The House of Representatives voted late last week to cut the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (popularly referred to ‘food stamps’) by $40 billion over ten years. The vote was close (217-210) and the bill now goes to the senate. The Des Moines Register has come out with a scathing editorial against the cutting of SNAP benefits, comparing the meager allowance with how lavishly the state’s members of Congress spend on their own food on trips at taxpayer expense. [Read more…]

In a long profile in Foreign Policy, Shane Harris describes Keith Alexander, the head of NSA, as a cowboy who disdained the law and felt that he could do what he needed to do to get the results he wanted. [Read more…]

It was less that a year ago that General David Petraeus was the golden boy of US military strategy, the supposed genius who had turned around US fortunes in Iraq prior to the withdrawal. Members of Congress treated him as some kind of oracle whose words must be followed by even the president and competed to see who could praise him the most. Criticisms of him were treated as if they were blasphemy, as could be seen from the howls of outrage when the group MoveOn.org put out an ad in 2007 against the Iraq war that made a bad pun on his name. [Read more…]

It was little more than a week ago that the US seemed on the verge of bombing Syria, an action that threatened to spread to Iran and thus open yet another front in the perpetual war against Muslim countries. This was something that was hoped for by the neoconservatives, the liberal war hawks, Israel and its US lobby, and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups that thrive on instability and chaos. [Read more…]

We have been steadily observing over time the encroachment of the civil liberties and the violation of constitutional protections by the government, using fear-mongering about terrorism in order to get people to acquiesce. The government seizes any excuse to make inroads into our due process rights, often stampeding people at times of crisis, and terrorism is the best excuse they have. [Read more…]

Yesterday I wrote about the big yellow board that had been placed in front of the university library to let people write their views on a possible war with Syria. The board only went up yesterday and so there were not that many comments. On my way to the library today, I checked on the board to find that it had been almost completely filled up with written comments. Tomorrow is the last day it will be there. [Read more…]

It looks like Edward Snowden is settling in to life in Russia, learning the language and the culture. He may well decide to stay on there if the Russian government lets him. Although he apparently travels freely and is unrecognized by people, he is living incognito at a secret location with security, presumably just in case the US government gets an insane idea to kidnap or even kill him. They are less likely to do that in Russia than in some smaller country like Venezuela or Ecuador because the US government, like all bullies, only picks on people that cannot fight back. [Read more…]

On my way across the campus earlier today for a meeting, I saw that a big (roughly 4ft x 16ft) yellow board had been set up in front of the library asking people to write what they thought about a US war with Syria. There were a mix of comments, with those opposed slightly outnumbering those who were either ambivalent or in favor of direct US intervention. I noticed that the board had been put up by the student group Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), a libertarian counterweight to the more establishment conservative Republican Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) which seems to be dormant. (Warning: Audio may begin upon clicking. I hate it when they do that.) [Read more…]