One of the frequently recurring arguments offered by those supporting the widespread NSA surveillance programs is that this should not bother anyone who has nothing to hide. While this is a spurious argument at the best of times, it has a sinister corollary in that people who do take steps to protect their privacy may be assumed by the government to be up to no good, even though there are many reasons for guarding one’s personal information that have nothing to do with any form of criminality, let alone terrorism. [Read more…]

You may recall that I wrote about a recent report put out by young Republicans that surveyed the views of young people in general and what they found was that the Republican party was viewed very unfavorably, being described with words like closed-minded, racist, rigid, and old-fashioned. The young Republicans think that the party only cares about protecting those who have already made it rich and does not care about those who are still struggling to find their feet. Since almost all people, but especially the young, fall into the latter category, this has to hurt. [Read more…]

I wrote about the attempt to smear Glenn Greenwald by digging into his personal life. Justin Raimondo looks into the people behind the campaign. [Read more…]

The ever-reliable SCOTUSblog reports:

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court on Friday afternoon lifted a year-old order blocking same-sex marriages in California, apparently clearing the way for county clerks across the state to start issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. The one-sentence order immediately nullified a stay order issued last June by the Circuit Court in the “Proposition 8″ case — Hollingsworth v. Perry.

Almost immediately state officials issued statements that same-sex marriage ‘”is now legal in California and that marriage licenses must be issued to same-sex couples immediately.”

There is no going back. Californian becomes the 13th state to legalize same-sex marriage and since this is the most populous state, it add a huge demographic weight to the movement for equality.

Tom Gjelten is an honored member of the courtier journalist class who seems to see his role as to be a press conduit for the US government. I was curious to see how he would report on the Snowden case and he did not disappoint, fully living up to my expectations of him and dutifully playing his role of government propaganda distributor by smearing Snowden. [Read more…]

Via commenter slc1, I learned of news reports that say that a now-retired four-star Marine general James E. “Hoss” Cartwright has been targeted as the source for leaking to New York Times reporter David Sanger highly classified information about the Stuxnet virus that the US and Israel used to try and impede Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

Juan Cole gives a list of ten ways in which coverage of the Cartwright case will differ from that of the Snowden case. (#4: David Gregory will not ask that David Sanger be prosecuted for espionage because he aided and abetted Cartwright’s leaking.)