The Commentariat -- June 22, 2013

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leak of agency documents has set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance, has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for disclosing classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post, the Justice Department said on Friday. Each of the three charges unsealed on Friday carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, for a total of 30 years. But Mr. Snowden is likely to be indicted, and additional counts may well be added.... The charges were filed on June 14 by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which handles many national security cases. American officials said they have asked the authorities in Hong Kong, where Mr. Snowden is believed to be in hiding, to detain him while an indictment and an extradition request are prepared." ...

... The Washington Post story, by Peter Finn & Sari Horwitz, is here. ...

Ewen MacAskill, et al., of the Guardian: "Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA)....The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.... The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases. The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m 'telephone events' each day...." ...

... Laura Donohue, director of Georgetown University's Center on National Security and the Law, argues in a Washington Post op-ed that NSA's surveillance programs may be lawful, but they're unconstitutional.

... Gerry Shih of Reuters: "Facebook Inc has inadvertently exposed 6 million users' phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers over the past year, the world's largest social networking company disclosed late Friday. Facebook blamed the data leaks, which began in 2012, on a technical glitch in its massive archive of contact information collected from its 1.1 billion users worldwide. As a result of the glitch, Facebook users who downloaded contact data for their list of friends obtained additional information that they were not supposed to have." ...

... Tim Wu of the New Yorker: "The remarkable consolidation of the communications and Web industries into a handful of firms has made spying much simpler and, therefore, more likely to happen.... The national-security state tends to love monopolies -- a cooperative monopoly augments and extends the power of the state, like a technological prosthesis.

James Risen & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times recount the famous hospital-room showdown over warrantless eavesdropping between James Comey & top Bush White House aides Andrew Card & Alberto Gonzales. Worth noting: "Despite the showdown, in which Mr. Comey refused the request of White House aides to reauthorize a program for eavesdropping without warrants, he was later willing to go along with most of the Bush administration's surveillance operations." ...

... President Obama announces Comey's nomination to head the FBI:

Sorry, Darrell. Brian Beutler of TPM: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, address[ing] the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Friday..., effectively acknowledged to disappointed conservatives that recently revealed IRS malfeasance probably wasn't the consequence of any direct action taken by the White House. 'There might be some folks out there waiting for a hand signed memo from President Obama to Lois Learner [sic.] to turn up,' he said.... 'Do not hold your breath.' These remarks were extemporaneous -- they did not appear in the prepared text of his speech.... '... the President and his political allies encouraged this kind of bureaucratic overreach by their public comments,' he said. 'But that's quite different from saying they ordered it.'"

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. AP story here. ...

... ** Tom Kludt of TPM: "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Friday that the new border security amendment added to the immigration reform bill in the Senate is nothing more than a gift to defense contractors, but the Senate Judiciary Committee will still hold his nose and support the legislation. The measure offered by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND) would both double the number of border security officers on the United States-Mexico border and double the length of the border fence. Leahy said the amendment 'reads like a Christmas wish list for Halliburton.'" Read all of Leahy's remarks. ...

... Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "The Senate will vote Monday on ending debate on a border security deal supporters hope will bring more GOP support to the immigration bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the vote Friday as he filed a cloture motion on a border security amendment to the bill." ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with Ryan Lizza & John Cassidy discuss immigration reform (Lizza's piece -- referred to in the discussion -- is firewalled; if you're a subscriber, you can read it here):

... Frank Rich on immigration reform & other stuff.

... Charles Blow: "This one statement ... [by] Neal Boortz, a retired radio talk show host who refers to himself on his Web site as 'Mighty Whitey' and who was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009 by, of all people, Rush Limbaugh ... outlines the whole of the problem with conservative opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. It harkens to ideas of nativism, racism, misogyny, elitism and inequality from which the country is moving forward, but for which some conservatives still yearn." ...

... CW: for all the Tea Party's claims to "patriotism" & love of founding principles, yadayadayada, what primarily drives their "philosophy" is a belief in white-man rule. (And, yes, this makes women & minorities who subscribe to this brand of conservatism particularly pathetic.) ...

...Julia Moskin of the New York Times: "Paula Deen, the self-proclaimed queen of Southern cooking and a sugary mainstay of the Food Network, was dropped by the network on Friday, after a bewildering day in which she failed to show up for an interview on the 'Today' show and then in two online videos begged her family and audience to forgive her for using racist language." CW: you can use the N-word, Honey, but you can't piss off Matt Lauer. ...

... New York magazine foretells the New York Post front page.

News Ledes

New York Times: "While jurors in [George] Zimmerman's second-degree-murder trial, in which opening statements are scheduled for Monday, may get to hear the [911] recording in court, they will not hear the opinions of two audio experts for the prosecution about who the screamer is, or is not. One concluded that the voice was not Mr. Zimmerman's; the other said it was very likely [Trayvon] Martin's.In an order released on Saturday, the judge in the case, Debra S. Nelson, excluded their testimony."

New York Times: "Evidence gathered in Syria, along with flight-control data and interviews with militia members, smugglers, rebels, analysts and officials in several countries, offers a profile of a complex and active multinational effort, financed largely by Qatar, to transport arms from Libya to Syria's opposition fighters. Libya's own former fighters, who sympathize with Syria's rebels, have been eager collaborators."

The Commentariat -- June 21, 2013

Obama 2.0. David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Obama on Friday will formally nominate a former high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration as the nation's next FBI director, officials said. James B. Comey, 52, a former senior Justice Department official, will replace Robert S. Mueller III, who is leaving the agency after a dozen years. Comey's nomination has been expected since last month when he emerged as the top candidate over Lisa Monaco, a former assistant attorney general who became Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser this year."

Ron Nixon of the New York Times: "Opposition by Democrats who rejected huge cuts in the food stamp program and Republicans who viewed farm spending programs as overly generous led to the defeat of the House farm bill on Thursday, raising questions about financing for the nation's farm and nutrition programs this year. The vote, which was 234 to 195 to defeat it, came a year after House leaders refused to bring the five-year, $940 billion measure to the floor because conservative lawmakers who wanted deeper cuts in the food stamp program would not support it. The failure to pass the bill was a stinging defeat for Speaker John A. Boehner and his Republican leadership team...." ...

... Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: "... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made it clear earlier this week that Democrats weren't going to provide the winning margin. Second, if Republicans insist on doing things like trying to cut $20 billion from food assistance programs, they really shouldn't be shocked when Democrats don't enthusiastically jump on board. On the other hand, if Republicans want to give Democrats credit for blocking a bill that would make deep cuts to food programs for poor people, Democrats should be eager to accept it. After all, the public is on their side in this battle. If we want to cut spending from agricultural programs, let's go after subsidies for big agribusiness that destroy our land and encourage the production of unhealthy food." Hilariously, Eric Cantor's spokesperson tweeted that the bill, which the minority leadership & most of its members opposed, failed because "Democrats are not able to govern." ...

... This underscores that Boehner cannot pass bills on his own. He can't do anything with only Republicans. The real power center in the House is not Boehner. It's not Cantor. It's not Ryan. It's not McCarthy. It's the extreme right. This shows the real dilemma ahead for a Speaker who is very weak and very conscious of his weakness within the party.... They're pathetic. -- Norm Ornstein

No, the real power center is Nancy Pelosi. As I've been saying for more than six months, the House can't pass a bill unless the Republican leadership makes it palatable to Democrats. -- Constant Weader ...

... Paul Ryan Hates Poor People. Jason Easley of Politics USA: "Rep. Paul Ryan ... and Rep. Frank Lucas are proposing that categorical eligibility [for food stamps] be eliminated and replaced with an asset limit. If an individual has $2,000 in savings, or a car worth more than $5,000, they will not be eligible for food stamps. The CBO found that the impact of the move to an asset limit would throw 1.8 million people off of the program." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the link.

Jed Lewison of Daily Kos: the National Review sponsors an archaeology dig in which they think they have unearthed several live specimens of moderate Republican Congressmen "fight[ing] back against the conference's right turn." Lewison is not convinced. ...

... Jonathan Bernstein is not convinced.

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama's staff has turned a suite of offices into an immigration war room on Capitol Hill, aiming to secure passage of the first immigration overhaul in a quarter century.... While lawmakers from both parties are privately relying on the White House and its agencies to provide technical information to draft scores of amendments to the immigration bill, few Republicans are willing to admit it. Some are so eager to prove that the White House is not pulling the strings that their aides say the administration is not playing any role at all."

Ramsey Cox of the Hill: "The Senate on Thursday rejected Sen. John Cornyn's (R-Texas) immigration reform bill amendment that would have put mandatory border security triggers in place before immigrants were given legal status." Marco Rubio voted in favor of the amendment. ...

... "A Very Large Bag of Money." Ed Kilgore: "... it looks like the Gang of Eight (and the largely Democratic coalition of senators supporting them) are going to announce a new border enforcement 'compromise' that will be attributed to Republicans Bob Corker and John Hoeven. It basically involves massive new spending on border control agents and fence-building that would occur before newly legalized immigrants can get on the famed 'path to citizenship.'"

This is the equivalent of adding three or four regiments to the border. I am very hopeful and optimistic that this will be seen as a major game-changing effort to secure the border and will be enormously helpful to the bill. Literally, it will almost militarize the border as a surge. -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on the Corker-Hoeven amendment

Julie Pace of the AP: "President Barack Obama is holding his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board Friday as he seeks to make good on his pledge to have a public discussion about secretive government surveillance programs. Obama has said the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will play a key role in that effort. The federal oversight board reviews terrorism programs enacted by the executive branch to ensure that privacy concerns are taken into account. The president is also tasking the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, to consider declassifying more details about the government's collection of U.S. phone and Internet records." ...

... Glenn Greenwald & James Ball of the Guardian: "Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information 'inadvertently' collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The ... documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009..., detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target 'non-US persons'.... The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used." ...

... Scott Shane of the New York Times: "'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,' Mr. Obama said.... But as experts on American intelligence knew, that was not the whole story. It left out what N.S.A. officials have long called 'incidental' collection of Americans' calls and e-mails -- the routine capture of Americans' communications in the process of targeting foreign communications.... Americans routinely fall into the agency's global net, even if they are not the intended target of the eavesdropping." ...

... Timothy Lee of the Washington Post points out that the authorizing documents are more like legislation than warrants: "... rather than being drafted, debated and enacted by Congress, the documents were drafted by Obama administration lawyers and reviewed by the FISC. Congress is much better equipped than the courts to review this kind of quasi-legislative proposal."

Paul Krugman on monopoly rents: "... whether corporations deserve their privileged status or not, the economy is affected, and not in a good way, when profits increasingly reflect market power rather than production.... Rising monopoly rents can and arguably have had the effect of simultaneously depressing both wages and the perceived return on investment.... If household income and hence household spending is held down because labor gets an ever-smaller share of national income, while corporations, despite soaring profits, have little incentive to invest, you have a recipe for persistently depressed demand."

Edward Wyatt of the New York Times: "A Federal Trade Commission investigation into the practices of 'patent trolls' is necessary because there is little real evidence about the costs and benefits of a rising tide of patent litigation, Edith Ramirez, the F.T.C. chairwoman, said on Thursday. At a patent and antitrust seminar here, Ms. Ramirez laid out her recommendation for the F.T.C. to use its subpoena power and begin a sweeping inquiry into so-called patent trolls, a derogatory term for patent-assertion entities, or P.A.E.'s, as they are called by the F.T.C. The companies buy bundles of patents and make money by threatening infringement lawsuits." CW: just one of the myriad reasons it is at least marginally better to have Democrats controlling governmental agencies than Republicans, who would probably ignore this problem as a swell example of "free enterprise." ...

... CW: I'll be you haven't given much thought lately to "monopoly rents" or "patent trolls." But the two pieces I've cited above are but two examples of why the mindless conservative/libertarian free-market fetish is a dangerous model. ...

... THEN there's this. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone: "Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash."

Jamelle Bouie in the Washington Post: "The Chamber of Commerce wants to do as much as possible to cut retirement programs, regardless of whether its necessary to deal with the country's fiscal situation. And in that, they have the support of the Republican Party, which continues to push for massive spending cuts to all areas of government, regardless of need or necessity." CW: as someone who has suddenly become largely dependent upon federal retirement programs, my disgust with the band of selfish ageists has magnified. Don't Republicans think they're going to get old or sick?

Judy Nicastro, a woman who decided with her husband to have an abortion at 23 weeks, explains in a New York Times op-ed why second-trimester abortions must remain legal. CW: There are certainly thousands of heartrending stories like hers, & sex-obsessed legislators should turn their attention to porn & other pursuits more wholesome than playing god to Nicastro & her family.

Yellow Cake, the Sequel. Colum Lynch & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Despite months of laboratory testing and scrutiny by top U.S. scientists, the Obama administration's case for arming Syria's rebels rests on unverifiable claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people, according to diplomats and experts."

My Favorite Headline of the Month:

"Ted Cruz's Father Bribed An Official To Come To U.S."

Yumi Araki of TPM: "In a report Thursday on NPR about how Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) father..., Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, an immigrant from Cuba, said that while he 'came to this country legally,' he basically bribed an official to get to the United States. 'A friend of the family -- a lawyer friend of my father basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit,' the elder Cruz said. Son Ted Cruz [has said,] 'In my opinion, if we allow those who are here illegally to be put on a path to citizenship, that is incredibly unfair to those who follow the rules.'" CW: apparently "the rules" sanction bribery. ...

... The NPR story, by David Welna, is here. Rafael Cruz first came to the U.S. in 1957 as a student, he later moved to Canada, where he married a U.S. citizen. Ted was born in Canada. Because of "laziness," Rafael didn't bother to become a U.S. citizen until 2005. "And yet Ted Cruz wants to change the immigration bill with an amendment removing the path to citizenship." ...

... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "... the thing that really sticks out for me is the fact that his father fought with Fidel Castro. Um, isn't being the fruit of a lefty revolutionary's loins supposed to put a politician under a permanent cloud of suspicion, according to wingnuts? Or is that true only if the pol is named Obama?

For the Son of an Immigrant, Ted Cruz Is Sure Afraid of Immigrants.

If Gang of 8 bill passes, those newly legalized are exempted from Obamacare. HUGE incentive for employers to hire them instead of Americans. -- Ted Cruz, in a tweet

Cruz is off the mark here. He says there will be a 'huge incentive.' But there is literally no incentive -- unless Cruz expects companies to routinely break the law when looking for potential hires. In any case, the pool of companies that could even, by coincidence, possibly take advantage of this quirk is too small to be even worthy of notice. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

Andrew Blankstein of the Los Angeles Times: "The Los Angeles Police Department said there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings. The Los Angeles County coroner on Thursday positively identified Hastings as the driver of a Mercedes that crashed on Highland Avenue near Melrose Avenue on Tuesday morning. Hastings' involvement with hot-button stories has led to a variety of conspiracy theories arising on the Internet over his death." CW: Yes, I see we did our part yesterday." ...

... Brian Bennett of the L.A. Times has a bit on the conspiracy stuff. ...

... Also this from Tim Stanley of the Telegraph.

Rachel Hartman & Chris Wilson of Yahoo News: "A Yahoo News analysis of the 444 briefings that [White House Press Secretary Jay] Carney has held since becoming White House press secretary has identified 13 distinct strains in the way he dodges a reporter's question. Since Carney held his first daily briefing with reporters in the White House Brady Press Briefing Room on Feb. 16, 2011, for example, he's used some variation of 'I don't have the answer' more than 1,900 times. In 1,383 cases he referred a question to someone else. But will he at least speculate on hypotheticals? No. In fact, he has refused to do so 525 times." The post includes an interactive feature where "you can browse all 9,486 of Carney's most-used responses and verbal crutches." ...

... Jay Carney "appreciates" 131 questions:

Charles Pierce amuses himself grounding the latest flutters from the eternally confused Peggy Noonan. This time Noonan is confused about the IRS "scandal" because Elijah Cummings -- & some conservative IRS worker in Cincinnati -- wrecked her claim -- which she makes anyway -- that this is an "historical" and "uniquely dangerous" scandal.

Local News

David Lieb of the AP: "States are increasingly adopting laws that purport to nullify federal laws -- setting up intentional legal conflicts, directing local police not to enforce federal laws and, in rare cases, even threatening criminal charges for federal agents who dare to do their jobs. An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver's licenses. The recent trend began in Democratic leaning California with a 1996 medical marijuana law and has proliferated lately in Republican strongholds like Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback this spring became the first to sign a measure threatening felony charges against federal agents who enforce certain firearms laws in his state."

Keeping It Classy in Maine. Steve Mistler of the Portland Press Herald: "LePage Draws Fire for Crude Sexual Remark.... Referring to Assistant Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson of Allagash [D], who gave his party's response to the Republican governor's latest budget proposal, [Gov. Paul] LePage said: 'Sen. Jackson claims to be for the people, but he's the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.' Later in the interview, LePage said, 'Dammit, that comment is not politically correct. But we've got to understand who this man is. This man is a bad person. He not only doesn't have a brain, he has a black heart. And so does the leadership in the Legislature.'" It's worth listening to the interview by WMTV reporter Paul Merrill.

Keeping It Classy in Illinois. Catalina Camia of USA Today: "The local Illinois Republican Party official who called a biracial congressional candidate a 'street walker' resigned Thursday, after his comments were widely denounced as offensive. Jim Allen referred to Erika Harold, a lawyer and former Miss America, as a 'street walker' and 'love child' in an e-mail with racial overtones to the conservative website, Republican News Watch. Harold is challenging Rep. Rodney Davis in a GOP primary in Illinois' 13th Congressional District."

... James Pindell of WMUR: "Controversial state Rep. Stella Tremblay, R-Auburn, resigned from the New Hampshire House of Representatives Thursday, moments before lawmakers were poised to pass a two-year, nearly $11 billion budget and a day after she made another allegation the Boston Marathon bombing might have been a government conspiracy." ...

... John Celock of the Huffington Post has more on Tremblay's conspiracy theories. She is one crazy old bird. New Hampshire pays its state legislators $100/year, which may help explain why they have a surfeit of dimwits.

News Ledes

New York Times: "The prison sentence of Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive of Enron who spearheaded the pervasive fraud that destroyed the energy company, was reduced by 10 years on Friday after a federal judge approved a deal between his lawyers and prosecutors. Judge Simeon T. Lake III of Federal District Court in Houston, who oversaw Mr. Skilling's trial in 2006, signed off on an agreement that will decrease his 24-year sentence to 14 years. The reduction was driven in part by a 2009 appeals court ruling that ordered a recalculation of Mr. Skilling's sentence because of a mistake made by the judge in interpreting the federal sentencing guidelines."

New York Times: "The mass protests thundering across Brazil have swept up an impassioned array of grievances -- costly stadiums, corrupt politicians, high taxes and shoddy schools -- and spread to more than 100 cities on Thursday night, the most yet, with increasing ferocity. All of a sudden, a country that was once viewed as a stellar example of a rising, democratic power finds itself upended by an amorphous, leaderless popular uprising with one unifying theme: an angry, and sometimes violent, rejection of politics as usual." ...

     ... Reuters Update: " Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will hold an emergency meeting of top aides on Friday to figure out how to respond to massive protests that brought 1 million people into the streets and also resulted in widespread vandalism and injuries."

Reuters: "Germany's foreign minister urged Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich on Friday to let his jailed opponent Yulia Tymoshenko go to Germany for medical treatment and he warned against the use of 'selective justice' in the ex-Soviet republic.... Tymoshenko, 52, a former prime minister and arch foe of Yanukovich, was jailed for seven years in October 2011 for abuse of office linked to a 2009 gas deal she brokered with Russia. The Yanukovich administration says the deal saddled Ukraine with an exorbitant price for gas supplies. But the European Union says her jailing smacks of political vengeance and many EU officials say a planned signing of political association and free trade agreements with Ukraine later this year could be in jeopardy unless she is freed."

AP: "Police say more than 20,000 celebrants have gathered at the famed Stonehenge monument to mark the summer solstice."

The Commentariat -- June 20, 2013

John Broder of the New York Times: "President Obama is preparing a major policy push on climate change, including, for the first time, limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, as well as expanded renewable energy development on public lands and an accelerated effort on energy efficiency in buildings and equipment, senior officials said Wednesday."

Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports on reactions to President Obama's proposal "to limit American and Russian deployed strategic warheads to about 1,000 each, [which] would bring the two countries back to around the levels of 1954."

Michael O'Brien of NBC News: "FBI director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that the nation's top law enforcement bureau uses drones to conduct surveillance on U.S. soil, though only on a 'very, very minimal basis.'" ...

... New York Times Editors: "The basic justification for outsourcing government work is to get a job done better and cheaper. Outsourcing intelligence does not appear to achieve either aim.... The proliferation of private sector employees with top-secret clearances, now estimated at up to 500,000, makes breaches more likely.... The revolving door between government intelligence agencies and private-sector contractors ... conflates public and private interests and entrenches the status quo.... While it may still make sense to outsource specific projects, the practice of outsourcing vast swaths of national security, with little or no attempt to develop the needed expertise inside government, has gone on for too long with too little scrutiny." ...

... Glenn Greenwald: "Top secret documents obtained by the Guardian illustrate what the Fisa court actually does -- and does not do -- when purporting to engage in 'oversight' over the NSA's domestic spying. That process lacks many of the safeguards that Obama, the House GOP, and various media defenders of the NSA are trying to lead the public to believe exist.... Under [the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008], which was just renewed last December for another five years, no warrants are needed for the NSA to eavesdrop on a wide array of calls, emails and online chats involving US citizens.... The decision to begin listening to someone's phone calls or read their emails is made exclusively by NSA analysts and their 'line supervisors'. There is no outside scrutiny, and certainly no Fisa court involvement." ...

... Leakers' Solidarity. Ned Resnikoff of NBC News: "'We are in touch with [Edward] Snowden frequently, and we are involved in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland,' Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said on a Wednesday press conference call. Also featured on the call were Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and previous National Security Agency leaker Thomas Drake. The joint gathering was an unusual show of solidarity from three men who have all found themselves under attack by the United States government for disclosing classified information."

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said on Wednesday that the central bank intended to reduce its monetary stimulus later this year -- and end the bond purchases entirely by the middle of next year -- if unemployment continued to decline at the pace that the Fed expected." ...

... Here's the Fed's statement. ...

... As Ed Kilgore notes, the statement indicates that "the Fed had decided to stand absolutely pat on monetary stimulus at its latest policy meeting. Whoever drafts their deliberately tedious statements even tried to use the same language as in previous announcements, clearly to stress there was no news to worry about.... But then Ben Bernanke held his traditional press conference, and let himself get talked into speculating about the future conditions under which these stimulative efforts would be slowly curtailed. Even as he spoke, stocks started to slide, and now it looks like you'd never know the Fed actually did nothing." ...

... Inyoung Hwang & Katie Brennan of Bloomberg: "The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index retreated the most in two weeks as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank may reduce bond purchases later this year as the economy strengthens."

** David Dayen in Salon: "Bank of America's mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification -- but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose sworn statements were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.... It is a testament to the corruption of the federal regulatory and law enforcement apparatus that we're only hearing evidence from inside Bank of America now, in a civil class-action lawsuit...." Read the whole article. CW: a friend of mine -- a very persistent, savvy friend -- was a victim of this runaround. I believe every word of the allegations.

Thomas Edsall in the New York Times on "our broken social contract." The remarks of Alan Krueger, who is the head of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, are worth reading. Charles Murray & David Brooks -- not so much.

This. Burns. Me. Up. Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post: Facing a tight withdrawal deadline and tough terrain, the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014. The massive disposal effort, which U.S. military officials call unprecedented, has unfolded largely out of sight amid an ongoing debate inside the Pentagon about what to do with the heaps of equipment that won't be returning home. Military planners have determined that they will not ship back more than $7 billion worth of equipment -- about 20 percent of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan -- because it is no longer needed or would be too costly to ship back home."

Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday followed Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.) to became the third Republican in the U.S. Senate to come out in favor of marriage equality. While her powerful statement was a testament to a politician willing to rethink a fraught policy position, it also is a clear expression of her conservative ideals. And that's a good thing. One I hope will be mirrored by the Supreme Court soon, maybe even today." CW: Capehart highlights this line from Murkowski's statement: "I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government." Uh-huh. Alaska receives more than $15,000 per annum per capita from the federal government. If she'd like the rest of us taxpayers to pull back some of that intrusive overreach, we'd be glad to.

Erica Werner & David Espo of the AP: "White House-backed immigration legislation is gaining momentum in the Senate, where key lawmakers say they are closing in on a bipartisan compromise to spend tens of billions of dollars stiffening the bill's border security requirements without delaying legalization for millions living in the country unlawfully.... Under the emerging compromise, the government would grant legal status to immigrants living in the United States unlawfully at the same time the additional security was being put into place. Green cards, which signify permanent residency status, would be withheld until the security steps were complete." ...

Right Wing World

... Dana Milbank: At a Washington rally (or press conference or some combination thereof), Tea Party members & their stalwarts in Congress trod on their former heartthrob Marco Rubio. Milbank doesn't mention it, but the remarks from Heritage Foundation "scholar" Robert Rector were pretty rich in light of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office -- where the green shades know how to weigh the data without putting their thumbs on the scale -- just totally refuted an earlier Heritage Foundation claim that immigration reform would bring a net cost to the U.S. ...

... More details of the rally (or whatever) from Emma Dumain of Roll Call: House "Speaker John A. Boehner ... met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Wednesday and hopes to cure his party's huge demographic challenge with Hispanics by passing an immigration overhaul this year. But the tea party energy on display outside the Capitol, which catapulted him into power in 2010, has turned on the speaker." ...

... Steve Benen: "... consider yesterday's event in the larger context: what have Republicans shown the nation lately? There was a Tea Party rally this week, which followed a big fight over an anti-abortion bill that can't pass. In the states, we see a focus on culture-war issues, including state-mandated, medically-unnecessary ultrasounds. On Capitol Hill, most Republican lawmakers are running around talking about 'amnesty' and 'illegals,' which is every bit as insulting as their rhetoric about women. Yesterday, we even heard talk about 'takers,' as if the '47 percent' video never happened. And on the horizon, many in the GOP are already planning another debt-ceiling crisis."

Ed Kilgore: "If ... Kansas and North Carolina are currently operating as sort of right-wing policy 'laboratories' thanks to the highly-focused ideological nature of their Republican state legislative majorities, then my own home state of Georgia might be viewed as sort of a petri dish, where wingnuts don’t necessarily wield great power but do exert an immoderating influence on the GOP." CW: as far as I can tell, Georgia's wingers think sex is icky. ...

Father Knows Best. You know, maybe part of the problem is we need to go back into the schools at a very early age, maybe at the grade school level, and have a class for the young girls and have a class for the young boys and say, 'You know, this is what's important. This is what a father does that is maybe a little different, maybe a little bit better than the talents that a mom has in a certain area. And the same thing for the young girls, that, you know, this is what a mom does, and this is what is important from the standpoint of that union which we call marriage. Of my three daughters and one daughter-in-law, they all work. They all work, some of them full-time, some of them part-time. But they're still there as moms. And when they come home and take over that responsibility, they need a shared partner, and that partner is that partner for life. And I'm talking about, of course, the father. -- Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who is, BTW, an obstetrician, speaking on the House floor in support of the Defense of Marriage Act ...

... Steve Benen: "Is it possible Republicans are trying to make the gender gap worse? Are politicians like Gingrey embracing misogyny as some kind of deliberate campaign tactic?" ...

... Maybe So. Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "I mean, really, if he's going to say that boys and girls should be taught traditional gender roles from a young age, why not go all the way and say it was a mistake to allow women to vote? That great constitutional scholar Ann Coulter favors repeal ('If we took away women’s right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president'), as do such conservatives as National Review's Michael Walsh ('."let's just observe that without it Barack Obama could never have become president. Time for the ladies to take one for the team'"), Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, and Vox Day." ...

... Sorry I missed this one, which James S. referred to in the Comments a couple of days ago ...

     ... Fetuses Just Wanna Have Fun. Kate McDonough of Salon: "Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said on Monday that he supports the proposed federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks because he has personally witnessed male fetuses with their hands 'between their legs' pleasuring themselves at 15 weeks. 'There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20-weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15-weeks, 16-weeks,' said the former OB-GYN during the House Rules Committee debate on the 'Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.'” Like Phil Gingrey (& Ron Paul), Burgess is an OB-GYN.

Here's obnoxious Food Network host Paula Deen appearing with Michelle Obama in 2008:

... AND here's Deen with Oprah Winfrey (apparently Oprah's network OWN produced a special on Deen):

... AND this makes you wonder what Deen said about Obama & Winfrey when the cameras weren't rolling.

Local News

CW: Yes, yes, I know this is an incredibly competitive contest, but Chris Hayes is coming down on the side of my highly-qualified contestant. Thanks, Chris! Screw you, Rick:

Tim Buckland of the New Hampshire Union Leader: "A man was arrested and two people, including a Concord police officer, were allegedly assaulted during a rally Tuesday in a clash between a gun control group and gun rights supporters. The event had people supporting the Mayors Against Illegal Guns movement, founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reading the names of those 'killed with guns' since the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.... Witnesses said Daniel Musso, 52, of Brentwood was asked by police to move. He placed his hand on an officer, was tasered and arrested." CW: not sure why this story is getting national attention, but it is. ...

... Okay, here's one reason. Philip Bump of the Atlantic: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg's organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns organized an event in Concord, New Hampshire, yesterday, during which the names of victims of gun violence since Newtown were read for several hours. Included among those names: Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspect killed during a shoot-out with police." Mayors Against Illegal guns issued a statement saying Tsarnaev's name should not have been on the list. Bump explains how it got there.

News Ledes

Orlando Sentinel: " Six women, all but one of them white, will decide whether Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in a case that sparked widespread outrage and prompted civil rights marches. They will begin their work -- listening to testimony and evaluating evidence -- Monday morning."

Los Angeles Times: "A panel of federal judges on Thursday ordered Gov. Jerry Brown to immediately begin releasing inmates from the state's crowded prisons. In a 52-page order..., the court ordered Brown to expand good-time credits that allow inmates to finish their prison terms early. The judges demanded that the state take such steps 'commencing forthwith' and regardless of any laws that might prevent those releases."

Washington Post: "The stock market plummeted on Thursday, posting its biggest one-day drop since 2011, rocked by investor concern that the Federal Reserve is getting closer to pulling back on its stimulus program and by poor economic news from China." New York Times story here.

NBC News has some details of James Gandolfini's death.

AP: "Dozens of homes were evacuated near Denver as a wind-driven wildfire flared, one of many in the western states where hot and windy conditions were making it easy for the wild land blazes to start and spread."

AP: " The Afghan Taliban are ready to free a U.S. soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their senior operatives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay as a conciliatory gesture, a senior spokesman for the group said Thursday."

Washington Post: "A new virus responsible for an outbreak of respiratory illness in the Middle East may be more deadly than SARS, according to a team of infectious disease specialists who recently investigated a set of cases in Saudi Arabia."

New York Times: "... at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of [Giovanni Palatucci's] heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz."