Tag: TMC Politics

I’m proud to be here as you host World Press Freedom Day.  So everybody from the American press corps, you should thank the people of Costa Rica for celebrating free speech and an independent press as essential pillars of our democracy.

~President Obama

Remarks by President Obama and President Chinchilla of Costa Rica in a Joint Press Conference, in National Center for Art and Culture San Jose, Costa Rica, 10 days ago.

That was so ten days ago. The news broke that Obama Department of Justice had secretly seized two months of phone records of the Associated Press reporters and editors.

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP’s source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual.

The president and CEO of AP, Gary Pruitt sent a letter protesting the “massive and unprecedented intrusion” (pdf):

Last Friday afternoon, AP General Counsel Laura Malone received a letter from the office of United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. advising that, at some unidentified time earlier this year, the Department obtained telephone toll records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to the AP and its journalists. The records that were secretly obtained cover a full two-month period in early 2012 and, at least as described in Mr. Machen’s letter, include all such records for, among other phone lines, an AP general phone number in New York City as well as AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, and at the House of Representatives. This action was taken without advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were seized by the Department.

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.(my emphasis)

h/t to Marcy Wheeler who points out the two months, April to May of 2012, that were of interest covered the period that, now CIA Director, John Brennan had rolled out his drone propaganda campaign:

That would mean they’d get the sources for this Kimberly Dozier story published May 21 [..]

Within 10 days of the time Dozier published that story, John Brennan had rolled out an enormous propaganda campaign – based on descriptions of the drone targeting process that Brennan’s power grab had replaced, not the new drone targeting process – that suckered almost everyone commenting on drones that drone targeting retained its previous, more deliberative, targeting process, the one Brennan had just changed.

And that propaganda campaign, in turn, hid another apparent detail: that UndieBomb 2.0, a Saudi sting had actually occurred earlier in April, and that UndieBomb 2.0 preceded and perhaps justified the signature strikes done at the behest of the Yemenis (or more likely the Saudis).

Marcy listed the timeline of the AP stories that were focused on Brennan and the undie bomber. However, it was after the Dozier story that  Brennan began his propaganda campaign to cover up how illegal and uncontrollable the drone program is.

Comparing this to Nixon and Watergate, Charles P. Pierce goes full throttle on why Eric Holder should be fired:

This isn’t hard. This is what made Egil (Bud) Krogh famous. This is what got people sent to jail in the mid-1970’s. This is the Plumbers, all over again, except slightly more formal this time, and laundered, disgracefully, even more directly through the Department Of Justice. And of course, this is not nearly good enough. And even if you point out, as you should, that the AP is hyping this story a little — The government “secretly” obtained the records? Doesn’t that imply that nobody knew the records had been seized? Wasn’t there a subpoena? The phone companies knew. — the ignoble clumsiness of this more than obviates those particular quibbles.

The White House on Monday said that other than press reports it had no knowledge of Justice Department attempts to seek AP phone records. “We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department,” spokesman Jay Carney said.

That is all my arse. At the least, this was a counter-terrorism operation. (Why else would Brennan have been questioned already?). Which puts the whole business inside the White House. And you’d have to be a toddler or a fool to believe that Eric Holder could go off on his own and take as politically volatile a step as this. But, let us take the White House at its word. Eric Holder did this by himself. He should be gone. This moment. Not only is this constitutionally abhorrent, it is politically moronic. Nobody likes the press, I will grant you that, but the administration is soft if it thinks the public distrusts the press that much. And to have this genuinely chilling revelation emerge simultaneously with the Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! mummery and the IRS dumbassery is pretty much a full broadside below the water line of this administration’s credibility. Good god, this is going to be one long-ass summer.

Pres. Obama needs to do damage control starting with throwing Holder to the wolves. I suspect this will be the next congressional investigation in an effort to not just derail Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign but to build a case for impeachment of Obama for abuse of his executive powers. A long hot summer, indeed.

The main purpose our blogging is to communicate our ideas, opinions, and stories both fact and fiction. The best part about the the blogs is information that we might not find in our local news, even if we read it online. Sharing that information is important, especially if it educates, sparks conversation and new ideas. We have all found places that are our favorites that we read everyday, not everyone’s are the same. The Internet is a vast place. Unlike “Punting the Pundits which focuses on opinion pieces mostly from the mainstream media and the larger news web sites, “Around the Blogosphere” will focus more on the medium to smaller blogs and articles written by some of the anonymous and not so anonymous writers and links to some of the smaller pieces that don’t make it to “Pundits” by Krugman, Baker, etc.

We encourage you to share your finds with us. It is important that we all stay as well informed as we can.

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This is an Open Thread.

From Atrios, the scandal you won’t hear of today, or any other day:

Gaius Publius at Americablog, tells us how to become an activist by asking a question:

• Henry Waxman will support Chained CPI in trade for “things we want”

But just what is it that “we want”?

At Corrente, lambert‘s litany of the Obamacare Cluster F**k continues:

• ObamaCare Clusterfuck: Kremlinology
• ObamaCare Clusterfuck: Is Ross Douthat dumb enough to be a “progressive”?
• ObamaCare Clusterfuck: The IRS scandal and the ObamaCare “eligibility engine”

Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch, gives a history of the similarities of Syria and Iraq:

• History Lessons the West Refuses to Learn

Also at Counterpunch, Binoy Kampmark on the effect of drone attacks on US/Pakistan relations:

• Stopping the Drones

On the failing American health care system, and Obama’s FHFA nominee Mel Watts, Yves Smith at naked capitalism:

• Coming Corporate Control of Medicine Will Throw Patients Under the Bus
• Mel Watt, Nominee to Head FHFA, Opposes Administration by Voting to Deregulate Derivatives

From Voices on the Square, contributors Cassiodurus and JayeRaye:

• Socialism is like total equality y’know.
• Hellraisers Journal: Big Bill Haywood exposes “The Rip in the Silk Industry.”

Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft, gives a peak at Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s conditions of confinement and the cost of a death penalty prosecution of Aurora Theater Shooting defendant James Holmes:

• Details on Dzokhar Tsarnaev’s Solitary Confinement
• The Cost of James Holmes Death Penalty Prosecution

From Grist, Sarah Laskow bursts a healthy fast food myth:

• Sorry, Jared, Subway food can be just as bad for you as McDonald’s

and from Sarah Miller, what could be eating your house:

• Hand-sized, house-eating snails show up in Texas

Charles P. Pierce in his wry wit at Esquire’s Politics Bog sums up the latest obsessions of the Sunday talking heads and the latest in the bizarre world of Rand Paul:

• What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days?
• Somebody Hit Bill Keller’s Knee With A Hammer
• Rand Paul’s Big Weekend

Austerity was thoroughly trounced by a couple of university grad students who discovered major omissions in the much touted study by a couple of Pete Peterson’s paid cronies. So why are we still even talking about it? Good question that no one so far has asked our fearless leader in Washington.

Up host Steve Kornacki discussed whether the elite consensus on austerity has started to shift and if there is any effect on the opinions in Washington. His guests Josh Barro, Columnist, Bloomberg View; Jared Bernsein, former economic adviser to V.P. Joe biden; Lori Montgomery, Economic Policy Reporter, The Washington Post; and Heather McGhee, Vice President, Demos; examine the lessons that can be learned from Europe’s austerity experience and what the US economy will look like if it continues on the austerity path. The panel also discussed how conservative have backed away from cuts to Social Security shifting their focus to tax reform, controlling spending through cost efficient measures and the roadblocks to getting it done.

“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

Joseph E. Stiglitz: Student Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream

A CERTAIN drama has become familiar in the United States (and some other advanced industrialized countries): Bankers encourage people to borrow beyond their means, preying especially on those who are financially unsophisticated. They use their political influence to get favorable treatment of one form or another. Debts mount. Journalists record the human toll. Then comes bewilderment: How could we let this happen again? Officials promise to fix things. Something is done about the most egregious abuses. People move on, reassured that the crisis has abated, but suspecting that it will recur soon.

The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America’s soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down – some to a point even lower than where they began.

New York Times Editorial Board: Who Can Take Republicans Seriously?

It is time for President Obama to abandon his hopes of reaching a grand budget bargain with Republicans.

At every opportunity since they took over the House in 2011, Republicans have made it clear that they have no interest in reaching a compromise with the White House. For two years, they held sham negotiations with Democrats that only dragged down the economy with cuts; this year, they are refusing even to sit down at the table.

Mr. Obama hasn’t given up inviting the Republicans to join him in making the hard choices of governing, but he has been rebuffed each time. This year, in hopes of getting some support for modest tax increases on the rich, he even proposed a reduction in the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. The events of the last few weeks should make it clear to him why that offer should be pulled from the table immediately.

Columnist, Richard (RJ) Eskow wrote a humorously helpful article at Huffington Poat honoring his mother’s wish not to send her a card on Mothers’ Day. She, like me, thinks it’s a “phony holiday designed to boost profits for Hallmark Cards.”. So if your mom is like me and RJ’s mom, here are his helpful suggestions that every Mom will love you for:

1. Tell our leaders to stop talking about budget cuts.

I don’t know about you, but my mother and father always told me: If you do something stupid and bad things happen, don’t do it again. It aggravates many of America’s mothers when this advice isn’t followed. [..]

Mother wouldn’t like that. So write them and tell them you want them to stop.

2. Demand that Congress repeal the sequester.

The sequester is a remarkably stupid policy, even by today’s degraded standards. It has already cost the country a lot of lost jobs, and has shrunk the economy at a time when government should be investing in its growth. [..]

Congress needs to repeal this numbskull grab-bag of destructive cuts and invest in growth instead. The President needs to stop using “I’ve got a smarter austerity plan” argument and start arguing forcefully for jobs and growth. If he refuses, other Democrats need to step up to the plate as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a handful of others have done. [..]

You can go here to drop a Mom-centric message to Congress: Repeal the nitwit sequester once and for all.

3. Demand more education funding, rather than less.

Mothers and fathers also care about their children’s education, and funds for education are being slashed. We need to hire more teachers, stop trying to siphon education money off to private corporations, provide our schools with adequate supplies, and rebuild the ones that are in bad shape. [..]

4. Insist that Congress create jobs — for the young, for our crumbling infrastructure, for the future.

Those crumbling schools need workers to rebuild them. So do our crumbling roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. [..]

5. Tell Congress not to pass the president’s destructive Social Security cut. (It’s also a tax hike.)

The most cynical con in this country is the idea that cutting Social Security cost-of-living adjustments — through the president’s proposed “chained CPI” — is being done to protect “the younger generations” from “greedy geezers.” [..]

And that’s no way to talk to your mother.

6. Support the fast food and retail workers’ strike.

Low-wage workers went on strike last week in New York, and the walkout is spreading like wildfire: first to New York, then Chicago, then to St. Louis, and now to Detroit. Terrance Heath has a good write-up on working conditions in Detroit. [..]

7. Contact Congress and demand they raise the minimum wage.

The minimum wage has failed to keep pace with inflation, depriving generations of Americans of a decent life. If it had kept pace with inflation, it would be more than $16 per hour by now. [..]

You can go here to sign a petition demanding an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013.

RJ finishes the piece with reminder of how this day to honor our mother’s began and it’s true meaning:

Postscript: Mother’s Work Day

Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was the one who first popularized the idea of Mother’s Day. She got the idea from Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian housewife who organized “Mother’s Work Days” to provide sanitary conditions for troops on both sides of the Civil War. Jarvis went on to promote worker health and safety issues, as well as reconciliation between Northern and Southern soldiers.

There’s a different kind of Civil War being waged today. It’s a Class War, and the wealthy are waging it on the rest of us. As we’ve said before, the class war is a war on women. It’s time to take action against this economic assault on all women, including the Mothers of America. What better day to rededicate ourselves to that struggle than Mother’s Day?

So tell your family, friends and neighbors to pressure our elected officials to do the right thing for our mothers. And as RJ said, when you call your representatives, “tell ’em your Mother sent you.”

Yeah, really make my day.  

“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: Steve’s guests on Sunday’s show are: Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Executive Director, CEO and Co-Founder,  MomsRising.org; Celinda Lake, Democratic Pollster, President, Lake Research Partners;  Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List; Maya Wiley, Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion; former Sen. Sheila Frahm (R-KA); Thomas Frank, author, What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, columnist, Harper’s Magazine; Urvashi Vaid, currently Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School; Pat Brady, former Chairman, Illinois Republican Party; Rachel Stassen-Berger, political reporter, The Star Tribune; and State Sen. Kelvin Atkinson (D-NV).

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on “This Week” are  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); and Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI).

On a special Foreign Policy Roundtable: George Will, Washington Post, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chair Gen. James Cartwright, Ruth Marcus, columnist Washington Post; and Jonathan Karl, ABC News contributor.

At the political roundtable: George Will; Democratic Strategist Donna Brazile; GOP Strategist Mathew Dowd, former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-NH) and Jonathan Karl.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are former Defense Secretary William Gates; Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL); Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH); and Poet Maya Angelou.

His roundtable guests are: David Sanger, New York Times reporter, Bobby Ghosh, TIME; David Rohde, Reuters; and Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are  Howard Fineman, Huffington Post; S. E. Cupp, MSNBC; Joe Klein, TIME; and Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: On this week’s MTP:  Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA); Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); and Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering.

The roundtable guests are: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), David Brooks; columnist for The New York Times; Katty Kay, reporter for the BBC; and Author Wes Moore.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL); Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI); GOP Strategist Alex Castellanos; Democratic Strategist Mo Elleithee; and Karen Tumulty , Washington Post.

In his “What We Know Now” segment, Up host Steve Kornacki notes that Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is proposing legislation that is aimed at lowering the rate students pay on their loans to the same rate that banks get when borrowing from the Federal Reserve. Steve is joined by his guests Jared Bernstein, former economic advisor to V.P. Joe Biden; Sarah Kliff, health policy reporter for The Washington Post; Perry Bacon, Jr., TheGrio.com and MSNBC contributor; and former Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), now MSNBC contributor, to discuss what they have learned this past week.

Elizabeth Warren: Student Loans Should Have Same Rate Big Banks Get

by Ryan Grim and Will Wrigley, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled her first bill Wednesday, designed to set student loan interest rates at the same level the Federal Reserve offers to big banks.

With some student loan rates set to double on July 1 — from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent — Warren’s bill would reduce student loan interest rates to 0.75 percent, opening the Fed’s discount window to students.

“Every single day, this country invests in big banks by lending them money at near-zero rates,” Warren told The Huffington Post. “We should make the same kind of investment lending money to students, who are trying to get an education.”

Working Families Flexibility Act Passes House Over Opposition Of Democrats, Labor

by Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — As part of their efforts to rebrand the GOP as a more caring party, House Republicans passed a hotly debated bill Wednesday that would loosen federal overtime laws, allowing for “comp” time instead of pay for private-sector employees who work more than 40 hours in a week.

Although GOP legislators made a strong public-relations push for the bill as worker-friendly legislation, the measure is not expected to go anywhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the White House said Monday that the president would be advised to veto such legislation on the grounds that it would weaken protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Pentagon: Estimated 26,000 Sexual Assaults In Military Last Year

by Hayes Brown, Think Progress

Just one day after the Air Force’s chief of sexual assault prevention was arrested for sexual assault himself, a new Pentagon report shows a sharp increase in the estimated number of assaults in the military annually.

The report from the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office for Fiscal Year 2012 found a 6 percent rise in reported assaults over the last year, for a total of 3,374. But much more troubling is the estimated number of sexual assault incidents that were never officially reported. In last year’s report, there were an estimated 19,000 instances, but this year the number has jumped to an unprecedented 26,000 instances of assault, leaving thousands unreported.

Environmentalists seize on Biden’s Keystone XL remarks to launch new attack

by Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post

Environmentalists have seized on a comment Vice President Biden made while working a rope line in Columbia, S.C., on Friday, in which he told an activist he is “in the minority” within the administration when it comes to opposing the Keystone XL pipeline.

Elaine Cooper, who serves on the executive committee of the Sierra Club’s South Caroline chapter, said in an interview Wednesday that Biden shared his thoughts with her during Rep. James Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) annual fish fry.

Buzzfeed first reported the vice president’s remarks late Tuesday, based on an e-mail a colleague of Cooper had sent to fellow environmentalists.

“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

Richard Eskow: Tick-Tick-Tick: Do 60 Minutes And America’s Billionaires Want Us to Beg?

If you’re a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care, “60 Minutes” has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it. That was part of the powerful, if covert, message behind last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast.

The rest of Sunday night’s message, which tracks closely with the right-wing agenda promoted by billionaires like Pete Peterson, goes like this: Keep downsizing government. Keep tolerating and promoting the hijacking of our national wealth by the rich, even as it suffocates the middle class and creates soaring poverty rates. Surrender democratic control over the social safety net to wealthy donors.

And whatever you do, keep stroking their insatiable egos.

Norman Solomon: Obama in Plunderland: Down the Corporate Rabbit Hole

The president’s new choices for Commerce secretary and FCC chair underscore how far down the rabbit hole his populist conceits have tumbled. Yet the Obama rhetoric about standing up for working people against “special interests” is as profuse as ever. Would you care for a spot of Kool-Aid at the Mad Hatter’s tea party? [..]

To nominate Penny Pritzker for secretary of Commerce is to throw in the towel for any pretense of integrity that could pass a laugh test. Pritzker is “a longtime political supporter and heavyweight fundraiser,” the Chicago Tribune reported with notable understatement last week, adding: “She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family. With a personal fortune estimated at $1.85 billion, Pritzker is listed by Forbes magazine among the 300 wealthiest Americans.”

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! spent an hour with Michael Pollan,  Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism.

Pollan has written several best-selling books about food, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” In his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” Pollan argues that taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make our food system healthier and more sustainable. “There is a deliberate effort to undermine food culture to sell us processed food,” Pollan says. “The family meal is a challenge if you’re General Mills or Kellogg or one of these companies, or McDonald’s, because the family meal is usually one thing shared.” Pollan also talks about the “slow food” movement. “Slow food is about food that is good, clean and fair. They’re concerned with social justice. They’re concerned with how the food is grown and how humane and chemical-free it is.” He adds, “Slow food is about recovering that space around the family and keeping the influence of the food manufacturers outside of the house. … The family meal is very important. It’s the nursery of democracy.”

“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

Paul Krugman: Bernanke, Blower of Bubbles?

Bubbles can be bad for your financial health – and bad for the health of the economy, too. The dot-com bubble of the late 1990s left behind many vacant buildings and many more failed dreams. When the housing bubble of the next decade burst, the result was the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s – a crisis from which we have yet to emerge.

So when people talk about bubbles, you should listen carefully and evaluate their claims – not scornfully dismiss them, which was the way many self-proclaimed experts reacted to warnings about housing. [..]

For one important subtext of all the recent bubble rhetoric is the demand that Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues stop trying to fight mass unemployment, that they must cease and desist their efforts to boost the economy or dire consequences will follow. In fact, however, there isn’t any case for believing that we face any broad bubble problem, let alone that worrying about hypothetical bubbles should take precedence over the task of getting Americans back to work. Mr. Bernanke should brush aside the babbling barons of bubbleism, and get on with doing his job.

Henry A. Giroux: Lockdown, USA: Lessons From the Boston Marathon Manhunt

The American public rightfully expressed a collective sigh of relief and a demonstration of prodigious gratitude towards law enforcement authorities when the unprecedented manhunt for the Boston marathon bombers came to an end. The trauma and anxiety felt by the people of Boston and to some degree by the larger society over the gratuitously bloody and morally degenerate attacks on civilians was no doubt heightened given the legacy of 9/11.  Since the tragic events of that historical moment, the nation has been subjected to “a media spectacle of fear and unreason delivered via TV, news sites and other social media;”  it has also been engulfed in a nationwide hysteria about Muslims. Moreover, the American public has been schizophrenically immersed within a culture of fear and cruelty punctuated by a law-and-order driven promise for personal safety, certainty, and collective protection that amounted to a Faustian bargain with the devil, one in which Americans traded constitutional rights and numerous civil liberties for the ever expanding presence of a militarized security and surveillance state run by a government that has little regard for human rights or the principles of justice and democracy.