Spock answers one of the most famous lines in Star Trek lore: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” I stood up to bureaucracy and the secrecy of government and did so at great risk. I had to resign. I no longer had income or retirement. I lost all of it. I am over it.
The McDonald's restaurant chain refused to open a branch in a West Bank Jewish settlement, the company said Thursday, adding a prominent name to an international movement to boycott Israel's settlements.
Irina Shalmor, spokeswoman for McDonald's Israel, said the owners of a planned mall in the Ariel settlement asked McDonald's to open a branch there about six months ago. Shalmor said the chain refused because the owner of McDonald's Israel has a policy of staying out of the occupied territories. The decision was not coordinated with McDonald's headquarters in the U.S., she said. In an email, the headquarters said "our partner in Israel has determined that this particular location is not part of his growth plan."
The Israeli branch's owner and franchisee, Omri Padan, is a founder of the dovish group Peace Now, which opposes all settlements and views them as obstacles to peace. The group said Padan is no longer a member.
We would not know how the N.S.A., through its Prism and other programs, has become, in the words of my colleagues James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “the virtual landlord of the digital assets of Americans and foreigners alike.” We would not know how it has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or videos of citizens across the world; nor how it has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; nor how through requests to the compliant and secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (F.I.S.A.) it has been able to bend nine U.S. Internet companies to its demands for access to clients’ digital information.
We would not be debating whether the United States really should have turned surveillance into big business, offering data-mining contracts to the likes of Booz Allen and, in the process, high-level security clearance to myriad folk who probably should not have it. We would not have a serious debate at last between Europeans, with their more stringent views on privacy, and Americans about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.
We would not have legislation to bolster privacy safeguards and require more oversight introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Nor would we have a letter from two Democrats to the N.S.A. director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, saying that a government fact sheet about surveillance abroad “contains an inaccurate statement” (and where does that assertion leave Alexander’s claims of the effectiveness and necessity of Prism?).In short, a long-overdue debate about what the U.S. government does and does not do in the name of post-9/11 security — the standards applied in the F.I.S.A. court, the safeguards and oversight surrounding it and the Prism program, the protection of civil liberties against the devouring appetites of intelligence agencies armed with new data-crunching technology — would not have occurred, at least not now.
All this was needed because, since it was attacked in an unimaginable way, the United States has gone through a Great Disorientation. Institutions at the core of the checks and balances that frame American democracy and civil liberties failed. Congress gave a blank check to the president to wage war wherever and whenever he pleased. The press scarcely questioned the march to a war in Iraq begun under false pretenses. Guantánamo made a mockery of due process. The United States, in Obama’s own words, compromised its “basic values” as the president gained “unbound powers.” Snowden’s phrase, “turnkey tyranny,” was over the top but still troubling.
On Tuesday night, the nation's eyes were on Texas state Senator Wendy Davis, who bravely stood on the floor of the Texas Statehouse for 11 hours—without food or water—filibustering a bill that would have been a devastating setback for women's reproductive rights.
Earlier in the day, when hundreds of protestors packed into the Statehouse, the Legislature shut down their testimonies. So Sen. Davis stood for them. With support from Democratic allies, she launched her filibuster, reading aloud the stories of those who didn't get to testify.
That's what a true leader looks like. Let's make sure champions like Sen. Davis know that when they stand up for what's right, we've got their backs.
Will you show Sen. Wendy Davis you've got her back by making a pledge to support her in whatever office she runs for next?
We must build on the groundswell of support we saw Tuesday, and stand together to fight back against these restrictive policies. And that's why building a war chest for Sen. Davis is more important than ever.Let's show Republicans that—like Sen. Davis—we aren't afraid, and we won't back down.
UPDATE: NYT covers this here, noting how it hurts Perry in more ways than one. Also, see Texas's seen mother rate.“They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view,” Davis told the Associated Press Thursday. “Our governor should reflect our Texas values. Sadly, Gov. Perry fails that test.” She also added that his comment was “without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds.”
Sherry Sereboff: I have a novel idea! Why not report the facts? SB 5 would have imposed the toughest abortion restrictions in the nation. The bill would have required physicians to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of an abortion facility. Required abortions--even drug-induced ones-- would have to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers and required doctors to administer those drugs in person. When was the last time you drove 1000 miles Melinda Henneberger? The Lone Star State is a big ole place, and SB 5 would have shut all but a few clinics in the entire state, forcing girls and women--including those who were pregnant due to rape and incest--to drive over 1000 miles to have access to a medical procedure that is constitutionally guaranteed. Yep, facts are always a good place to start. I'm surprised your editors at the Washington Post don't agree.
Thomas Dewar: You cannot be serious. First of all, women favor reproductive choice by a solid margin, which is one of the primary reasons the GOP consistently faces a gender gap each cycle. And yes, there are deranged, homicidal people in our society, just as your church unleashes predators upon children. I bet most reasonable people can agree, however, that the issue in such cases is the deranged mind of the perp, and not theology or reproductive choice or homosexuality, any more than Jeffrey Dahmer's issue was not being a vegetarian. It's irresponsible, hamfisted, and intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. I look at polling and work on campaigns all over this country for a living, for one. For another, you cannot out of one side of your mouth imply those who disagree with you somehow make common cause with the likes of Gosnell and out of the other indulge your martyr complex about being "vilified." Respect is a two-way street, sister.
Four CIA officers were embedded with the New York Police Department in the decade after Sept. 11, 2001, including one official who helped conduct surveillance operations in the United States, according to a newly disclosed C.I.A. inspector general’s report.
That officer believed there were “no limitations” on his activities, the report said, because he was on an unpaid leave of absence, and thus exempt from the prohibition against domestic spying by members of the C.I.A.
Another embedded C.I.A. analyst — who was on its payroll — said he was given “unfiltered” police reports that included information unrelated to foreign intelligence, the C.I.A. report said.
The military's highest court has overturned a murder conviction against a Camp Pendleton Marine in one of the most significant cases against American troops from the Iraq war. The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Wednesday threw out the conviction of Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III.
According to the ruling posted on the court's website, the judges agreed with Hutchins, who claimed his constitutional rights were violated when he was held in solitary confinement without access to a lawyer for seven days during his interrogation. Hutchins led an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping a retired Iraqi policeman from his home in April 2006, marching him to a ditch and shooting him to death in Hamdania.
The squad's other members served less than 18 months.
To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “disparage,” ”injure,” “degrade,” ”demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.
Krystopher Dibella, the man who sold the Bushmaster rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Newtown massacre, has pleaded guilty to a federal charge stemming from a gun sale at Riverview Gun Sales, which was raided days after the massacre.
Dibella pleaded guilty Monday afternoon in federal court in Bridgeport to aiding and abetting a failure to make a proper entry on an ATF 4473 form, which is a firearms transaction form.
The offense occurred March 15, 2010, the court clerk’s office said, the same date Nancy Lanza began her purchase of the rifle.
Dibella is a former employee of Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor, Conn., a store raided by the ATF in the wake of the Newtown massacre.
Dear Mr. Carr and Mr. Somaiya,
I expect that you will correct your recent article on the U.S. Investigation of WikiLeaks found here.
I am a journalist-- and the proper title for me is journalist, most especially because Mr. Somaiya has solicited information published by me in my capacity as a journalist-- and I am more than happy to publish my detailed and lengthy email exchange with him for the public.
Mr. Carr, Mr. Somiya, Mr. Bill Keller, The New York Times and other publications have used or linked to my work. I have been a credentialed member of the press at Fort Meade, MD for 18 month. My work covering the Manning trial was short listed for the 2013 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (not activism). I have received a grant from the Freedom of the Press Foundation for journalism for my coverage of the Manning trial (not for activism).
I find the term activist used here by Mr. Carr and Mr Somaiya-- pejorative. So, you will accordingly correct your error immediately.
I am at Fort Meade, where are you, New York Times?
You are reading my journalistic work, using my journalistic work, capitalizing off of my journalistic work, and linking to my journalistic work about the largest criminal investigation ever into a publisher and its source.
More importantly, you are not here.
Best,
Alexa O'Brien
The press lined up outside of her house and showed up at her casino, causing her to miss work for weeks. One night, she turned on the television to find the HBO host Bill Maher and the actress Jane Lynch performing a dramatic reading of the bawdy messages. Ms. Weiss, an avowed Maher fan, said she sat in her living room crying. While coping with the onslaught, she drank heavy amounts of alcohol, a habit that persists.
“I obsess about it,” she said, “every day.”
Although there were a scattering of tourists carrying bags from the duty-free shops preparing to board the plane, a large number of the passengers were journalists trailing Mr. Snowden on the Russia-to-Cuba leg of his extraordinary odyssey, which began early Sunday when he fled his hideout in Hong Kong.
Several journalists carrying American passports were ejected from the aircraft because of visa requirements to visit Cuba.
(AP) A former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing highly classified surveillance programs has been allowed to leave for a “third country” because a U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with Hong Kong law, the territory’s government said Sunday.
Hong Kong’s government did not identify the country, but the South China Morning Post, which has been in contact with Edward Snowden, reported that he was on a plane for Moscow, but that Russia was not his final destination.
Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong for several weeks since he revealed information on the highly classified spy programs, has talked of seeking asylum in Iceland.
However, Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency cited an unidentified Aeroflot official as saying Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.
The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks took credit for helping Snowden leave Hong Kong, saying on Twitter, “Mr. Snowden is currently over Russian airspace accompanied by WikiLeaks legal advisors.”
Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions.
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.
The United States, Britain and France have supplied the United Nations with a trove of evidence, including multiple blood, tissue and soil samples, that U.S. officials say proves that Syrian troops used the nerve agent sarin on the battlefield. But the nature of the physical evidence — as well as the secrecy over how it was collected and analyzed — has opened the administration to criticism by independent experts, who say there is no reliable way to assess its authenticity.
