Wingnuts will soon have to find another target for their misogyny, paranoia and homophobia:
Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, announced Friday that she was stepping down, setting off a search to fill one of the most challenging positions in government at a time when the Obama administration is struggling to get a team in place for the president’s second term.
The vacancy sets the stage for another confirmation fight as Republicans continue their efforts to nullify the last two presidential elections. There’s no word yet on whom the president will nominate, but WaPo put together a speculative list, including:
[Joe] Lieberman makes sense as DHS secretary for one pretty obvious reason: He created the department. Lieberman, as chair of the committee that is now referred to as the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, drafted the bill that created DHS shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. He also recently retired from the Senate, meaning he’s a free agent. But his tendency togive his Democratic colleagues heartburnbe a spiteful, war-mongering Republican dick may not make him an ideal fit. [Edited for accuracy]
No, no, a thousand, million, kajillion, ding-dong-dillion times, no. Jenny Durkan (profiled in that same WaPo article) sounds qualified, and since she’s an out lesbian, her candidacy would have the added benefit of triggering even more Lesbocalypse fears among the right-wing assholes who have spent the last five years absurdly imagining that the innocuous Ms. Napolitano was rifling through their underwear drawer and monitoring activities at the Moose lodge.
But perhaps the best outcome — and most fitting monument to Lieberman’s work in the Senate — would be to abolish the Department of Homeland Security altogether, break it up into its component parts. Like so much that is wrong with this country, it’s a remnant of post-9/11 hysteria.
Or we could at least change the name, which, as Peggy Noonan pointed out in a rare moment of clarity, is “vaguely Teutonic.” What shall we call it? Please feel free to discuss other topics too — open threadage.
[X-posted at Rumproast]
greennotGreen
How about “Department of the Big Wuss”? Their motto could be, “America cowers in fear before a bunch of dead guys with box cutters.”
WereBear
Yes, let’s abolish it. Can the President do that? Because that’s the only way ANYTHING is getting done these days…
When, oh, when, will the spasms of Wingnut Rage actually make them fear for their health so they will stop? But then I think of Breitbart… why don’t they?
Baud
Let’s call it the Ministry of Magic!
@WereBear:
I don’t think the President can abolish it, but maybe if he directs the next Secretary to focus exclusively on right-wing militia types, Congress will.
jeffreyw
Thread needz moar puppeh!
c u n d gulag
DaSS Department Ov VaSSerland SSecurity!
“SSeig HARUMPH!!!
HEY!
I didn’t get a “HARUMPH!” outta that guy!
You’d beSSer vatch your aSS!!!”
HelloRochester
Ms. Cracker,
Did you coin “Lesbocalypse”? If so, I bow to your ability to make a mouthful of coffee, waffle, and ham hash spurt out my nose. I will be sneezing pork for the next week.
Omnes Omnibus
@c u n d gulag: You are missing a “Giff der Secretary ein HARRUMPH” in there.
/pedant
Omnes Omnibus
@HelloRochester: I damn near did the same with coffee from your comment.
Betty Cracker
@HelloRochester: As far as I know. But surely someone else thought of that too? At any rate, it would make a great name for a band, no?
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw: I am overcome by The Cutitude.
Elizabelle
I agree on breaking Homeland Security up. It is nothing but a boondoggle.
You will still have the issue of how best government agencies can share intelligence to mutual benefit, to protect Americans, but the permanent security state and war on terror has got to go.
Also: Joe Lieberman as a potential nominee?
It is to laugh.
Just One More Canuck
@HelloRochester: Sneezing pork? Is that what te kids call it these days?
Elizabelle
@jeffreyw:
That puppy looks so matter of fact about feeding.
Same expression as if he had a cigarette trailing out of his little mouth.
Ben Cisco
That department represents the absolute worst of American impulses, the absolute ugliest of our beliefs, the absolute worst of our politics, and the absolute worst of our collective cowardice.
Unholy Joe would be a perfect fit.
Suffern ACE
I’d go with George Ryan. Having spent time in prison might help provide some much needed perspective for the secretary in charge of rounding up folks and putting them in detention centers and FEMA camps.
MattF
Go all the way:Innere Sicherheit-Abteilung.. And Achtung, and good morning, etc., to you.
MattF
@Suffern ACE: Not to mention the Obamacare camps.
Biscuits
@jeffreyw:
Teh babeez!
Warm Thickness Advection
@Betty Cracker:
Google gives 7 results currently with the oldest (and first listed) being from Aug 6, 2010. Betty’s is number 2.
magurakurin
@Ben Cisco:
plus the name is just so nazi. really bad name.
khead
@jeffreyw:
Very nice puppeh pic.
magurakurin
@Suffern ACE:
oh, go ahead joke about FEMA camps.
First they came for the Creationist, and I said nothing
then they came for the gun nuts and I stood by
then they rounded up the last of the Tea Party and I just watched
then they locked the key, closed up shop and smoked some big fat doobies in a little club just outside of Denver….
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Those babies are so cute. Such overload of preciousness.
Are they rescues? Is that a supplemental feeding or did something happen to their momma?
jeffreyw
Maybe a JRT x Poodle? Jackiepoo!
Anya
Chuck Schumer recommended Ray Kelly (the king of racial profiling). Imagine what he would do with the department of fear and paranoia.
Cacti
I wish JN would have respectfully declined the POTUS’s request and served out her term as AZ gov.
She was the dam that held back the worst wingnut impulses of our State legislature, and the place has been worse in every respect since obnoxious drunk Jan Brewer took her place.
Antonius
The Ministry of Fear
Suffern ACE
I nominate this cute kitten.
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: Mrs J says the folks who brought the litter of four claimed the momma ran off. Staff at the shelter say they believe the pups are full blooded Shih Tzu. They are about four weeks old.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: OMG. Boundless energy and incredible smarts. That’s a nuclear puppy!
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: Jackiepoo. Ugh. I don’t like the name but that puppeh is also cuuuute. Oh, those eyes.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Break up the DHS? Oh, say not so! Who among us hasn’t wanted a Swiss Army Knife with so many blades that it weighs a thousand pounds?
jeffreyw
@Suffern ACE: Cute kitties?
NotMax
Any new name will become classified secret, as it might give away vital national security information.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: O/T, but are you allowed to share Mrs. J’s peach pie recipe? I’ve got a pile of peaches over here…couldn’t seem to find a recipe on TaMara’s site, though I found a drool-worthy picture of the pie, which hardly seems fair…
PurpleGirl
@jeffreyw: St. Francis Care looks like a very nice and well-run shelter. Since I’ve begun watching various kitten cams, I’m interested in shelters and their policies.
jeffreyw
@Betty Cracker: Mrs J is out walking the pups, when she returns I’ll ask. I know the crust was from Smitten Kitchen, her all butter pie crust recipe.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: Awesome, thanks! Smitten Kitchen’s pie crust is the very one I plan to use.
Ben Cisco
@magurakurin: This begs for a Bush cabal historical reference, but I’m gonna leave it alone.
jeffreyw
@PurpleGirl: They are hoping to build a bigger place, the main building is an old house, there are several other smaller buildings on the site. Most of those were built with donated materials and labor. They have a small paid staff, the director is a veterinarian. There is an informal tie in with a local veterinary school where many of the volunteers come from.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: That is so adorable. I love when cats fit together like puzzle pieces.
kdaug
Too big to unwind?
Let’s find out.
gene108
I’d nominate Mitch McConnel just to watch him filibuster himself again, like he did with a bill he once proposed to raise the debt ceiling.
Elizabelle
Obama appointing an interim Director of Homeland Security, charged with breaking down the department into more manageable agencies? To make government more responsive and more affordable?
Sounds like a plan to me.
And interim would not need confirmation by McConnell’s Senate Raiders, would he or she?
WereBear
@Elizabelle: Me likey.
JCT
@Betty Cracker: Kudos for Lesbopocalypse,just had an elevator of people give me the death ray stink eye for laughing in the elevator at work .
I’ll have to check out the Smitten Kitten crust, been using Ruth Levy Beranbaum’s cream cheese crust for years for apple pies. Smitten Kitten was the first food web site my oldest told me about (instead of vice versa) – makes me feel a little old.
Oh Cacti, don’t get me started on our drunken doofus of a gov.
jeffreyw
@Betty Cracker: The filling: 8 or 9 peaches, peeled and sliced, 2/3 cup Splenda (or sugar in the same measure), 1/4 cup of water, cinnamon to taste, corn starch to thicken – about 2 Tbs in a little water.
Cook the peaches with the sweetener and the 1/4 cup of water in a sauce pan, grate in cinnamon. Taste for sweetness after the filling has cooked for a couple of minutes. Stir in the corn starch slurry. Mrs J says she lets the filling cool but isn’t sure if you need to if you bake the pie right away.
Betty Cracker
@jeffreyw: Sounds great! Many thanks, bro. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Southern Beale
Just another responsible gun owner! This guy has to be some kind of NRA hero. Sorry about the dead kid and all. Woopsies!
Southern Beale
Just another responsible gun owner! This guy has to be some kind of NRA hero. Sorry about the dead kid and all. Woopsies!
Hawes
Reshuffling those agencies into one department makes sense. Why should the Commerce department run Customs and the Border Patrol? But Domestic Security sounds nicer. Even Domestic Safety. As soon as I heard Napolitano was retiring I knew someone would proffer up Leiberdouche’s odious candidacy.
Loneoak
Many of us at the UC are not at all happy about this. The process was entirely secret, conducted by our unelected Regents. As a friend said in the fB, this is the head of our security industrial complex appointed by a former studio mogul appointed by a multi-millionaire actor, none of whom know shut about education, to lead the largest (and greatest) public university on Earth.
Svensker
Does anyone else have the I Don’t Wanna Do Nuthin’ Blues? If it doesn’t involve a hammock, a beach, or doing bupkis, I’m just not into it At. All. The laundry is giving me side eye, the rugs ain’t vacuuming themselves, and the pile of work sitting next to my computer is making fart noises at me and I just don’t freaking care. I am on strike until the beach shows up, ready for lolling, with a tropical drink on standby.
Villago Delenda Est
The name I gave the monstrosity when the deserting coward created it was Heimatsicherheitshauptamt.
Yes, the given name is vaguely Teutonic (Nooners must have been away from the liquor cabinet for a day or so when she called it that), so why not go whole hog?
A friend of mine mispronounced it Heimatsicherheitshauptangst which does, after all, seem less of a mispronunciation and more of commentary on the state of the nation’s mental health when the monster was created.
By the war criminal deserting coward.
PurpleGirl
@Southern Beale: This man needs to be charged with something. He needs to see some prison time and lose those guns.
PurpleGirl
@Svensker: Well said. I know the feeling myself.
PurpleGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: Can you break it down into its component words and their English equivalent — I know how German builds “new” words from combining other words.
Villago Delenda Est
@Southern Beale:
Ugh. From the shithole that is Josephine County, OR. Home of Art Robinson.
This guy needs to go to prison for a long, long, time.
PeakVT
@Loneoak: It could be worse – she’s not a CEO brought in to apply “business principles” or some-such MBA malarkey. And she does have a lot of experience with running a complex bureaucracy.
JCT
@Southern Beale: What never ceases to amaze me is the way these idiots wander around with loaded guns. Mine are never loaded unless I am standing on the line at a firing range or on a remote hike.
Using a loaded AR as a makeshift crutch? The mind reels.
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl:
Heimat Homeland
sicherheits Security
hauptamt Main office
angst Fear, anxiety
Wikipedia notes that Heimat really has no direct English translation, Homeland is an approximation of the meaning that is communicated by it. The Wiki article goes on to elaborate how a certain political movement of the early to mid 20th century latched on to the concept.
SRW1
Well if Department of Homeland Security smells bad, that could be ballanced by renaming it into Ministry for Staatssicherheit for a while.
Villago Delenda Est
@Villago Delenda Est:
I might also note that this name is a play on the actual names of Nazi era German state organizations, such as the one the ever popular and cultured Reinhard Heydrich headed.
Ken
Minilove is still available.
Davis X. Machina
DHS is the offspring of Hart-Rudman, a pre-9/11, bi-partisan reinventing-government proposal, with significant Democratic origins. (Gary Hart, Andy Young, Lee Hamilton).
The Commission’s recommendations were presented in January of 2001.
Davis X. Machina
The ‘homeland’ language makes its first notable appearance in the Hard-Rudman commission’s Phase III report, Roadmap for National Security: Imperative for Change. One of its recommendations was “”the creation of a new independent National Homeland Security Agency (NHSA) with responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various government activities involved in homeland security”
This is in January 2001. The report was in gestation for probably a year before that.
Kathleen
How about Department of Depends? I’ve believed for awhile that our new national symbol should be an American bald eagle wearing Depends.
Corner Stone
What’s wrong with Lieberman for DHS? Certainly no worse a pick than Comey for FBI.
Kay
The WaPo is adorable. Amnesia!
Lieberman blocked a real investigation in Katrina. He would be the absolute worst pick. He is completely and utterly captured. His role in the fake investigation was misdirection, with a laser-like focus on inconsequential, minor decisions and lower-level actors.
Southern Beale
Just read today that Orson Scott Card is asking for tolerance of his intolerance. That’s so cute.
CaseyL
The only reason DHS exists is because, after 9-11, the Bush Admin needed a plausible scapegoat to divert attention from its own walloping, grotesque, beyond-criminal incompetence and indifference.
The problem wasn’t that the Bushies simply refused to acknowledge or listen to the intelligence warning them of an attack; oh, no! The problem was institutional, the intel agencies weren’t allowed to communicate directly.
No one was able, or willing, to say “Isn’t that the whole reason for having an NSC in the first place? To coordinate and correlate information from all the agencies?” because that would lead to awkward questions that no one wanted asked or answered.
Why Lieberman came up with the idea at all – who knows. The man is a complete tool, so it’s even possible he wanted to save the Bushies’ asses. In any case, they lost no time co-opting the idea.
DHS is an enormous, wasteful, toxic coral reef built on the tiny seed of Saving Bush’s Face. I’d love to see it go away.
Violet
Please let this Nazi-inspired Big Brother agency go away. Please.
Yatsuno
I am shocked, SHOCKED, that no one has mentioned that bastion of freedom yet: Rand Paul. What better way to secure liberty than to be in the agency that can strip it away at a moment’s notice?
Baud
@Southern Beale:
But is he willing to tolerate our intolerance for his intolerance?
Mike in NC
DHS was a disaster from the get-go. Abolish it, abolish the TSA, and undo every change to federal government agencies that happened after 9/11/2001. DHS is a bureaucratic nightmare. We don’t need it and it’s no more than a figleaf to ignore the inconvenient fact that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and the rest of those cretins were to blame for ignoring the warnings that the professionals kept sending them. Recall Bush’s “you’ve covered your ass” comment?
PeakVT
There’s a huge disparity between the country’s highest- and lowest-performing areas. For men, the difference in longevity in the top and lowest counties is 17.77 years.
Best health care in the world, baby.
Villago Delenda Est
@CaseyL:
You have to remember, that our glorious Commander-In-Chief actually appointed a “War Czar” to oversee the clusterfuck in Iraq.
The deserting coward was, and is, criminally incompetent.
Corner Stone
Boom! Roasted.
Nation Will Gain by Discussing Surveillance, Expert Tells Privacy Board
” At one point, Mr. Bradbury, who in the Bush administration signed secret legal memorandums declaring that the suffocation procedure known as waterboarding was a lawful interrogation technique, criticized as “not accurate” Mr. Jaffer’s description of the call log program as “surveillance,” saying that term means content collection, not metadata collection.
But Mr. Jaffer, seated next to Mr. Bradbury, replied, “I think people can decide for themselves whether it’s surveillance or not, in the same way they can describe for themselves whether it’s torture or not.”
liberal
@Corner Stone:
11-dimensional chess, bitchez.
Corner Stone
Damn Libertarians at even the liberal WSJ op-ed…
The NSA’s Surveillance Is Unconstitutional
“With the NSA’s surveillance program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has apparently secretly approved the blanket seizure of data on every American so this “metadata” can later provide the probable cause for a particular search. Such indiscriminate data seizures are the epitome of “unreasonable,” akin to the “general warrants” issued by the Crown to authorize searches of Colonial Americans.
Still worse, the way these programs have been approved violates the Fifth Amendment, which stipulates that no one may be deprived of property “without due process of law.” Secret judicial proceedings adjudicating the rights of private parties, without any ability to participate or even read the legal opinions of the judges, is the antithesis of the due process of law. “
liberal
@PeakVT:
Well, at least it’s one of the less expensive health care systems in the developed world.
Oh, wait…
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
The outgoing Clinton NSC people extensively briefed the incoming deserting coward appointees on the Al Qaeda threat, their known actions, and their ambitions. They told them that Al Qaeda was the greatest danger that they faced, that Al Qaeda had huge plans that dwarfed what they had done in East Africa against our embassies there.
It was all dismissed with a wave of the deserting coward’s hand because Clinton people were talking about it. The new focus was turning China into the huge existential threat to focus the populace’s fear on. Remember the deserting coward’s major policy address on stem cell research, during the summer before he went on one of his seemingly endless vacations? The malassministration was floundering at that time. Bin Laden did the deserting coward a huge favor by taking out the WTC.
Because the Bush Crime Family is closely allied to the Bandit House of Saud.
Roy G.
@Loneoak: As a fellow Golden Stater, I concur. I don’t get Napolitano’s gifting of this position, except perhaps as a freudian slip of the regents belief they need to friendly female führer to impose a paramilitary lockdown on the UC campuses while they continue to strip mine the system.
Corner Stone
@liberal: People need to grow more chickens, so they can afford more annual doctor’s visits.
Elie
@Yatsuno:
THIS
Corner Stone
@Roy G.: I read somewhere that position pays $591,000. The UC position I mean.
Wonder how much she’ll grift for it?
Corner Stone
I love that Shark Week commercial with the news reporter and the release of Snuffy the seal back into the ocean. That one gets me every time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ll never forget Karen Hughes holding up great big books and saying “The president read these books! He really did!” for reporters, then saying he had “agonized” over the stem cell decision; Junior didn’t like that. Real men don’t agonize.
BArry
@Loneoak: “… to lead the largest (and greatest) public university on Earth”
Don’t worry; I’m sure that the ‘greatest’ title will soon pass to another.
Dead Ernest
@Just One More Canuck:
The Lesbocaylpse will put an end to that toot sweet!
Lurking Canadian
@Corner Stone: That’s a lot of money, but a CEO of a private organization the size of UC would make probably 100 times as much, because of the greater efficiency of the private sector.
tofubo
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/12/ktvu-gaffe/2513971/
KTVU Channel 2, a Fox affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area, has issued an apology on Friday after an on-air blunder by an anchorwoman that involved fake names of Asiana flight 214 pilots.
“KTVU has just learned the names of the four pilots who were on board” the flight that crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday, co-anchor Tori Campbell told viewers during the noon newscast Friday.
She proceeded to read the names that may have originated as a racially insensitive joke online — “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo,” “Ho Lee Fuk,” and “Bang Ding Ow”— while a TV graphic displayed the names next to a photo of the charred cabin….
Corner Stone
@Lurking Canadian: Indeed. But I suspect this position will free up quite a bit of her time for the speech giving circuit as well. I can’t imagine she’ll actually handle any of the admin overhead details there.
So she’ll go on a few speaking tours, which will also have the benefit of raising the profile of the UC, of course and natch, so she’s really doing what they are paying her for – fundraising etc.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Breaking: For the first time in its history, California’s UC system has adopted an official song. In recognition of Janet Napolitano being named president of the system UC has adopted “Somebody’s Watching Me,” as the song most exemplifying of UC’s new direction.
PeakVT
Texas abortion bill passes.
liberal
@Corner Stone:
My town is thinking of changing zoning regs to allow people to raise chickens in their backyards, so we’ve got that covered.
Violet
@tofubo: You missed the best part–the NTSB blames the fuckup on an intern.
NCSteve
In any other nation on Earth, my brain would instantly translate “Department of Homeland Security” as “secret police.” Only in America does it mean “idiotic aggregation of bureaucracies that were awkwardly pasted together because when countries are run by MBA’s, the inevitable response to something bad happening is to move boxes around on the T.O.”
Elizabelle
@Kathleen:
Yes!
Get a grip, people.
Adults are in charge.
One of them, a dark adult.
Live with it.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Re Intern.
I know.
But don’t TV stations and newspapers have editors any longer?
And it will be fun to see if the NTSB intern was clueless or being sarcastic. And whether said intern is still interning.
Didn’t one of the CNN anchors (or MSNBC? Contessa White??) hold up something from a White House parody site once?
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Well, makes sense, because whoever is put in charge has been imperiused by the Kenyan Muslim Usurper, dontcha know!
burnspbesq
@WereBear:
Hell yeah, if for no other reason than to refocus CBP on customer service, which was part of the culture when Customs was part of Treasury. The CBP agents at Pearson Airport in Toronto are the biggest assholes in the entire government–yes, far worse than Darrell Issa or Mitch McConnell.
Corner Stone
Personally, I think we should put women in charge of the whole damn apple cart. Nothing would make me happier than seeing a 60% or 70% female cabinet.
eyelessgame
The Department of Security Theater.
Violet
@Elizabelle:
The whole think is a complete mess. Here’s what the TV station says happened:
How do you confirm the names of the pilots on a phone call without reading them out loud? Is that even possible? And of course the reporter “failed to get the name of the intern”. Uh huh.
The story in and of itself is just kind of amusing, but it certainly illustrates how failed our media experiment is. They claim to have checked the fake names with the NTSB, but can’t give the name of the “intern” who verified them, and claim their reporter didn’t read them out loud while on a phone call.
They’re so eager to be first at everything that conveying facts and being correct are no longer the goal.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
And the ambassador from Dumbasapostistan arrives, presents his/her credentials, and is deemed accredited..
lojasmo
@JCT:
Using it as a crutch while the muzzle points up? Je ne comprehende pas.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Obamacus Derangius!
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: I appreciate your substantive rebuttal counselor. Now I think we all understand why you went into protecting tax cheats and scofflaws instead of anything that had to deal with real people.
aretino
Department of Happy Smiles. Won’t even have to change the acronym.
Yatsuno
@aretino: Something tells me that won’t make the wingnuts feel any better.
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
Your initial comment was so fucking stupid it forfeited the right to a substantive response. But here’s one anyway: there is no valid basis for comparing Comey to Lieberman. Comey is fully qualified to run the FBI.
greennotGreen
@burnspbesq: Oh, do NOT get me started! I crossed at Detroit around noon of July 10, and the guy at the gate was a complete asshole and wrong about the applicable regs covering my live plants (WITH phytosanitary certificate.) I had to sit with a bunch of people of color and white people whose first language was something other than English, a white guy with two earrings, and a Canadian or American white woman with a crying toddler in a drab little room of agents who never smiled, who treated all of us as suspects in murder investigations. Do white bread middle class people never run afoul of the regulations, or are they just never SUSPECTED of it. It was infuriating. I’m an American citizen (albeit, one with purple hair.) I’m just trying to come home. Why am I being treated like a convicted criminal?
Eventually I was let go. I don’t know that they ever examined my plants (maybe they did and maybe that’s why I’m now missing one,) and I know they never asked why a person in Canada for ten days was carrying four large and one small suitcase. (All perfectly innocuous, but it seems to me they should have asked.) I am embarrassed that this is the face we’re presenting to people who want to visit our country.
I have written my senators, my congressional representative, and Janet Napolitano. I don’t think it will help, but still…
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Going with the truth. Always a winner.
@burnspbesq:
He may be qualified but that doesn’t make him a good candidate for the job.
FlipYrWhig
If there are confirmation hearings for DHS head, that’s an opportunity to make a big stink about NSA surveillance, no? Seems like an excellent opportunity to get some statements on the record, and maybe even to change direction on some of these policies that have been justified by a wartime framework everyone agrees is waning.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
That was mentioned a couple nights ago. What a schlemiel.
Violet
@greennotGreen: An English friend won’t visit the US because of the changes in our immigration regulations. They visited in 2000, but won’t again unless the entry regulations are relaxed. They travel a lot so the US is missing out on some tourism money. I would bet they’re not the only ones.
greennotGreen
@Violet: I want to visit China next year. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the one thing I worry about in planning the trip is whether I’ll be allowed back in the U.S. where I am a natural born citizen.
Librarian
Sorry, but I agree with those who see the DHS as an un-American abomination, whether it’s run by Napolitano or anyone else. Under her, it spied on and helped to crush the Occupy movement and treated it as a terrorist organization. I see nothing in her tenure at DHS to be proud of.
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: The ACLU and others disagree with you on Comey.
As for Lieberman, he was a Senator for many years, and was Chairperson of the Homeland Committee, among other significant and responsible posts. Napolitano was a US Attorney, state Attorney General and AZ Gov before DHS.
What’s the difference if she was qualified that makes him not qualified?
jc
Break up the Dept. of Surveillance, Security and Spin?
Dream on. I’ll be surprised if our oh-so-trustworthy authorities don’t double-down on secret courts, rulings and systems to “protect” us, until we’re so safe that those inconvenient, messy rights are a thing of the past.
? Martin
@PeakVT:
Yeah, I’m not sure. It’s unusual for UC to not go with an academic. But UC is at a precarious point with the state – there is absolutely no effort being expended on student education as it’s not even a break-even activity. We’re going to go broke on education at it’s structured now. All of our activity is centered around other funding sources. That MUST get fixed. Getting a government insider might be the key.
But I don’t know. It’s a concerning departure from how we’ve done things.
Yatsuno
Well…shit.
Chris
@NCSteve:
The DHS has been a dysfunctional clusterfuck for years on end. Personally, I’d say the FBI is a much better candidate for the title. No way 50 years of J. Edgar Hoover didn’t leave a mark.
PeakVT
@Yatsuno: Holding the Senate in 2014 will be tough.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
Randy Barnett?
LoL
Google “Bill of Federalism” for a primer on what your new favorite legal scholar is all about.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Sigh. He’s a Libertarian writing in the WSJ op-ed. I don’t have to suck his dick to agree with the analysis presented in the opinion article.
Jesus Christ.
? Martin
@Corner Stone:
How do you ‘seize’ electronic data? Seizure assumes that there can only be one possessor of a thing. It’s why copyright violations are not ‘theft’. That data is not being taken from you.
And what’s the difference between the data being retained at the NSA awaiting search from a federal warrant and the data being retained at Verizon awaiting search from a federal warrant? They’re equally prone to abuse. And the very next revelation everyone was freaking out about was that the social media companies were retaining the data and letting the Feds access it. Clearly the issue isn’t who paid for the server that the data sits on.
Peter
“Committee for State Security”. It’s closer to the original Russian.
MikeJ
@Yatsuno: If you thought Max Baucus was a pain in the ass wait until you see the Republican they replace him with,
NickT
The jury has now deliberated for 8 hours in the Zimmermann trial.
Corner Stone
@? Martin:
There’s no definition anywhere that I am aware of that defines seize as relating to only one possessor. But your attempted semantics aside, the point being made there has to do with my contention that overly broad warrants that involve mass people instead of a specific target are unconstitutional. aka general warrant.
I think it’s also instructive that the difference between Verizon “possessing” the data and awaiting a targeted warrant, and the NSA “possessing” the data is, IMO the whole ballgame.
Yatsuno
@MikeJ: My only hope is they put up an unelectable teatard again. Or Rehberg gets ideas of trying for higher office. Montana is weird, it should be primo Republican territory but because they’re so resource-based there’s a huge environmental streak there plus Missoula.
NickT
@Yatsuno:
This might be about Schweitzer planning a presidential run in 2016. I think it’s a shame, because he would win the Senate seat, whereas I don’t see him winning the presidential primary.
Violet
@PeakVT: So depressing. 2014 could be a nightmare.
Yatsuno
@Violet: It’s gonna take work. And a lot of it. We might be able to use their own worst impulses against them but even then Dems need to get out and vote. OfA better have some decent plans in place.
Violet
@NickT: A president from Montana? A Democrat? I can’t see that at all. He’s out of his mind if he thinks that’s going to happen.
NickT
@Violet:
He is apparently quite ambitious and very determined. I don’t see him getting the nomination, but he was certainly interested.
Violet
@Yatsuno: I’m encouraged by the grass roots Moral Mondays actions in NC and the StandWithTexasWoman stuff in TX. Maybe the Dems will be the more activist ones this midterm cycle. Who knows.
@NickT: If that’s the case, why did he just say he doesn’t want to go to Washington? He’s got a much better chance at being President if he runs for Senate and wins. Then he can be a Senator and a Governor. Either he really does want to stay in Montana or he doesn’t think he can win the Senate race. As Gov. I’d think he’d have a good shot at the Senate race.
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin: Here’s another example. When you have a small business, I think you’re required to save paperwork (like invoices and bills) for X years, I suppose in case you end up in a case before the IRS. If the other parties to all those transactions had to send copies to the IRS too, so the IRS could use search algorithms to ferret out fraud and malfeasance, and you didn’t consent to that, even if you did consent to save your own paperwork, would that give you pause? When I think of it that way, I feel like it would. It may be legal, but it’s kind of creepy. Then again, a lot of your tax forms say right on them that information has been provided to the IRS already, and that doesn’t seem entirely creepy.
I think it just gets to how fuzzy the lines are around the-surveillance-that-is-eavesdropping and the-surveillance-that-is-data-collection. If you treat those as two sides of the same coin, you come down one way on all these stories. If you treat those as just different enough to matter, you come down another way.
That’s why I think we probably need some kind of Bill of Rights to Electronic Privacy to re-work how the law treats information and devices that may or may not be similar anymore to phones and pieces of paper mail.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Agreed that “general warrant” feels quite wrong, although if the FISA Court is approving them, something’s even wrong-er with the FISA Court.
NotMax
Got it.
Department of Orwell.
NickT
@Violet:
Beats me what Schweitzer is thinking. He’s just got the job of board chairman with the Stillwater Mining Company, which I imagine is pretty lucrative, so maybe he’s just sick of politics and wants to stay home with his family.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: I suppose their argument is that what they’re approving is more like a meta-warrant for a warrant than a warrant for a search, because they need further approval as they get closer to actual content. I see why it’s more effective to do Big Analysis on a giant dataset. Is that consistent with the Constitution? Well, let’s bring some suits and make some laws, baby!
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hey, now, the incoming Bushies would have listened to the commie Clintonites had they only not stolen the “W”s from the WH keyboards, which probably didn’t happen but IT MIGHT HAVE.
9/11 is Clinton’s fault, except for that portion that is Carter’s fault.
FlipYrWhig
@NickT: I think a lot of would-be heavy hitters are losing interest in the Senate. It has to be so frustrating to be a Type A personality in a chamber full of risk-averse slow-walkers who love committee meetings and the perks of seniority. Mark Warner was a hot property at one point. Bright political future as a technocrat who Got Things Done. Then he became a Senator. Now he’s basically invisible, and the buzz is gone. I’m not terribly surprised that Schweitzer might not want to be a Senator not because he thinks he’d lose but because he thinks he’d win, and the gig would suck.
PeakVT
@Violet: Could be, but it’s not entirely hopeless. My early guess is a 51-49 Senate in favor of the good guys. But that means losing only 1 of 5 closer races (AK, AR, IA, LA, NC). I’m certain 3 will flip (SD, WV, and now MT). NJ will go back to being D.
Yatsuno
@PeakVT: Yertle is vulnerable and his opponent is solid. Plus he’s about as popular as dirt in Kentucky. I think that one might just be in play here.
IowaOldLady
@greennotGreen: I’m from Detroit, and we used to go back and forth with bascially nothing, going out to dinner and stuff. But Mr IOL was there on business recently, and he and two co-workers were supposed to meet with someone from the University of Windsor. Whoever was driving made the mistake of saying they were going for work. They also got sent to the little room to wait while someone figured out their status. These are white, middle-aged engineers.
IowaOldLady
@PeakVT: Bruce Braley is running way ahead in Iowa. The Republicans are having trouble finding someone to run against him, which is a good sign.
Mino
Given the pro-Nazi history of his various ancestors, I just assumed Bush was punking us when they named it Dept of Homeland Security simply because he could.
Davis X. Machina
@Mino: The name predates the Bush presidency by at least two years. Blame Garry Hart, mostly. Or perhaps Warren Rudman.
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, go to the Senate to be nibbled to death by ducks.
Mino
@Davis X. Machina: A two-fer.
Dead Ernest
@NotMax:
Nice, Not Max.
Perhaps this adjustment;
Department of Orwellien Homilies
The D’OH
?
PeakVT
@Yatsuno: Maybe so, if turnout is really good. Right now I’m assuming the turnout falloff differential from 2012 to 2014 won’t favor the Repukes as much as it did from 2008 to 2010. The post-Shelby shenanigans across the South may push up the AA turnout, and I think the outrage that drove the teabaggers in 2010 is largely exhausted. But that would just make turnout about normal for an off-cycle election, not really good. IOW, I don’t see a wave building for either side right now. But everything could change by this time next year, so…
@IowaOldLady: That’s good. I think IA is the least likely to flip of the 5 I listed, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
ETA: Part of the problem in 2014 is that there are no blue-state Republicans to pick off. Collins is basically the only one up, and she’s pretty safe.
gelfling545
@greennotGreen: Last time we were coming home Canada (we live near the border & like to go there fairly often) my daughter was driving her car. I was the passenger. The inspector had already looked at her passport & my enhanced ID (we both have the same last name) but made her get out of the car so he could ask her how she knew “that woman in the car”. Now my daughter is no kid so I can’t imagine what he thought was happening. I think they get bored & want to mess with people to make the time pass.
? Martin
@Corner Stone:
‘Seize’ could not have meant any other thing when the 4th amendment was written. And modernly, we have completely different laws regarding those things that can be copied (without depriving the owner of equal possession) and those things that can be taken (possessed exclusively). Copying your data doesn’t deprive you of it. It hasn’t been seized. Has it been searched? Well, that’s a different question entirely.
The ‘search’ component of the 4th amendment makes that somewhat immaterial, however. Regardless of who possesses the data, the search component is the same. And that’s what the laws and courts operate around. Possession is pointless to discuss when it comes to digital data. Your data is possessed by so many more entities than you can possibly know, either through caches, backups, and so on.
The 4th amendment as written is simply unequipped to handle this, and the laws have not kept pace. And it’s pretty likely that if the court does rule on it, they’ll fuck it up terribly. For instance, if an email you send gets temporarily cached on a government server, have they violated your 4th amendment rights? If Akamai caches a banking transaction, can you sue them? The if possession is what matters then the internet might as well just shut down here and now.
RaflW
@Elizabelle:
As you say: It is to laugh.
If anything is clear now, the GOP has decided that the phrase “how best government agencies can [anything]” is totally inoperative.
As long as that illegitimate blah pretender guy is in the White House, the government must fail at as many tasks as possible. Otherwise we’d have to recognize that it really was Bush’s fault that Brownie couldn’t run FEMA, Bush & his security minders slept through the “Osama determined to attack” memo, and the Republicans and their masters of the universe friends blowed up the damn economy.
So, uhhh, good luck with the government effectively doing anything as long as nullification and total obstruction are the order of the day.
Corner Stone
@? Martin: Did you actually read anything of what you just wrote? Half of it contradicted the other half and then you threw in the whole intertrons are a series of tubes nonsense.
For a genius polymath who loves his mother, this comment was not one of your better showings.
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, this comes down to recognizing what the ramifications of digital data are. The reality of it, is that ‘exclusive possession’ is effectively impossible with digital data. Your digital data is going to be copied repeatedly. It will be backed up. It will be cached. That wasn’t the case with analogue. Further, searching digital data doesn’t require possession. That’s the point of Google – they grab data (whether you invite them or not because they crawl) and any of us can search it without possessing it.
So, can law enforcement search your data without possessing it? Yes. That was the point of the Facebook/Google/etc revelation by Snowden. That the NSA didn’t need to possess any of it – they could just search those companies directly. That’s pretty clearly not true as it was stated, but it seems to be true for subpoenaed data – provide Facebook with a (non-blanket) subpoena for an individual and they will put the data on a server that they own which law enforcement can search. Search without possession. And legally, that seems pretty cut and dried – you need the same sort of subpoena you needed 50 years ago when you wanted to roam through some filing cabinet.
Can law enforcement possess your data without searching it? Yes. But this is much less clear. What they’ve done with the FISA court is argue that they need to possess the data because the amount of time from subpoena to receiving the data is too long for national security purposes. So, the next logical step is to ask the data provider (Verizon, Facebook, etc.) to hold onto the data and allow law enforcement to search it in place. Ok, that’s basically what is happening with the social media sites, but the data is getting replicated to an isolated server. So far so good. The next step is to argue whether it matters if the data is physically on a Verizon server or on an NSA server, provided that nobody looks at the NSA server until that specific subpoena is issued. And that’s where we are now. The only thing stopping the NSA searching their data vs Verizon’s data is the respect for the subpoena. Policy is the only safeguard. There is no physical safeguard in either case. Possession doesn’t protect us here, only policy does. Now, there should be some enforcement of that policy – and that’s really where this all potentially falls apart, because that’s the piece we know the least about. Who is auditing the NSA on their searches? Before it was Verizon, and I sure as fuck aren’t about to trust them more than the US court system. With the NSA possessing it, we’ve been led to believe the auditors are directly responsible to the DOJ. But we don’t really know.
I’m not arguing that the NSA possession of the data under the blanket warrant is fine. I’m arguing that if done right, it would be fine. But keeping the data at Verizon not done right is just as bad. My objection to this debate isn’t that it’s happening, it’s that it’s happening around the issue of ‘possession’, which is immaterial in the end. What matters is how those specific subpoenas are issued – and from the data we’ve gotten so far, it doesn’t sound as though there are many of those, but the data isn’t quite as clear is it needs to be to say for sure. That needs to be addressed. But more importantly, how the search activity is audited. That’s what really matters because if you are of the thinking that the NSA is cheating the search warrant, then it doesn’t matter who possesses the data, they’re going to cheat the warrant to the same effect. What needs to really be answered is ‘how do we know we can trust the NSA to only look at the subpoenaed data?’ Answer that, and it doesn’t matter who holds the data.
Kyle
@gelfling545:
US customs and immigration have been assholes for as long as I can remember, but it’s become worse since 9/11. Perhaps just part of the exponential increase in authoritarian assholishness of all law enforcement/security agencies in this country.
Arrivals at LAX feels like being herded into prison. Other Western countries, some with more actual history of real terrorist threats, manage to be businesslike without being aggressively dickish. In all my travels the only more assholish border crossing than entering the US was Estonia a couple years after it broke off from the Soviet Union. Not a high standard.
Corner Stone
@? Martin: Allow me to once again cut through your attempted semantics and repeat myself as to what the issue is:
“But your attempted semantics aside, the point being made there has to do with my contention that overly broad warrants that involve mass people instead of a specific target are unconstitutional. aka general warrant.”
Botsplainer
Mr Zero Awareness strikes again.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/13/1223308/-Snowden-Greenwald-Threaten-The-United-States
The fucker’s skull needs to be clubbed in with a baseball bat after a poverty street riot – he’s just a propagandist like Limbaugh or Hannity. Sadly, he’s undoubtedly safe in a walled 1% neighborhood, so it is unlikely to happen.
PopeRatzo
@Botsplainer:
The New Left: Now With More Clubbing!
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
I understand.
Glomming onto far right legal scholars that write for Rupert Murdoch publications is what passes for “progressive” on the internets these days.
PopeRatzo
@? Martin:
Then why is everyone so mad at Edward Snowden? All the data he’s given to journalists was in digital form.
Or does the requirement to relinquish any claim to ‘exclusive possession’ of data only apply to us?
The data that the NSA is collecting is not limited to data that has been previously shared by its originators, you know. They’re not just collecting stuff that’s on Facebook. And just because you say so does not mean I should not have an expectation of privacy for an email or text message I send to my wife or daughter.
I can’t wait until it sinks in for the subset of progressives who are pro-NSA that the next time there are protests over some illegal war THEY are going to be the targets of that surveillance. Considering how quickly the Occupy movement up and evaporated, maybe it’s already happened. There is not one thing about the secret warrants from the secret courts that says it’s only going to be swarthy terrorists who are the targets. When you become an impediment to the smooth flow of commerce, you become the national threat.
And what possible precedent do we have for any secret military/police apparatus like the NSA being the least bit trustworthy?
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Poor thing. Maybe we can get DNI Clapper to explain it to you further. Since you’re too delicate to understand the topic yourself and can only stomach analysis that fits your dance card.
You probably think the ACLU should be burned to the ground any time they disagree with the admin too, eh?
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
Making threats like a common neighborhood thug. Very progressive.
I’d say GG should join his protege in Moscow, but being gay in public is a criminal offense there now.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
Since Randy Barnett is your new political BFF, any choice bits from the LaRouchies or Alex Jones that you’d like to share?
It takes a truly advanced progressive understanding to be down with the far right. Please help us all in your wisdom.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Good sweet Christ but you’re a moron.
Just Some Fuckhead
I keep reading the post title as Farewell Big Tits.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
If you go dragging the sewer for ideological allies, don’t complain when someone notices you smell like shit.
PUMA!
Mandalay
Meanwhile….
Nobody could have predicted that Assad’s opponents would end up fighting each other. I hope President Obama reaffirms his support for his Syrian ally, Al Qaeda, in these deeply troubling times.
And popcorn futures soar in Israel, as the clusterfuck grows.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Your little world gets smaller every day, doesn’t it?
MomSense
@Svensker:
I totally have the do nothing blues because I spent about 5 hours baking in the sun while fighting with the weeds in the garden.
And now jeffreyw has gone and posted peach pie and links to awesome pie and pie crust recipes so all I can think about is how much I want a peach pie–with raspberries. Doesn’t that sound like a great combination?! I just don’t want to actually do the pie making part. I really need a house elf.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
While your list of compatriots on the far right just keeps growing.
Just Some Fuckhead
oops, wrong thread.
Botsplainer
@Cacti:
Russia under Putin is the very model of a state free from surveillance, free from autocracy, free from oligarchic corruption, free from security overreach and is full of tolerance of alternative lifestyles and religions.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
Well, of course it would come to this.
The opposition to Assad, as the opposition to Qaddafi last year, shared an enemy, and once the enemy seemed to be on the ropes or subdued the fundamental disagreements between them reemerge and take over.
Botsplainer
BTW – St Glenn of Greenwald is in the midst of about an 8 hour twittergasm, and hasn’t contacted his doctor.
The LGF thread is for the ages.
Dead Ernest
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Boob.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dead Ernest: Thanks for keeping abreast of me.
central texas
Why not “stasi”, as that is the direction it has been going since days after its creation?
NR
@Botsplainer: Your violent fantasies about your political opponents are fucking creepy. You’d fit right in at a brownshirt meeting, you know that?