Happy Birthday to Sonia Sotomayor, 59.
And to the good stuff:
1. Norm Ornstein responds to Mitch McConnell. I used to be (mostly) on McConnell's side on this one -- Norm is exactly correct that McConnell has flipped. I don't mind hypocrisy or partisan jockeying for advantage -- that's what politicians do -- but I did like McConnell's old position a whole lot better.
2. John Sides on Politico.
3. Seth Masket passes along some comparative research on the effects of polling on elections. Interesting.
3. Dan Larison probably has a better critique of Haass than I did.
4. Amy Walter has a useful note: "Why Obama's climate proposals won't get much pushback from House D's: just 7 of 43 Ds who voted agst Cap-n-Trade still in House."
5. And this time it's Kevin Drum being sensible on Snowden.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
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"To leave him alone would be to tacitly give permission for any low-level intelligence worker to release anything they wanted anytime they wanted. No intelligence service can work like that."
ReplyDeleteKevin Drumm is being willfully obtuse here. Snowdon is not someone who just released any old random information he could get his hands on. He released specific documents that proved that the the NSA was conducting domestic surveillance on a massive scale. And that the NSA has lied to us about it. Daniel Ellsberg says that Snowdon's leak is more important than the Pentagon papers.
It's interesting that an administration that claims to believe in transparency would attempt to prosecute such a person. It's also interesting that some of those who once believed that "dissent is patriotic" would support the prosecution of the very whistleblowers who make dissent possible.
Agreed on Snowden and on the position the administration seems to be taking toward him. As to Daniel Ellsberg, I realize he's the go-to guy for comparisons with the Pentagon Papers. But I think he's wrong. Snowden's leak proved what was already widely suspected, but without really detailing it. Ellsberg's gave us the government's own detailed history of Cold War-era policymaking in Southeast Asia over a 20-year period, complete with memos and diplomatic cables and the like. This provided real insight, beyond anything I've seen in this Wikileaks era. Leaks..... they just don't make 'em like they used to.
DeleteMy own journalistic guess on the David Gregory/Glenn Greenwald tempest. Of course Gregory was way wrong to ask that question. But Greenwald is a jerk who himself makes wild accusations. Maybe it was payback. He got some of his own medicine. Doesn't justify it, especially given Gregory's position and the weight of Meet the Press. Bad all around.
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