort to rally the troops behind his return to talking about the economy, striking a 'grand bargain' and staying strong in support of the health care law." ...

     ... UPDATE. Jonathan Weisman & Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama on Wednesday offered a strong defense of his potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to head the Federal Reserve, though he said no final choice had been made.... The president also reassured Congressional Democrats on Wednesday that he would not 'sell out' his party's principles as his White House tries to negotiate a budget deal with Senate Republicans this fall....Lawmakers said mounting Democratic concern over sweeping government surveillance through the National Security Agency was not mentioned."

... Mark Landler & Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "President Obama, seeking to break a stalemate with Republicans, announced [in Chattanooga, Tennessee,] Tuesday that he would cut corporate tax rates in return for a pledge from Republicans to invest in more programs to generate middle-class jobs":

Dana Milbank: "House Republicans, in their final days at work before taking a five-week vacation, have come out with a new agenda: 'Stop Government Abuse.' A more candid slogan might be: 'Stop Government.' ... The real 'government abuse' is what the House itself is doing: Only four of the 12 appropriations bills have cleared the chamber so far. And because the House plans to be in session just nine days in September, that guarantees that government finances won't be in order in time for the new fiscal year.... In a sense, the inaction on spending is just another sign of the dysfunction in the chamber that has prevented negotiations on an overall budget framework, put bipartisan immigration legislation on ice and created a standoff on the farm bill that will, if not overcome, cause milk prices to jump to as much as $8 per gallon next year." ...

... The Bickersons of the GOP

If he cared about protecting this country, maybe he wouldn't be in this 'gimme gimme gimme gimme all the money you have in Washington' -- or don't have -- and he'd be a little more fiscally responsive and know that the way we defend our country, the way we have enough money for national defense is by being frugal, and not by saying 'gimme gimme gimme' all the time. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

I find it interesting that Sen. Paul is accusing us of having a 'Gimme, gimme, gimme' attitude toward federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state and we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington. Interestingly, Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they send to Washington. So if Sen. Paul wants to start looking at where he's going to cut spending to afford defense, maybe he should start looking at the pork barrel spending he brings home to Kentucky. -- Gov. Chris Christie

Sabotage, Ctd. Sophie Novack of the National Journal: "In a talk at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Ted Cruz argued in favor of his plan -- along with fellow Sens. Mike Lee and Marco Rubio and other tea-party members -- to use the continuing resolution debate at the end of September to defund Obama's health care law, emphasizing the importance of grassroots efforts to win the fight.... Cruz emphasized the need for 'unprecedented levels' of grassroots efforts. He called upon individuals to join the fight and pressure their representatives to join in refusing to fund the law.... 'If we're not willing to fight on Obamacare, what are we willing to fight on?'" Cruz asked. ...

... Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "The implementation of the Affordable Care Act would continue during a government shutdown, according to a Congressional Research Service report commissioned by the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).... Coburn's goal in commissioning this report is to convince his fellow Republicans that threatening to stop the government over Obamacare is a bad idea." ...

... Jon Favreau of the Daily Beast on no-government v. small-government conservatives. The "fundamental philosophy [of no-government conservatives] is ... that since government can't do everything, it should do nothing. So as long as the public continues to see Washington as a dysfunctional circus of petty children, the conservative philosophy of government is vindicated. That is also precisely why no-government conservatives view the successful implementation of Obamacare as an existential threat -- because it would prove that limited government intervention in the market can still be an effective force for good. It is why some Republicans are threatening a shutdown unless Obama agrees to defund the Affordable Care Act...."

Paul Krugman: Larry Summers screwed up, and here's why: "... he is a whip-smart academic, the terror of the seminar room, who likes to play political operator -- and as a political operator, he's a great academic. But there is, I'd argue, a larger issue: Summers did not recognize the extent to which the political world has changed. He's been carefully cultivating an image as a Very Serious Person, in a world where VSPness has gone from a source of cachet to being a liability on both right and left."

"Guns Are for White People." Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News counted the depictions of gun owners in three popular gun magazines. Of the 223 pictures, there were only three pictures of blacks, one of a Hispanic & three of Asians. "(Does it still count if they're Japanese soldiers from WW II in an ad for military surplus?)" In one magazine "... both the (light-skinned) black guy and the Hispanic guy are wearing uniforms -- don't worry, folks, they're on our side! The Asian is dressed in a suit and tie and is clearly presented as a law enforcement or high-end security professional." In another magazine both black people are portrayed as "law enforcement officers, one of whom is accompanied by 4 whites."...

... Prof. Harold Pollack in the Washington Post: "I've been more horrified by [George] Zimmerman's race-conservative defenders than I've been by the defendant himself. Their post-trial reaction suggests amazing social distance from African American communities. Many Americans don't understand what's happening in minority communities, or why many residents of these communities are so angered by this verdict." Pollack reports on a Chicago rally for "Justice for Trayvon."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Bishop of New York, "clarifies" Pope Francis's remark on gay priests. Via Think Progress:

Local News

Laura Vozzella & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Tuesday that he will return all the gifts from businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. and indicated for the first time that he was not aware of everything the Star Scientific executive had given to his family. McDonnell (R) made the comment in a radio interview one week after announcing that he had repaid $120,000 in loans that Williams had made -- $70,000 to a real estate company owned by the governor and his sister and $50,000 to first lady Maureen McDonnell."

Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's transition office chief and the wife of embattled New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, is expected to take extended vacation time from her job with the former first lady in the coming days, sources told POLITICO. The move is not a leave of absence, two sources familiar with the move insisted, and it's not precisely clear when she will depart for her vacation time from her day job." ...

... On Tuesday, the New York Daily News published this article by Olivia Nuzzi, who worked for four weeks as an intern on Anthony Weiner's mayoral campaign as well as this column, in which she describes his experience on the campaign (it wasn't good). In the "news" article, Nuzzi claims, "Anthony Weiner's campaign manager, Danny Kedem, resigned because Weiner lied to him about the timing of his sexting scandal, a source familiar with Kedem's thinking tells me." She also makes various allegations suggesting the campaign is in disarray & six disgruntled campaigners have quit. ...

Here's the glam shot of Nuzzi to which Morgan objected.... Hunter Walker of TPM: "TPM called Weiner's communications director Barbara Morgan to discuss an unrelated story Tuesday and she went off on a curse-filled rant about Nuzzi, describing her as a fame hungry 'bitch' who 'sucked' at her job. Morgan also called Nuzzi a 'slutbag,' 'twat,' and 'cunt' while threatening to sue her.... 'Fucking slutbag. Nice fucking glamour shot on the cover of the Daily News. Man, see if you ever get a job in this town again,' said Morgan. When asked whether the claims in Nuzzi's stories were true, Morgan suggested many of them were 'bullshit. ... And then like she had the fucking balls to like trash me in the paper. And be like, "His communications director was last the press secretary of the Department of Education in New Jersey,"' Morgan said. 'You know what? Fuck you, you little cunt. I'm not joking, I am going to sue her.'" Morgan later claimed she thought the TPM interview was off the record. CW: Nah, nothing incompetent about you, Barb. ...

... Seth Masket of Pacific Standard: Bill "Clinton's scandal was probably worse [than Anthony Weiner's], as it involved a) actual physical contact with another person and b) lying under oath to keep it a secret.... [So] why are liberals tossing Weiner aside? Why not? Unlike Clinton in 1998, Weiner is far from indispensable. There are other competent people running for mayor. He has no political power today, and no particularly impressive record from his days as a member of Congress to draw upon. His main activity then was to antagonize Republicans -- certainly a valid goal for some, but hardly the sort of thing you go to the wall to defend." Via Jonathan Bernstein. ...

... Maureen Dowd on Anthony Weiner & "friends." ...

... Feminist Susan Jacoby, in a New York Times op-ed, on the sex lives of women who sext. CW: I think I'll write something about this tomorrow.

Karen Kucher of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "An eighth woman alleging that [San Diego] Mayor Bob Filner made unwelcomed sexual advances toward her came forward Tuesday evening, telling KPBS that Filner in 2011 grabbed her hand and gave a 'saliva-filled kiss' after a business meeting. Lisa Curtin, director of government and military education at San Diego City College, said that she met with Filner, who was then a congressman, to discuss use of property near the Naval Training Center.... The eight accusers, all respected professionals in the San Diego community, all have said that Filner isolated them in some manner, complimented or proposition[ed] them and then attempted to kiss or touch them without consent." ...

... Craig Gustafson of the Union-Tribune: "The [San Diego] City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a cross-complaint against Filner seeking indemnity for all damages the city may have to pay as a result of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the mayor earlier this month."

Gubernatorial Race

Reuters: "Former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, the son and brother of former mayors of Chicago, formally announced on Tuesday he is running for governor of Illinois in 2014.... The announcement sets the stage for a fight for the Democratic nomination for governor between Daley and Governor Pat Quinn. Daley has been criticizing Quinn for months, saying that the governor has failed to lead a state facing a financial crisis over mounting costs of public sector pensions."

News Ledes

Still Armed. Still Dangerous. Los Angeles Times: "An armed George Zimmerman, acquitted of all charges in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, was pulled over by police in Forney, Texas, three days ago and given a warning for speeding and released, according to media reports. TMZ ... and CBS11 in Dallas-Fort Worth both reported Wednesday that Zimmerman was pulled over just before 1 p.m. on July 28 while traveling westbound on Highway 80." ...

     ... Update. TMZ has the dashcam video of the traffic stop, which you could watch to waste four-&-a-half minutes of your time on this earth.

Reuters: "O.J. Simpson was granted parole on Wednesday on several charges related to his role in the robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers at a Las Vegas hotel, but the former football star will remain in prison at least until 2017 on other charges."

Washington Post: "The economy grew faster than expected over the spring, according to new data released Wednesday morning, easing fears that government spending cuts would undercut the recovery's momentum. The nation's gross domestic product increased at a 1.7 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2013, almost twice as fast as many economists had predicted."

Reuters: "The trial of Bradley Manning ... is scheduled to move into the sentencing phase on Wednesday ... [when] prosecutors and defense attorneys will call witnesses to address Manning's motives and the effects of his actions."

AP: "A 25-year old college student has reached a $4.1 million settlement with the federal government after he was abandoned in a windowless Drug Enforcement Administration cell for more than four days without food or water, his attorneys said Tuesday. The DEA introduced national detention standards as a result of the ordeal involving Daniel Chong, including daily inspections and a requirement for cameras in cells, said Julia Yoo, one of his lawyers."

Serious Lowlifes. ABC News: "A United Airlines customer service representative and his girlfriend have been charged with grand theft and commercial burglary for allegedly stealing luggage from San Francisco International Airport in the aftermath of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash."

New York Times: "The number of civilians killed or injured in Afghanistan rose by 23 percent in the first six months of 2013, according to a United Nations report on civilian casualties, reversing a decline last year and signaling the challenge Afghan forces face as they take over all combat duties from American soldiers."