Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has been agonizing over how to feel about the recent revelations of government snooping. Given that he is a Democratic (and Obama) supporter, he has been grasping at arguments that seek to portray it as not as bad as it looks. One of his readers sent in a comment that illustrates precisely how many people decide on what stance to take. [Read more…]
Gordon Gee, the recently resigned president of Ohio State University because of a series of intemperate remarks, symbolized the worst aspects of the corporatization of the university. He clearly saw himself in the CEO mold and was not shy about extracting the maximum personal salary, perks, and benefits for himself by jumping from job to job while universities in general are hiking fees on students and otherwise making higher education harder to achieve. [Read more…]
As people await rulings on the two same sex marriage cases before the US Supreme Court that are due to be released any day now, it is useful to see what the state of play is. It seems unlikely that the court will issue sweeping rulings affirming the constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, though that would be a welcome surprise. Failing that, what lies ahead? [Read more…]
I have written before of president Obama’s skillful use of words to convince people that he represents their interests even when he doesn’t. I saw this statement by president Obama today on the controversy over the recent leaks that provides another excellent example. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert captures the problem for the Republican party with the recent revelations of government violations of people’s privacy. They would normally enjoy anything that embarrasses the Obama administration but since they also love the national security state and indeed expanded and exploited its powers shamelessly during the Bush administration, they are caught in a bind. [Read more…]
Jonathan Turley has been rightly ranting for some time about judges who come up with novel sentences meant to humiliate the convicted. This risks making the judiciary a laughing stock. Recently he heighted this disgraceful display by a judge in the Cleveland Municipal Court system. [Read more…]
As promised, Glenn Greenwald has received more leaks from whistleblowers. The latest is that president Obama has issued a directive ordering his agencies to draw up a list of targets for cyberattacks all over the globe. You can see the leaked presidential directive here. [Read more…]
He says that in the case of the Bradley Manning trial the government as usual has been successful in getting the media to chase squirrels and obsess over the wrong questions. The government has long figured that out that this tactic works well and uses it quite skillfully. [Read more…]
One catch for most people in dealing with the two major stories of the government’s sweeping capturing of telephone records and internet activity is trying to understand its significance. If you are like me and not particularly tech-savvy, the question we cannot really answer is what were they actually doing and how bad it was. We have seen many supporters of the national security state trying to pooh-pooh the revelations as no big deal and some may be persuaded by those arguments. [Read more…]