Tag: Punting the Pundits

The Senate is unnecessarily rushing to vote on President Obama’s nomination of David Barron for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, even though the public has yet to see documents written by Mr. Barron that have raised legitimate concern among civil liberties advocates on both the left and the right.

Mr. Barron, a Harvard law professor, was a top official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel when he wrote two classified memos justifying the drone strike in Yemen in 2011 that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen accused of being a terrorist. [..]

In other respects, Mr. Barron appears clearly qualified for the job. Some senators will vote for him in spite of (or because of) what is in the memos; some, like Mr. Paul, will vote against him. But what’s the rush in pushing through this vote? A federal judgeship is a lifetime appointment. The American people should be able to decide for themselves whether their elected representatives are making the right decision.

Jane Hamsher: The Price of Whistleblowing: Manning, Greenwald, Assange, Kiriakou and Snowden

We were eating dinner last night around my kitchen table when the news of the dustup between Wikileaks and the Intercept came through the tubes. As I read the details to the people who came here to share food and conversation, everyone’s eyebrows raised.

The eyebrows at a lot of tables probably raised as Wikileaks took the Intercept to task for its latest story, and failing to release the name of one of the countries in which the United States is spying on its citizens. The Intercept maintained they had been shown compelling evidence that led them to redact the name; Wikileaks maintained the citizens of the country have a right to know. [..]

I know that in the past, Assange has had concerns about releasing documents himself without redacting the names of innocent people who could get hurt, and has contacted the Pentagon offering to work with them to redact documents before their release. And I also understand his concerns that the Pentagon is not always acting in good faith when they say people are in danger. They have cried wolf so many times that nobody believes them any more.

But I also don’t think you can assume bad faith on the part of the people at the Intercept. We may learn two days from now, or in 10 years, that there were fierce internal battles over the Snowden documents. Or we may learn that everyone was in general agreement to redact the name of the country.  I have no idea and have had no discussions with anyone at the Intercept about the story, including Glenn Greenwald.

Robert Reich: The Practical Choice: Not American Capitalism or “Welfare State Socialism” but an Economy That’s Working for a Few or Many

For years Americans have assumed that our hard-charging capitalism  is better than the soft-hearted version found in Canada and Europe. American capitalism might be a bit crueler but it generates faster growth and higher living standards overall. Canada’s and Europe’s “welfare-state socialism” is doomed.  

It was a questionable assumption to begin with, relying to some extent on our collective amnesia about the first three decades after World War II, when tax rates on top incomes in the U.S. never fell below 70 percent, a larger portion of our economy was invested in education than before or since, over a third of our private-sector workers were unionized, we came up with Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, and built the biggest infrastructure project in history, known as the interstate highway system.

But then came America’s big U-turn, when we deregulated, de-unionized, lowered taxes on the top, ended welfare, and stopped investing as much of the economy in education and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Canada and Europe continued on as before. Soviet communism went bust, and many of us assumed European and Canadian “socialism” would as well.

That’s why recent data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database  is so shocking.

The top Senate Republican beat his conservative primary opponent, but it came at a price for the GOP

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s primary victory on Tuesday night in Kentucky will undoubtedly tempt many a pundit to write the Tea Party’s eulogy. But the Tea Party will achieve in electoral death what it could never achieve in life: lasting control of the GOP agenda.

McConnell won because he’s got a familiar name, a lot of money and the kind of political clout that makes up for occasional lapses from orthodoxy. That might not be enough next time – as a local Kentucky Republican leader told the National Journal last week, the state party is “still McConnell’s Republican Party, but it’s edging toward being Rand Paul]’s Republican Party”. But, it was enough to keep it from being challenger Matt Bevin’s Republican party – especially after his [unforced errors and willingness to prize ideological purity over more pragmatic concerns (like the $2bn in pork McConnell brought home for agreeing to end the government shutdown).

McConnell didn’t win because he became a Tea Party member – he’s so conservative, he didn’t have to. (A vote analysis casts him as one of the top 25 conservative members of the Senate, and Tea Party darling and intrastate rival Paul is at number 19.) Instead, McConnell’s win just shows how easily the GOP grows over its fringes.

Zoë Carpenter: Will GOP Leaders Block Another Immigration Measure?

For months now Republican leaders have said they’re committed to passing immigration reform while making excuses for inaction. This week, the House has a chance to tackle one small part of a reform agenda, in the form of a bill to allow undocumented immigrants to serve in the military and in some cases receive green cards. WIth the window of opportunity for reform closing, the GOP leadership is poised once again to back away from it, in deference to the far right.

The Enlist Act, put forward by California Republican Jeff Denham and co-sponsored by twenty-four Republicans and twenty-six Democrats, should be among the most palatable to Republicans of the individual reforms: It rewards military service and would apply only to those who were brought to the US as children. But hard right groups like Heritage Action have fought the proposal because it would open up a pathway to legal status. Last week a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he would not allow debate on the measure, dealing what seemed like a terminal blow.

Bryce Covert: In the Real World, the So-Called ‘Boy Crisis’ Disappears

The realization came to me later than it should have: getting a job is not the same as applying to college. After I graduated, I assumed for a long time that the work world operated the same way as the school world. If I wanted a job, I would comb through hundreds upon hundreds of job postings. If there were jobs that sounded interesting and I seemed to have the right qualifications, I would send in a cover letter and resume, then wait for a call to come in for an interview. About 98 percent of the time, a call never came.

Little did I know that by the time a company posts a job listing, in particular a journalism job, it’s often already all but filled and the posting is an HR formality. The people getting the jobs weren’t following the instructions as laid out on the “Work for Us” section of companies’ websites. They were having informal meetings with friends of friends.

School was all about following the directions and reaping the rewards. Getting ahead outside of school, I eventually figured out, meant figuring out rules that weren’t written down.

Michelle Chen: Turkey’s Deadly Mining Disaster Reveals Just How Little Was Done to Prevent It

After days of pulling bodies from the ruptured earth, the death toll of the Turkish mine disaster in Soma has plateaued at 301. With their masked faces frozen in agony, their crumpled photographs clutched in the fists of loved ones, the workers and their struggles have become far more visible in death than they were in life.

The names have been accounted for, but not the catastrophe that befell them. What was originally suspected to be an electrical fire was later described by experts as a massive industrial explosion precipitated by long-term negligence, not a mere technical malfunction.

Whatever the exact cause, the government seems committed to avoiding blame. Defying workers’ accounts of horrific safety conditions, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stoked outrage by coldly citing mining accidents of nineteenth-century England and suggesting that such tragedies were “usual.” The mine operator, Soma Holding, claimed the company was not obligated to provide workers with an emergency shelter, insinuating that workers were personally responsible for failing to escape on their own. (According to Today’s Zaman, Turkey is one of just a few countries without such a shelter requirement.)

For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don’t have the right to much privacy in the first place

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company’s network. [..]

The problem here is technological: until any communication has been decrypted and the contents parsed, it is currently impossible for a surveillance device to determine which network connections belong to any given suspect. The government argued that, since the “inspection” of the data was to be carried out by a machine, they were exempt from the normal search-and-seizure protections of the Fourth Amendment.

More importantly for my case, the prosecution also argued that my users had no expectation of privacy, even though the service I provided – encryption – is designed for users’ privacy.

If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance under the shroud of secrecy, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did – standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people’s defense against an abuse of the state’s power.

Gary Younge: Racism is far more than old white men using the N-word

Why is there outrage only when epithets are caught on tape? Discrimination is in reality carried out by well-mannered people

Let’s hear it for Robert Copeland. The police commissioner of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire (population 6,083) sticks to his principles. Even if those principles are stuck in a previous century and mired in bigotry. In March Jane O’Toole was finishing her dinner at a bistro in town when she heard Copeland, 82, announce loudly that he hated watching television because every time he turned on the TV he kept seeing “that fucking nigger”. The “nigger” in question was the president of the United States. [..]

By the time Copeland’s outburst became a matter of national note a week later, the pattern had been set: old white men with mouths writing cheques their status won’t cash, in currencies that went out of date decades ago. So far so bad. None are worthy of sympathy.

And yet the magnitude of the response to each incident exemplifies how high the bar is now set for challenging racist behaviour and how distorted our understanding has become of what that behaviour constitutes.

Chris Arnade: Transgender Latinas’ stories reveal how much intolerance they still endure

Facing poverty and with no support network, some Latina transwomen turn to the streets to survive

In downtown Manhattan same sex marriages have become beautifully normal. No longer are they celebrated for their rarity, they are simply celebrated as any wedding is: in whatever manner the couple wants.

Go only five or 10 miles away, to the poorer parts of New York City, and things are dramatically different.

In these communities many LGBT people face an abusive environment. Getting married to someone of the same sex is almost unimaginable. Instead, the LGBT community is still fighting a more primary battle – for basic acceptance of their identities, and to convince their families and friends to let them remain a part of their communities.

One of those neighborhoods is Jackson Heights, a mostly Latino working-class community in Queens where I have spent time documenting a portion of the trans community.

Jonathan Freedalnd: Hillary Clinton needs Hollywood: Modern Family proves it

Drama, like satire, can shape politics and alter society. From 24 to Borgen, TV does more than reflect life: it changes it

Hillary Clinton should steer well clear of Nicole Kidman. The latter’s performance in a new movie of the life of Princess Grace, formerly Grace Kelly, has come in for some acid criticism. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw declared Grace “so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk”.

Twisting the knife, he likened it to the dire Diana movie, a film whose arteries were similarly clogged with saccharine. Admittedly, Helen Mirren did a wonderful PR job for the Queen, but often even the most hagiographic screen treatments can end up diminishing rather than dignifying their subjects.

What’s this got to do with the former secretary of state and could-be presidential candidate for 2016? No producer is likely to begin shooting Hillary: the Movie anytime soon – not now, when the final reel of the story is still undecided. And yet, Ms Clinton needs Hollywood’s help.

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Midterm elections are like fancy software: Experts love them, end-users couldn’t care less. But if the 2010 elections are any indication, we might not want to doze off as we head into the summer months before November. Midterm elections at the state level can have tremendous consequences, especially for low-wage workers. What you don’t know can hurt you – or them.

In 2010, the Republicans won control of the executive and legislative branches in 11 states (there are now more than 20 such states). Inspired by business groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, they proceeded to rewrite the rules of work, passing legislation designed to enhance the position of employers at the expense of employees.

The University of Oregon political scientist Gordon Lafer, who wrote an eye-opening report on this topic last October for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, looked at dozens of bills affecting workers. The legislation involved unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, child labor, collective bargaining, sick days, even meal breaks. Despite frequent Republican claims to be defending local customs and individual liberty, Mr. Lafer found a “cookie-cutter” pattern to their legislation. Not only did it consistently favor employers over workers, it also tilted toward big government over local government. And it often abridged the economic rights of individuals.

Ton Engel hardt: Drones, Trains, and China: How America’s Budget Is Fighting the Wrong Battle

Consider this: our advanced robotic creatures, those drone aircraft grimly named Predators and Reapers, are still blowing away human beings from Yemen to Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is now testing out a 14,000-pound drone advanced enough to take off and land on its own on the deck of an aircraft carrier — no human pilot involved. (As it happens, it’s only a “demonstrator” and, at a cost of $1.4 billion, can’t do much else.) While we’re talking about the skies, who could forget that the U.S. military is committed to buying 2,400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, already dubbed, amid cost overruns of every sort, “the most expensive weapons system in history.” The bill for them: nearly $400 billion or twice what it cost to put a man on the moon. [..]

On the other hand, if we’re talking about purely civilian infrastructure, just consider that, at this very moment, Congress is dilly-dallying while the crucial Highway Trust Fund that keeps American roads and interstates in shape is “heading for a cliff” and projected to go bankrupt in August. This from the country that once turned the car into a poetic symbol of freedom. Meanwhile, the nation’s overall infrastructure, from levees and dams to wastewater and aviation, now regularly gets a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

As a rising power in the nineteenth century, the U.S. moved toward global status on the basis of an ambitious program of canal building and then of government-sponsored transcontinental railroads. Jump a century and a half and the country that, until recently, was being called the planet’s “sole superpower” has yet to build a single mile of high-speed rail. Not one. Even a prospective line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which looked like it might be constructed, is now blocked coming and going.

Robert Kuttner: The Road to Euro-Fascism

As Europe’s depression continues six years after the financial collapse of 2007-2008, watch for far-right parties to make big gains in this week’s elections to the EU’s European Parliament. And why not? The establishment parties of Europe’s center-right and center-left have put austerity policies and the interests of banks ahead of a real economic recovery for regular people.

More than 20 years ago, when the European Union created its constitution in the form of the Treaty of Maastricht, the hope was that Europe stood for a social compact that put citizens first. Europe, especially northern Europe, was a model of decent earnings, universal social benefits and regulation that prevented wealth from swamping citizenship.

Today, however, centrist or center-right governments, which either sponsor austerity or approve of it, govern in every major European capital but France, and France is too weak to go its own way. The economic crisis with its high unemployment only stimulates more migration, which puts pressure on local labor markets and pushes the local working class further into the arms of the nationalist far-right.

Michael Powell is the son of Gen. Colin Powell. The elder Powell knows a thing or two about war. He famously presented the case for invading Iraq to the United Nations, on Feb. 5, 2003, based on faulty evidence of weapons of mass destruction. He calls that speech a painful “blot” on his record. So it is especially surprising when his son threatens “World War III” on the Obama administration.

Michael Powell is the president of the NCTA, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which is the cable industry’s largest lobbying group. He is also the former chairperson of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. His target: net neutrality. The battleground is in Washington, D.C., inside the FCC’s nondescript headquarters. The largest Internet service providers-companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon-are joining forces to kill net neutrality. Millions of citizens, along with thousands of organizations, companies, artists and investors, are trying to save it.

Eugene Robinson: Clinton Gets the GOP Treatment

Republican panic at the prospect of facing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race has suddenly reached Godzilla-nearing-Tokyo proportions.

The election is more than two years away, and Clinton hasn’t even decided whether to run. But none of this seems to matter to the GOP strategists and spinmeisters who are launching the whole arsenal at her-smears, innuendo, false charges. Already, they’ve moved beyond distorting her record to simply making stuff up.

As these damp squibs clatter harmlessly to the ground, it’s useful to remember that Clinton has seen it all before. And I mean all. Anyone who thinks she’ll be rattled or intimidated hasn’t been paying attention the past few decades. [..]

If Clinton should get the nomination, her Republican opponent-no matter who it is-would be no pushover. But the possibility of electing the first woman as president would likely stoke the enthusiasm of Democratic voters to the point where the party’s structural advantages-overwhelming support among minorities and women-came into play. Clinton might win big.

Hence all the premature mudslinging, which reeks of desperation. Republicans hear the sound in the distance. They feel it in their bones. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.  

Jane E. Kirtley: Why the US constitution gives you the right to know lethal injection’s secrets

The death penalty has always been subject to public oversight, and for good reason. It’s called the First Amendment

In the panic and fear that followed the 9/11 attacks, the US government went into ultra-secret mode. In the name of protecting national security, prosecutors asked judges to close criminal proceedings involving terrorism, even though they had always been presumed to be open to the public – and the press – under the First Amendment. Many judges complied.

But in 2002, Judge Damon J Keith of the US Court of Appeals in Detroit ruled that secret deportation proceedings in so-called “special interest” cases involving alleged terrorists could not be conducted in secret. The Bush administration argued that open hearings would reveal sensitive intelligence information and compromise national security. The government further contended that these administrative proceedings are not technically part of the judicial system – and so should not be subject to the First Amendment right of access. [..]

Although the high court has not yet ruled explicitly that these rights extend to executions, history and experience support the argument. The death penalty – the ultimate expression of the state’s power over human life and death – has always been subject to public oversight, and for good reason. The government executes prisoners in the name of the public. To have confidence in that process, the public must have as much information as possible about it. We should know how officials treat those who are paying the ultimate penalty. We cannot call ourselves a democracy if we cede this kind of activity to a secretive government in blind faith and without question.

Sadhbh Walshe: Want to curb binge drinking? End the focus on laws and look at culture

The sooner we all start drinking like Italians, the better: despite liberal regulations, the way they drink in moderation reduces serious risk

The summer before I went to university in Dublin, I was in a state of high anxiety – not about the prospect of leaving home or the coming course work so much as my ability to drink alcohol in any quantity. To my young mind, being able to drink a lot was as important a part of college life as being able to write a good paper. So I put in a lot of effort – to drinking – until I was able to knock back pints with the best of my new classmates.

This kind of blind obligation to binge drink is exactly the kind of potentially dangerous boozing that’s led to a surge of new warnings from health experts. According to a report released this week by the World Health Organization (WHO), fully 16% of drinkers worldwide engage in heavy episodic (or binge) drinking – the most harmful form.

WHO is urging governments to take aggressive steps to address the problem by raising taxes on alcohol sales, raising minimum drinking ages, regulating sales and so on. But if regulations alone were enough to reduce binge drinking, then countries with stricter rules would have better drinking habits. Except that isn’t always the case.

For months Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Michele Leonhart has openly rebuked the drug policy reform policies of Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama with one embarrassing statement after another. Now she is picking a fight with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Y) and other members of Congress over hemp. Meanwhile the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has launched an investigation into multiple scandals plaguing the agency. It is clear that Leonhart lacks the ability to lead and should resign. Activists are using the Twitter hashtag #FireLeonhart.

The DEA created a political firestorm this week when it seized seeds bound for a Kentucky hemp research program that was approved by Congress. Even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has weighed in, telling Politico last night, “It is an outrage that DEA is using finite taxpayer dollars to impound legal industrial hemp seeds.” The Kentucky Agriculture Department is suing the agency. The seizure is the latest misstep by the agency, which is being investigated by the Department of Justice for numerous scandals.

Micheal Winship: The Fight Goes On: FCC Votes to Consider Rules That Could End Net Neutrality

The vote was taken at the Federal Communications Commission Thursday morning, as drums pounded and hundreds of demonstrators supporting Net neutrality chanted outside FCC headquarters.

In a packed meeting room — from which a handful of vocal protesters was ejected — the majority of commissioners approved a so-called Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the latest step in a process that will determine the fate of a free and open Internet. Along with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Democratic commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel voted in favor, despite reservations. “I would have done this differently,” Rosenworcel told the meeting. “We move too fast to be fair.”

So the tally was 3-2 along party lines, Democrats vs. Republicans, setting the stage for what will be, as Michael Weinberg, vice president of the media law public interest group Public Knowledge calls it, “the summer of Net neutrality.”

Enacting the notice now triggers an extended four-month public comment period so that the FCC can continue to hear, it said, “from Americans across the country.”

Ben Hallman: Congress Takes From The Poor, Gives To The Corporate Rich

The most dysfunctional Congress in U.S. history has finally found something that can attract bipartisan support: an expensive package of tax breaks that mostly benefit corporate interests.

By a vote of 96-3, the Senate this week advanced an $85 billion bundle of breaks known as “extenders,” so named because they supposedly expire every two years. In reality, these breaks have become an all-but-permanent part of the tax code, costing the Treasury billions of dollars a year in lost revenue. Though the House has introduced rival legislation, some version of the Senate bill is likely to win final passage.

The tax breaks advanced without any corresponding spending cuts elsewhere in the budget, despite previous demands by Republicans that any new legislation must not increase the federal deficit. They passed even as Republicans, often preaching fiscal responsibility, have forced cuts to food stamps and refused to extend long-term unemployment benefits, measures that would cost much less than the buffet table of giveaways contemplated under the bill.

Tom Engelhardt: The Pentagon Brings the Yemeni Model to Africa

Amid the horrific headlines about the fanatical Islamist sect Boko Haram that should make Nigerians cringe, here’s a line from a recent Guardian article that should make Americans do the same, as the U.S. military continues its “pivot” to Africa: “[U.S.] defense officials are looking to Washington’s alliance with Yemen, with its close intelligence cooperation and CIA drone strikes, as an example for dealing with Boko Haram.” [..]

One of the poorer, less resource rich countries on the planet, Yemen is at least a global backwater. Nigeria is another matter. With the largest economy in Africa, much oil, and much wealth sloshing around, it has a corrupt leadership, a brutal (pdf) and incompetent military, and an Islamist insurgency in its poverty-stricken north that, for simple bestiality, makes AQAP look like a paragon of virtue. The U.S. has aided and trained Nigerian “counterterrorism” forces for years with little to show. Add in the Yemeni model with drones overhead and who knows how the situation may spin further out of control.

Tomorrow is an important day for the future of the Internet. That’s when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will cast a crucial vote that could send us down a dangerous and misguided path toward destroying the Internet as we know it. That path could end with an Internet of haves and have-nots, with big corporations deciding who falls into which camp, all based on the amount of money they pay. I’m urging the FCC to take a different course — one that preserves the Internet as an open marketplace where everyone can continue to participate on equal footing, regardless of one’s wealth or power.

Tom Wheeler, the FCC’s chairman, has a proposal that would undermine net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic must be treated equally. Net neutrality is embedded in the foundational architecture of the Internet, and it has served us well. Because of net neutrality, an email from my constituent in rural Minnesota gets to me as quickly as an email from my bank. Because of net neutrality, the website for the small neighborhood hardware store loads just as quickly as that of a major retail chain. Because of net neutrality, you were able to access this op-ed, even if your Internet provider doesn’t like what I have to say.

Zoë Carpenter: Judicial Nominee in Limbo After Senators Demand Secret Drone Memos

Once again, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are challenging the Obama administration over its national security policies. At issue now are secret legal opinions sanctioning the government’s targeted killing program, some of which were written by a Harvard law professor named David Barron, who is President Obama’s nominee for a prominent judicial position. At least two of the memos written by Barron when he worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council concern the extrajudicial killing of American citizens abroad. [..]

Just how many memos related to drones Barron produced during his time at the Justice Department is unclear. (He worked at the OLC from 2009 to 2010.) Most of the controversy around Barron has focused on two memos, the one at the heart of the court case mentioned above, and a shorter one also reportedly related to targeting Americans. Those two documents were particularly pertinent in the decision to target an American named Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Interestingly, majority leader Harry Reid indicated on Tuesday that the White House has provided senators with a second memo, presumably the other one of the two. “As far as I know, they’re down there,” Reid said when asked if the proper documents were available in the secure area. “I’ve looked, there’s two of them.”

The killing of American citizens abroad without due process is a critical issue, but so is the policy of assassinating non-Americans away from the battlefield. Many other memos have been written about the drone program beyond its application to US citizens; it’s unclear whether Barron contributed to any of them. With the White House claiming it has given senators access to the information they’ve requested regarding the targeting of American citizens, the question of whether Barron analyzed any other aspects of the drone program may now become the focus of the debate.

Jane Hamsher: What Do Barack Obama and the Koch Brothers Agree On? The Smarter Sentencing Act

There aren’t many things that Barack Obama, Eric Holder, the Koch Brothers, Grover Norquist, Ted Cruz and Sheldon Whitehouse agree on. One of those rare things is the Smarter Sentencing Act, a bill that has broad transpartisan both houses of Congress — but is currently stuck there for no other reason than partisan gridlock.

Four years ago, a similar coalition came together when everyone agreed that drug sentencing disparities had a deeply unfair application that resulted in black and Latino offenders serving much longer sentences for possessing the same amount of crack cocaine than a white person who was more likely to possess powder cocaine.

Their efforts resulted in the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2010. It did not, however, retroactively change things for people who were already serving draconian sentences under the old law.

The Smarter Sentencing Act would fix that problem as well as many other things that would dramatically reduce our seriously overcrowded prison population, which has quadrupled since the 1970s.

We are living amidst a crisis of conscience, politics and action. We must approach surveillance from all angles, taking care not to shame or dismiss people in the process

We’re soon approaching the one-year anniversary of the Snowden revelations, a day that may have changed how we view privacy forever. Although it is perhaps too soon to measure, we have already begun to see societal changes: in the way we talk about surveillance and privacy, in our politics, and in our behavior online.

Just a few short months after the first set of documents were published, the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project released a study stating that 86% of surveyed Internet users have taken measures to avoid being surveilled online. A full 55% of Internet users reported having taken steps to avoid observation by specific people, organizations, or the government. While these statistics speak to an awareness of online spying, the PEN American Center’s November 2013 survey of its members discovered an even more chilling effect: one in six members stated that they had avoided writing or speaking publicly on a subject they thought would subject them to further surveillance.

Zoë Carpenter: Despite Shocking Reports of Fraud at Charter Schools, Lawmakers Miss Opportunity to Increase Oversight

Between 2003 and 2008, a Minnesota charter school executive named Joel Pourier embezzled more than $1.3 million from his school, the Oh Day Aki Charter School. While students at Oh Day Aki went without field trips and supplies for lack of funds, Pourier bought houses and cars and tossed bills at strippers. Because his school received federal funding-charter schools are privately run but many receive significant public financing-taxpayers were, in effect, subsidizing his lavish lifestyle.

Pourier’s case is just one of many collected in a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education that documents shocking misuses of the federal funds being funneled into the poorly regulated charter industry. The report examined fifteen states with large networks of charter schools and found that more than $100 million in public money had been lost to fraud, waste and other abuse. “Despite rapid growth in the charter school industry, no agency, federal or state, has been given the resources to properly oversee it,” the report says. “Given this inadequate oversight, we worry that the fraud and mismanagement that has been uncovered thus far might be just the tip of the iceberg.”

Jessica Valenti: Of course the French have better sex if our idea of sex is limited to men’s ideals

But, Paris, at least we’ll always have masturbation

There’s really nothing like a conversation with someone who doesn’t live here to make you remember how puritanical America is when it comes to sexuality – and women’s pleasure, specifically. In a pretty wonderful exchange between New York magazine’s Maureen O’Connor and French GQ sex columnist Maia Mazaurette, the women take on first dates (“There is no first date. There is just first sex”), open relationships and sex toys. Short version: I’ll see you all in Paris.

Mazaurette seems genuinely baffled by the curious coupling of American prudishness and male-centric sex: she worries that any American man she might date would think she was a “slut” based on French norms, and she doesn’t understand why American women give unreciprocated blow jobs. “I don’t pleasure in my mouth. It’s very mysterious to me, why an American woman would do that,” she told O’Connor.

Well, to start – it doesn’t help that the defining porno of all time is about a woman who has a clitoris in the back of her throat.

Michelle Chen: NYU Just Dropped Its Contract With JanSport-Why Is That a Victory for Global Labor Rights?

JanSport might be a high-profile brand on college campuses, but some savvy student activists are exposing the corporate dirt beneath the label. After months of protests, New York University’s Student Labor Action Movement got the the administration to finally act responsibility when doing business with the global fashion industry. The group has persuaded the University to cut its merchandise licensing deal with JanSport “until and unless” the manufacturer signs onto the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

The university was responding to calls by SLAM, similar to those made on many campuses nationwide, to incorporate the Accord into its licensing deals for merchandise makers. The Accord is a landmark independent agreement that imposes binding rules and standards for building safety on the country’s massive and poorly regulated garment shops, aimed at preventing massive disasters like the Rana Plaza factory collapse, which left more than 1,100 people dead a year ago.

Health care reform advocates in California, led by Consumer Watchdog, are supporting a November ballot initiative to give the state insurance department authority to reject proposed rate increases that are deemed to be excessive.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 35 states have given their insurance departments the legal power of prior approval — or disapproval — of proposed health insurance rate changes.

California is not among them, and advocates believe the state’s residents are paying more for their health insurance coverage than necessary. While the Golden State did establish a rate review process in 2011 requiring public disclosure of proposed rate hikes — which the California Public Interest Research Group says has saved residents almost $350 million — lawmakers would not go further and grant the insurance commissioner authority to say “no” to rate hikes. As a result, says CalPIRG, about a million Californians paid higher premiums due to rate hikes state state officials deemed “unreasonable” but couldn’t do anything about.

Dan Gillmor: In the future, the robots may control you, and Silicon Valley will control them

Welcome to the horror show that is the ‘internet of things’ – hyper-intelligent software, vulnerable hardware … and a whole new level of privacy invasion

The “internet of things” is turning into Silicon Valley’s latest mania. At first glance, it is a trend with great appeal, enough to become something more than a trend and a true revolution: a world in which everything we touch and use has an embedded intelligence and memory of its own, and all of it is connected by way of digital networks.

What’s missing from this rosy scenario? Plenty – because security and privacy seem to be mostly an afterthought as we embed and use technology in our physical devices. Which means the internet of things could easily turn into a horror show.

Philip Pilkington: How rising asset prices increase inequality

The release of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has posed once more the question of what causes inequality. One key culprit from Piketty’s findings is the changing valuation of financial assets.

Imagine that you hold a financial asset, a company share worth $1,000. And suppose I believe the market is going to rise and I offer you $2,000 for that share. The market price for this share will now have increased from $1,000 to $2,000. This transaction will also increase the net worth of those who hold these shares by the amount that the share has increased in value – in our example, $1,000 – multiplied by the number of these shares in existence.

If we imagine that there are 5,000 of these shares in existence, this will increase the net worth of the holders of these shares by $5 million. Since rich people hold a disproportionate number of shares, my bid will have increased inequality in the economy because the net worth of the rich will rise in relation to the net worth of the poor.

Tom Engelhardt: The Year of Edward Snowden

Make no mistake: it’s been the year of Edward Snowden.  Not since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War has a trove of documents revealing the inner workings and thinking of the U.S. government so changed the conversation.  In Ellsberg’s case, that conversation was transformed only in the United States.  Snowden has changed it worldwide.  From six-year-olds to Angela Merkel, who hasn’t been thinking about the staggering ambitions of the National Security Agency, about its urge to create the first global security state in history and so step beyond even the most fervid dreams of the totalitarian regimes of the last century?  And who hasn’t been struck by how close the agency has actually come to sweeping up the communications of the whole planet?  Technologically speaking, what Snowden revealed to the world — thanks to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras — was a remarkable accomplishment, as well as a nightmare directly out of some dystopian novel. [..]

And of course, there was also a determined journalist, who proved capable of keeping his focus on what mattered while under fierce attack, who never took his eyes off the prize.  I’m talking, of course, about Glenn Greenwald.  Without him (and the Guardian, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post), “they” would be observing us, 24/7, but we would not be observing them.  This small group has shaken the world.