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Jun 11 2013
On This Day In History June 11
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on image to enlarge
June 11 is the 162nd day of the year (163rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 203 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress selects Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert R. Livingston of New York to draft a declaration of independence.
Knowing Jefferson’s prowess with a pen, Adams urged him to author the first draft of the document, which was then carefully revised by Adams and Franklin before being given to Congress for review on June 28.
The revolutionary treatise began with reverberating prose:
While political maneuvering was setting the stage for an official declaration of independence, a document explaining the decision was being written. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a “Committee of Five”, consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, to draft a declaration. Because the committee left no minutes, there is some uncertainty about how the drafting process proceeded-accounts written many years later by Jefferson and Adams, although frequently cited, are contradictory and not entirely reliable. What is certain is that the committee, after discussing the general outline that the document should follow, decided that Jefferson would write the first draft. Considering Congress’s busy schedule, Jefferson probably had limited time for writing over the next seventeen days, and likely wrote the draft quickly. He then consulted the others, made some changes, and then produced another copy incorporating these alterations. The committee presented this copy to the Congress on June 28, 1776. The title of the document was “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled.” Congress ordered that the draft “lie on the table”.
On Monday, July 1, having tabled the draft of the declaration, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and resumed debate on Lee’s resolution of independence. John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.[64] John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.
Jun 11 2013
Down the Totalitarian Hole of a Security State
William Binney, a former top official at the National Security Agency, and Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has broken the NSA spying stories join Amy Goodman to discuss the crucial matters facing this country over the growing power of the government to secretly collect data and information through secret courts and programs.
“The government is not trying to protect [secrets about NSA surveillance] from the terrorists,” Binney says. “It’s trying to protect knowledge of that program from the citizens of the United States.”
Transcript can be read here
Transcript can be read here
NSA Leak Highlights Key Role Of Private Contractors
by Jonathan Fahey and Adam Goldman
The U.S. government monitors threats to national security with the help of nearly 500,000 people like Edward Snowden – employees of private firms who have access to the government’s most sensitive secrets.
When Snowden, an employee of one of those firms, Booz Allen Hamilton, revealed details of two National Security Agency surveillance programs, he spotlighted the risks of making so many employees of private contractors a key part of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. [..]
Booz Allen, based in McLean, Va., provides consulting services, technology support and analysis to U.S. government agencies and departments. Last year, 98 percent of the company’s $5.9 billion in revenue came from U.S. government contracts. Three-fourths of its 25,000 employees hold government security clearances. Half the employees have top secret clearances.
The company has established deep ties with the government – the kinds of ties that contractors pursue and covet. Contractors stand to gain an edge on competitors by hiring people with the most closely held knowledge of the thinking inside agencies they want to serve and the best access to officials inside. That typically means former government officials.
The relationship often runs both ways: Clapper himself is a former Booz Allen executive. The firm’s vice chairman, John “Mike” McConnell, held Clapper’s position under George W. Bush.
Edward Snowdem is an American hero who is risking his life to protect our freedom from a government run amok.
Jun 10 2013
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Glen Greenwald: On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation
No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable
The times in American history when political power was constrained was when they went too far and the system backlashed and imposed limits. That’s what happened in the mid-1970s when the excesses of J Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon became so extreme that the legitimacy of the political system depended upon it imposing restraints on itself. And that’s what is happening now as the government continues on its orgies of whistleblower prosecutions, trying to criminalize journalism, and building a massive surveillance apparatus that destroys privacy, all in the dark. The more they overreact to measures of accountability and transparency – the more they so flagrantly abuse their power of secrecy and investigations and prosecutions – the more quickly that backlash will arrive.
I’m going to go ahead and take the Constitution at its word that we’re guaranteed the right of a free press. So, obviously, are other people doing so. And that means that it isn’t the people who are being threatened who deserve and will get the investigations, but those issuing the threats who will get that. That’s why there’s a free press. That’s what adversarial journalism means.
Paul Krugman: The Big Shrug
I’ve been in this economics business for a while. In fact, I’ve been in it so long I still remember what people considered normal in those long-ago days before the financial crisis. Normal, back then, meant an economy adding a million or more jobs each year, enough to keep up with the growth in the working-age population. Normal meant an unemployment rate not much above 5 percent, except for brief recessions. And while there was always some unemployment, normal meant very few people out of work for extended periods.
So how, in those long-ago days, would we have reacted to Friday’s news that the number of Americans with jobs is still down two million from six years ago, that 7.6 percent of the work force is unemployed (with many more underemployed or forced to take low-paying jobs), and that more than four million of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months? Well, we know how most political insiders reacted: they called it a pretty good jobs report. In fact, some are even celebrating the report as “proof” that the budget sequester isn’t doing any harm.
In other words, our policy discourse is still a long way from where it ought to be.
The US has shown itself so paranoid in the face of possible ‘al-Qaida-linked terror’ that it has played right into jihadist hands
Washington has handed Osama bin Laden his last and greatest triumph. The Prism files revealed in the Guardian indicate how far his bid to undermine western values has succeeded in the 12 years since 9/11. He has achieved state intrusion into the private lives and communications of every American citizen. He has shown the self-proclaimed home of individual freedom as so paranoid in the face of his “terror” as to infiltrate the entire internet, sucking up mobile phone calls, emails, texts and, we may assume, GPS movements.
The vast databases of Microsoft, Google, YouTube and Facebook are open to government. They may cry “your privacy is our priority”, but they lie. Obedience to regulatory authority is their priority. And what does authority say? It says what authority always says: “We collect significant information on bad guys, but only bad guys.” As police states have said down the ages, the innocent have nothing to fear. For innocent, eventually read obedient.
Robert Kuttner: Sweet and Sour Pork
President Obama’s personal summit with China’s new president, Xi Jinping, at the well-named venue of Rancho Mirage, Calif., covered a wide range of issues, from North Korea to cyber-spying to territorial disputes with Japan and Taiwan, to global climate change. What the meetings did not engage is the fact that China’s entire economic system violates the naïve American premise that free markets produce efficient and balanced outcomes.
As China has demonstrated for more than a generation, “free trade” is a useful American fantasy, and state-led capitalism is not a contradiction in terms. It is a recipe for hollowing out the U.S. economy in favor of Chinese economic primacy. Nor does capitalism, Chinese-style, logically lead to increased democracy and human rights.
Robert Reich: The Quiet Closing of Washington
Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Their refusal to compromise is working just as they hoped: No jobs agenda. No budget. No grand bargain on the deficit. No background checks on guns. Nothing on climate change. No tax reform. No hike in the minimum wage. Nothing so far on immigration reform.
It’s as if an entire branch of the federal government — the branch that’s supposed to deal directly with the nation’s problems, not just execute the law or interpret the law but make the law — has gone out of business, leaving behind only a so-called “sequester” that’s cutting deeper and deeper into education, infrastructure, programs for the nation’s poor, and national defense.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Trash Talking Economists
Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately, you’d think they got the two professions mixed up.
Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where everybody with a fist, glove or folding chair can jump out of the audience and into the ring. It doesn’t matter how much ref blows his whistle. There will be blood. If economists had entourages, bullets would be flying.
The brawl du jour is over the Affordable Care Act, but it’s also an argument over the tone of policy disputes, a burning “meta” question in that paradoxical world where conservative economists believe every human being on Earth is an economic actor … except other economists.
Economists are talking trash about each other. And, as crazy as it sounds, it actually matters.
Jun 10 2013
On This Day In History June 10
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
June 10 is the 161st day of the year (162nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 204 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1990, Luther Campbell and fellow 2LiveCrew members are arrested on obscenity charges
Though the First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states that the U.S. Congress “shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” free speech is widely understood to have its limits. It is dangerous and potentially criminal, for instance, to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. But what about yelling “$&%#@!!” in a crowded nightclub? Lenny Bruce and other comedians tested the limits of that practice in the 1960s, but it was not until the late 1980s that the issue of obscenity came front and center in the world of popular music. The group that brought it there was 2LiveCrew, a hip-hop outfit led by Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell. On June 10, 1990, just days after a controversial ruling by a Florida federal judge, Campbell and two other members of 2LiveCrew were arrested on charges of public obscenity after performing material from their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be in a Hollywood, Florida, nightclub.
In 1989, the group released their album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, which also became the group’s most successful album. A large part of its success was due to the single “Me So Horny”, which was popular despite little radio rotation. The American Family Association (AFA) did not think the presence of a “Parental Advisory” sticker was enough to adequately warn listeners of what was inside the case. Jack Thompson, a lawyer affiliated with the AFA, met with Florida Governor Bob Martinez and convinced him to look into the album to see if it met the legal classification of obscene. In 1990 action was taken at the local level and Nick Navarro, Broward County sheriff, received a ruling from County Circuit Court judge Mel Grossman that probable cause for obscenity violations existed. In response, Luther Campbell maintained that people should focus on issues relating to hunger and poverty rather than on the lyrical content of their music.
Navarro warned record store owners that selling the album may be prosecutable. The 2 Live Crew then filed a suit against Navarro. That June, U.S. district court Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled the album obscene and illegal to sell. Charles Freeman, a local retailer, was arrested two days later, after selling a copy to an undercover police officer. This was followed by the arrest of three members of The 2 Live Crew after they performed some material from the album at a nightclub. They were acquitted soon after, as professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. testified at their trial in defense of their lyrics. Freeman’s conviction was overturned on appeal as well.
In 1992, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity ruling from Judge Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Broward County’s appeal. As in the Freeman case, Gates testified on behalf of Navarro, arguing that the material that the county alleged was profane actually had important roots in African-American vernacular, games, and literary traditions and should be protected.
As a result of the controversy, As Nasty As They Wanna Be sold over two million copies. It peaked at #29 on The Billboard 200 and #3 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. A few other retailers were later arrested for selling it as well, including Canadian Marc Emery who was convicted in Ontario in 1991, and would later gain fame as a marijuana activist. Later hard rock band Van Halen sued over an uncleared sample of their song “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” in The 2 Live Crew Song “The Fuck Shop”. The publicity then continued when George Lucas, owner of the Star Wars universe, successfully sued Campbell for appropriating the name “Skywalker” for his record label, Luke Skyywalker Records. Campbell changed his stage name to Luke (and changed the record label’s name to Luke Records) and the group released an extremely political follow up album, Banned in the USA after obtaining permission to use an interpolation of Bruce Springsteen‘s Born in the U.S.A. The 2 Live Crew paraphernalia with the Luke Skyywalker or Skyywalker logos are often sought-after collector’s items.
Jun 10 2013
NSA Whistleblower Comes Out of the Shadows
Despite the risks to his personal safety, the whistleblower who leaked the FISA court order and NSA surveillance programs to The Guardian has revealed himself. Prior to giving the tapes to columnist Glenn Greenwald, the 29 year old Edward Snowden chose to leave the US for Hong Kong because of it long history of respect for freedom of speech. Like six other whistleblowers, he expects that he will be charged by the Obama administration under the 1917 Espionage Act. In the 12 minute video that was produced and copyrighted* by American documentary film director and producer, Laura Poitras, he explains his decision to give the secret warrant and programs to Greenwald and leave the United States.
by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras, The Guardian
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.
Jun 09 2013
Rant of the Week: Stephen Colbert, NSA Phone Surveillance
The Nation Security Agency collects millions of phone records from Verizon, and unlike during the Bush administration, this time it’s the Obama administration.
Jun 09 2013
On This Day In History June 9
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
June 9 is the 160th day of the year (161st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 205 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins Triple Crown
With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.
With easy victories in his first two starts of 1973, Secretariat seemed on his way to the Triple Crown. Just two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, however, he stumbled at the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, coming in third behind Angle Light and Sham. On May 5, he met Sham and Angle Light again at the Churchill Downs track in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. Secretariat, a 3-to-2 favorite, broke from near the back of the pack to win the 2 1/4-mile race in a record 1 minute and 59 seconds. He was the first to run the Derby in less than two minutes and his record still stands. Two weeks later, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, Secretariat won the second event of the Triple Crown: the Preakness Stakes. The official clock malfunctioned, but hand-recorded timers had him running the 1 1/16-mile race in record time.
On June 9, 1973, almost 100,000 people came to Belmont Park near New York City to see if “Big Red” would become the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown. Secretariat gave the finest performance of his career in the Belmont Stakes, completing the 1.5-mile race in a record 2 minutes and 24 seconds, knocking nearly three seconds off the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957. He also won by a record 31 lengths. Ron Turcotte, who jockeyed Secretariat in all but three of his races, claimed that at Belmont he lost control of Secretariat and that the horse sprinted into history on his own accord.
Jun 09 2013
Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
The Sunday Talking Heads:
Up with Steve Kornacki: The guests were not listed but Joan Walsh, editor at large Salon.com, said she would be one of Steve’s guests.
This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests this Sunday are Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI); Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO); and Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian.
Guests on the roundtable: George Will, Washington Post; GOP Strategist Matthew Dowd; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Paul Krugman, New York Times; and Greta Van Susteren, Fox News.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH); Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY); Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA); Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI).
On his roundtable: David Sanger, New York Times; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post); Harvard University Prof. Joseph Nye; and Margaret Brennan, CBS News.
The Chris Matthews Show: Chris is preempted for the Men’s Final of the French Open.
Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP is preempted for the Men’s Final of the French Open.
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO); Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Amy Walter, Cook Political Report; Former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL); and Former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA).
Jun 09 2013
What We Now Know
In this week segment of “What we know Now” wit Up host Steve Kornacki, we learn that the two men who were wrongly identified as the Boston Marathon bombers on the front page of The New York Post, have sued the Post for defamation. Steve is joined by guests Abby Rapoport, staff writer, The American Prospect; Jonathan Alter, columnist for Bloomberg View; Michael Steele, former chairman of the RNC; and Julia Ioffe, senior editor at The New Republic.
Jeremy Epstein Is Still Looking For A Job
by Andrew Kaczynski, BuzzFeed
The college student was thrust into the spotlight when he asked Obama and Romney about finding a job after graduation at the October town hall debate.
At the debate, Epstein made headlines for asking the candidates about finding a job after graduation. “Mr. President, Governor Romney, as a 20-year-old college student, all I hear from professors, neighbors and others is that when I graduate, I will have little chance to get employment,” he asked. “Can – what can you say to reassure me, but more importantly my parents, that I will be able to sufficiently support myself after I graduate?”
Epstein did not find a summer job but is doing some work at his school’s radio station 88.7. He’s even hosting a show.
Heather McGill, Wife of Alabama Sen. Shadrack McGill, Warns on Facebook to Keep Off Her Man
from ABC News
An Alabama politician’s wife who took to Facebook to warn women to stay away from her husband said a “righteous anger” pushed her to write a post that has now gone viral.
Why do we even care? But, hey now we know.
The New York Post‘s “Bag Men” May Get the Last Laugh
by Jennifer Lai, Slate
As you may remember, the photo and attention-grabbing headline led many to believe the FBI had IDed the two males-16-year-old high school student Salaheddin Barhoum and 24-year-old part-time college student Yassine Zaimi-as suspects in the bombing. In reality, the pair turned out to just be avid runners who had been already briefly questioned by authorities. Later that day, authorities released the photos and video of the two actual suspects, who we now know as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Barhoum and Zaimi are suing the Post for libel, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy, and are seeking unspecified damages
Gov. Deval Patrick says he got drunk after bomber captured
by Katie Glueck, Politico
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick got “quite drunk” by himself a day after the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects concluded, according to a report Thursday.
The Boston Herald reported that the Bay State Democrat went to the Berkshires for a swim and a solo dinner, the Saturday after Boston endured hours of lockdown as law enforcement engaged in a shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers and spent a day tracking down the surviving brother, Dzhokhar, before capturing him.
Good for him. I might have done the same after all that. Hmmm, I can’t remember but I might have.
Jun 08 2013
Health and Fitness News
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
There’s so much beautiful spinach in the farmers’ markets now, and though it will soon give way to summer heat, it’s nice to know you can buy it every week and make something different with it each time. If you’re already into hot weather, you’ll appreciate this week’s cold yogurt soup with spinach and grains, which I’ve been polishing off for lunch every day this week. But even the hot soups will work on a warm day.
This is a filling and comforting soup that is still suitable for a late spring/early summer meal.
Noodle Bowl With Mushrooms, Spinach and Salmon
A meal in a bowl that highlights fresh spinach.
Yogurt or Buttermilk Soup With Spinach and Grains
A refreshing soup that is great to keep on hand as summer arrives.
Spinach and Tofu Wontons in Broth
The wontons can be made ahead and frozen.
Puréed Spinach Soup With Middle Eastern Spices
This soup was inspired by a Syrian recipe, a spice-laced pan-cooked spinach that is served with yogurt and walnuts on top.
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