US Government Has Spied On Your Phone Calls For Longer Than Anyone Knew

Every time we think we've seen it all, reached the limit, learned all the bad stuff there is to learn about US government agencies engaged in illicit surveillance of American citizens, we are disabused of that comfortable notion with a metaphorical slap upside the head. This time it's Peter van Buren at FDL who administers the slap, and we should be grateful to him for doing so:

DEA Secretly Tracked Billions of Americans’ Calls a Decade Before 9/11

While the Snowden-NSA revelations continue to shock Americans on a daily basis, and illustrate how intrusive the government is in our lives, and how casually it violates our Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted searches, it just got worse.

It turns out the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was spying on Americans, gathering metadata on our phone calls, almost a decade before 9/11, and right up to 2013. With help from the U.S. military.

...

In an exclusive report, USA Today learned the U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed. The DEA spying only stopped, supposedly, in 2013, no longer needed due to the NSA.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the DEA amassed databases of virtually all telephone calls from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries “linked to drug trafficking.” ...

...

(or substitute GeeDubya Bush)

I seldom talk on the phone with my American friends in Europe; international phone calls (apart from emergencies) are not in my budget. But you may be comforted to know that on the rare occasions I've spoken to them in earlier years, the DEA was on the "wire" assuring that we were not talking about drugs. Not that we talked about drugs when we were face-to-face decades ago in the US... you may be comforted, but I sure as fuck am not.

The notion that any government action is justifiable if it leads to the capture and trial of someone engaged in a criminal act is one that our nation's founders were familiar with: when enough acts are criminalized that government must eliminate all citizens' privacy to enforce the laws, the essence of America's Bill of Rights (especially the Fourth Amendment) is destroyed. And that's where we are today. Privacy is gone, and has been gone for at least two decades.

In my youth I was convinced of the superiority of America's form of government. Why do I now think that that "superiority" is a pile of rank, steaming bullshit?

If there is a god, and if that god can damn, then god damn the people who did this and continue to do this... god damn them.

Man Who Took Video Of SC Cop Shooting/Killing Fleeing Suspect Feared For His Life

Caitlin MacNeal at TPM:

Man Who Videoed S.C. Cop Shooting: I Thought My Life 'Might Be In Danger'

Feidin Santana, the witness whose video led to murder charges against a South Carolina police officer, spoke out on Wednesday for the first time since the incident and said that he was so scared he thought about deleting his recording.

"I even thought about erasing the video," he said during an interview on MSNBC with Craig Melvin. "I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger.”

...

Is Santana's fear justified?

Most photographers who have often wandered the streets looking for interesting material have confronted a question like this at one time or another. While toting my camera, I've never confronted a cop, but I've confronted an angry business owner who didn't like my taking pics of his storefront sign even though I was standing on the city sidewalk in front of his business. I faced the man down and demanded that he call the cops; he repeatedly refused to do so, perhaps knowing that he hadn't a leg to stand on. (Now I'm the one... oh, never mind!)

But that was an easy case. I knew my rights, and the business owner was an ordinary asshole, not an asshole credentialed by the city to put lead in my back. If I had been in Santana's circumstance, I'd have felt the same doubts he did.

So what are your rights in the streets with a camera, still or video?

Let's let ACLU tell us. The good news: courts have ruled you have rights. The bad news: they're not absolute. Here's what ACLU says, quoted directly from their article on the subject:

(Updated July 2014)

Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right – and that includes federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties. Unfortunately, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs from public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply. Learn more »

Your rights as a photographer: 

• When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.
• When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner's rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).
• Police officers may not confiscate or demand to view your digital photographs or video without a warrant. The Supreme Court has ruled that police may not search your cell phone when they arrest you, unless they get a warrant. Although the court did not specifically rule on whether law enforcement may search other electronic devices such as a standalone camera, the ACLU believes that the constitution broadly prevents warrantless searches of your digital data. It is possible that courts may approve the temporary warrantless seizure of a camera in certain extreme “exigent” circumstances such as where necessary to save a life, or where police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that doing so is necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence of a crime while they seek a warrant.
• Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances. Officers have faced felony charges of evidence tampering as well as obstruction and theft for taking a photographer’s memory card.
• Police officers may legitimately order citizens to cease activities that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations. Professional officers, however, realize that such operations are subject to public scrutiny, including by citizens photographing them.
• Note that the right to photograph does not give you a right to break any other laws. For example, if you are trespassing to take photographs, you may still be charged with trespass.

The remainder of that ACLU article explains what you should do if the police stop you from photographing, and special rules particular to video recording (hint: the video and audio portions may be treated differently under the law, although ACLU says that constitutionally they should not be).

Unfortunately, these days, Santana's fear that the cops will not treat him in accordance with the law and the Constitution are not wholly unjustified. We live in parlous times: the police officers associated with the alleged killer may or may not be Santana's friend.

If you carry a camera (and a lot of people do these days, even if they call it a "cell phone," almost as many as carry guns), good luck to you.

Reading For Wednesday

Left over from earlier in the week, but not to be forgotten:

• Judge Denies DOJ Request To Remove Hold On Immigration Executive Actions
  

  First, debatable president George W. Bush attempted to control everything directly by executive order and appointments in his eight stolen years in office. Now that those years are over, his political heirs control everything through his judicial appointments. Unitary executive, then unitary judiciary... either way, the Rethuglicans rule. Got it? You think maybe the same conditions should apply to Obama's executive orders as to Baby Bush's? One of Junior's judges will inform you otherwise. Yes, it's being appealed

• Poverty may affect the growth of children’s brains
  

  With time and various studies, this phenomenon looks more and more likely: poverty denies kids their literal intellectual birthright.

• A 'different' Rand Paul will launch his 2016 bid today
  

  I can't imagine Child Paul making a credible presidential run, but I've been fooled before about what Repub's would or wouldn't do.

• American tragedy: At least 50% of police shooting victims struggled with mental illness
  

  And remember, this article was published before the cop in SC shot an unarmed man in the back. Eight times. Killing him. On video, all set for the national news.

• American police killed more people in March (111) than the entire UK police have killed since 1900
  

  I never thought I'd live to see a day that I fervently pray each time I leave my home that I do not encounter a cop... even though I'm white. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Feel free to post some good news in comments. (Sorry; salvation doesn't count.)

Easter Churchgoer Accidentally Shoots Self With Own Gun

UU Chalice

When I was about 25 years old, a fellow student (actually a woman) at a music workshop, on learning in a lunchtime chat that I am a Unitarian Universalist, accused me of being "dangerous." Really? More dangerous than this guy?

From a TV news transcript at that link:

...

Catholic
Cross

Police say a gun went off at about 11 p.m. Saturday at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament...

...

Jason Wagler was sitting with his fiancee at Mass and heard the gunshot.

...

Interdenominational
Pistol

"We were standing for a few minutes and just before the final procession started, the gunshot went off," Wagler said.

Wagler said at first no one seemed to know what had happened. Some people thought a speaker blew. But then he saw smoke.  Wagler took several photos with his phone shortly after the incident happened.

"I immediately took a step back and was about to take cover. You never know if you're safe anymore in this world. It's a shame to know you can't go into church without having something like this happen," Wagler said.

Police say a man had a gun in his pocket and it discharged when he stood up. The bullet grazed the man's hand.

... newspaper reported the trigger caught on the man's pants and the gun's safety was not on.

"I noticed the gun was handed to another gentleman. He immediately concealed it in a white program, so I took pictures of the gun inside this program," Wagler said.

The man was taken to the hospital. Police haven't released his name.

It's unclear why he brought a gun into church. At this point, no charges have been filed.

(NOTE: I believe that in this church the proper term for "program" is "disorder of service." But what do I know... like most UU's, I am not Christian... see the video linked above for a shot (ahem) of the paper in which the gun was hidden. - SB)

So... this happened in Houston, TX, right? Ummm... try Altoona, PA, about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh. Oh, and surely it happened in a "dangerous" Unitarian Universalist church, right? Ahhhh... no. Catholic.

I no longer attend church, but during the dozen or so years I did, I didn't know a single congregant of First UU Church Houston (apart from the occasional law enforcement officer) who entered a church service there carrying a firearm... let alone careless enough to have the safety off. Of course, YMMV...

(H/T Brendan James at TPM.)

Deepwater Horizon — Five Years Later

Oiled pelican - Deepwater Horizon

Here's a podcast by Susanne Bard featuring Science Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt and other Science staff assessing many aspects of the current state of the Gulf, the coast and their ecosystems five years after the worst oil spill in US history (at least). The 'cast is about 34 minutes long and there's very little fluff... I learned as much in those minutes as I have in the same period spent reading one or another article on the disaster over the last few years. I may have to revise my earlier opinion of the information density of podcasts!

(Thanks to NTodd for alerting me to the availability of much of the Science web site via free registration. You'll probably have to register to hear this podcast.)

Another 5-4 Supreme Court Ruling Hammers Medicaid For 68 Million Americans

Elizabeth G. Taylor and Jane Perkins of the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) (see also Taylor's blog), writing at TPM:

When it comes to health care at the Supreme Court this year, all eyes are focused on the Obamacare tax credits case, King v. Burwell. But a case decided this week, Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., has raised significant concerns for the availability of quality health care for those who need it most.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court turned against decades of legal precedent and ruled that Medicaid providers cannot use the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution to stop state provider payment policies that are inconsistent with the federal Medicaid Act’s requirement for adequate reimbursement rates. That may sound like a bunch of legalese, but the outcome has a real impact on the 68 million-plus people relying on Medicaid. If a state’s Medicaid payment rates are too low (and many providers complain these rates are below their cost of providing services), then provider participation in Medicaid—and the ability of enrollees to obtain care—is at risk.

...

[/face-palm] Yes, that's our Supreme Court, all right.

Dr. GOPer 'fixes' Medicaid

And unfortunately, that's our Medicaid system. Taylor and Perkins note that "Congress established Medicaid in 1965 as a cooperative program between states and the federal government"; the operative word there is "cooperative" ... in states run mostly by Republicans, the state implementation of Medicaid is as obstructionist as the state's governor and legislature can make it. I know: my late mother finally qualified for Medicaid to help with my late father's payments for her otherwise uninsured institutionalization for Alzheimer's disease... the week my mother died in 1990. Dad ended up nearly broke from paying for her treatment. Texas GOPers can be very proud [/irony] of what they accomplished in that case, goddamn them.

If there is one good reason above all others to hold your nose and vote for a Democratic president in 2016, it is to make sure the effing bastards of the Greedy Oppressive Party lack the power to appoint another Supreme Court Justice for at least another four years. A Democratic president will not assure an optimal replacement for a Justice who retires or dies... the GOPers can continue playing their obstructionist politics as surely as they obstruct Mr. Obama... but if the GOP has the presidency and both houses of Congress, it will be an utter disaster for healthcare in America. Don't let that happen!

Right-Wing Nut-Job Welfare: More Lucrative By Far Than Selling Pizzas, And A Splendid ‘Christian’ Example For Easter

AP via TPM:

Indiana Pizza Shop Still Raking In Money, Over $840K

WALKERTON, Ind. (AP) — A crowdfunding campaign for an Indiana pizzeria that came under fire after its owners said their religious beliefs wouldn't allow them to cater a gay wedding has raised more than $840,000.

Memories Pizza in Walkerton is closed indefinitely and its operators say they've gone into hiding.

...

Look, muthafuckas: religion is about belief; bigotry is about action. No aspect of genuine religious freedom can ever allow you to override secular law in pursuing a business which is a  public accommodation. And if you're Christian, and you're getting fucking rich by exercising that same bigotry, you're defying just about everything Jesus ever said: you're transforming your own moral exemplar into his exact opposite. You're setting a fine example for the rest of us, eh?

Happy Fv<king Easter, muthafuckas.

Chicago Police Systematically Deny Counsel To Arrestees

Is this still true?
Even in Chicago?

In my not-so-humble opinion, denying the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to people arrested in the context of exercising their First Amendment right to free speech in protest of government action, especially denying that right systematically, is arguably one of the most egregious sorts of police misconduct possible. I mean, if Chicago PD is doing this, they might as well be firing rubber bullets into crowds, assaulting peaceful protesters with billy clubs, using tasers on nonviolent protesters, etc. (Oh, wait...) Police denying arrestees' access to an attorney is behavior characteristic of a totalitarian government, not a representative democracy.

Kevin Gosztola at FDL has details. This is no April Fool's joke!

Miscellany

Each worth reading, even if together they don't make up a coherent list post...

Laura Flanders, Truthout: The Fight Against High-Stakes Testing: A Civil Rights Movement Dean Baker, Truthout: Don't Worry About the Robots; the Fed Might Take Your Job David Roberts, Grist: Congress is trying to squash one of the few examples of American leadership on climate George Takei (Star Trek's "Sulu"; gay activist) via Gwenned, Daily Kos: The Awesome Response to Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Flanders Baker Roberts Takei

Well, Du-uh... America Now Oligarchy, Not Democracy — Princeton Study

Brendan James at TPM:

A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.

Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.

...

Mr. James appears to be a young man, but damn, he's learning fast...

Naomi Klein On Oil Prices, Fossil Fuel Divestment, Better Climate Movement

Some of you know that my admiration for Naomi Klein is such that when my attempt to place a hold at Houston Public Library on her newest book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, failed, I actually promptly purchased the book, far out of my planned sequence of books to buy. Knowing that, it should hardly surprise you that I found an interview of Klein by May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, at a conference on divestment as an activist tactic, to be well worth reading. The interview is in three parts, dealing with oil prices, how to build a better climate movement, and fossil fuel divestment.

And if any old geezer (like me) says "they don't make activists like they used to," point them to Ms. Klein as an example: no, they don't make 'em like they used to; they make 'em better.

Global Climate Change: The Science CANNOT Be Treated As A Matter Of Religion... Or Politics

Tim McDonnell at Grist:

Scientists and science journalists like to say that one of the best ways to tell that climate change is real is to take a look at the changes we can already see: This year is on track to be the hottest ever recorded, and glaciers, corn, and even grizzly bears are responding to the warming. But all those shifts won’t be enough to convince most conservative climate skeptics, a new study in Nature Climate Change finds.

A growing body of recent research suggests a person’s political ideology, economic philosophy, and religious beliefs tend to overwhelm observed facts about global warming. The new study, which was released Monday, put that hypothesis to the test by analyzing Gallup polls taken just after the unusually warm winter of 2012. It found that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ perceptions of the warmer weather in their state tracked fairly well with actual satellite temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But “for people who said their local winter was warming, the observed temperature anomalies had no effect on the tendency to attribute that to global warming,” explains Aaron McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University who authored the study.

In other words, the actual temperature had no bearing on whether people believed in climate change. Instead, McCright says, “one of the strongest predictors” is party affiliation: Republicans were far less likely to attribute the warming they felt to human-made climate change than were Democrats. Other variables — gender, age, and level of education — were far less reliable as predictors of a person’s global warming beliefs.

...

NASA Temp's Feb 2015
(hottest on record)

This result aligns with my personal observations: Republicans or conservatives with whom I am still on speaking terms (i.e., those who are not so irrational moment-to-moment as to preclude reasonable conversation) frequently take the attitude, "You believe one thing; I believe another. So it's a matter of faith, and in America, we have a constitutional requirement to treat all faiths equally under the law. So my belief is as good as your belief, and I don't have to change my life to conform to your belief."

There's literally no arguing with that. But it's wrong.

Florida Sea Level Rise

The problem is, the physical universe does not operate on that basis. Its actual physical behavior, on the grandest and the most microscopic scales, takes no account of what anyone "believes" in a religious sense of the term. The physics of the universe is not a matter of faith, nor an issue to be decided democratically. And that's what we're talking about here: conservatives treat global climate change as if it were a matter of religion.

It's going to be a long, hot century...

What Freedom Of Religion? Two Daily Kos Posts That Make Me Glad I Just Renewed My ACLU Membership

The part of America's Constitution that we today call the First Amendment begins by getting right to the point:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; ...

This should be a
very small intersection indeed!

This isn't conceptually difficult: you (Congress, and through the Fourteenth Amendment, state legislatures) can't enact laws that require a government at any level to prescribe a specific body of religious belief which everyone must affirm, nor enact laws that use taxpayers' money to support such a belief, or support the activities of a religious institution or denomination.

But more and more members of Congress, state legislators, state governors, etc., all of them Republican, appear to be incapable of comprehending this simple prohibition: if it's religious, you can't use the government to compel it, prohibit it, fund it, etc.

A couple of examples turned up on Kos in the span of the past week alone. Please read them for a better idea of what these dominionists seem determined to do:

• House Republican introduces bill to require religious pledge of military cadets
• She's back! Arizona legislator suggests church attendance should be mandatory

You can say of these people that they are simply unclear on the concept expressed in the "free expression" clause of the First Amendment. I do not believe that. They understand it just fine; they simply don't like it... and they intend to try to violate it (or pretend to try to violate it), as a song-and-dance for their fundamentalist Christian constituents. In other words, they are un‑American.

Got that? Good! Now do what you can to put a stop to it. For example, I keep my ACLU membership up to date. When the great State of Texas tried a few years ago to prohibit my denomination from using its state tax exemption, which to comply with the First Amendment must be available to every religion, the ACLU set them straight. In court!

Kepler Project Finds Earth-Comparable Planet In Star's Habitable Zone

Via ellroon (again!), we read, spellbound, as NASA informs us of the Kepler mission's first "hit" of exactly the sort everyone hoped it would make... not exactly a new event (almost a year old, in fact), but I just noticed it:

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

...

Hot-damn! First we discovered a planet orbiting around another star. Then over the years we found hundreds of planets of different fundamental types orbiting around many stars. Now we're seeing something not too different from Earth, though many particulars are not yet known.

I always knew this day would come; what I didn't know is that the discovery would be made within my lifetime... 

(For interested parties, NASA offers some simple explanations about how Kepler accomplishes the detection of exoplanets. And please view visuals on the linked sites; I can't do them justice here with my self-imposed file size limits.)

Wisconsin Republican: Weekends For Me, None For Thee!

To be fair, I must say that not every state has a law requiring all businesses, or businesses over a certain size, etc., to give employees a weekend day off. But Wisconsin is currently such a state.

Wisconsin Republicans want to change that. Why? It's bound to be an unpopular change. I suppose it's "anything to stiff a union" ...

The Republican state senator sponsoring the bill is named Van Wanggaard. If he pushes this bill through, he damned well better guard it; someone whose weekend he trashed might well go after it with a stick, or worse...

One Person's Collection Of Favorite Terry Pratchett Quotes

Via the indispensable Avedon, we have BuzzFeed staff writer Kaye Toal's illustrated personal collection of her favorite quotes from the late (sob!) Sir Terry Pratchett. See how many of them correspond with your own; realize once again the depth of Pratchett's human understanding and his unparalleled and indefatigable ability to express that understanding in words meaningful to everyone.

Why Is Papa Pizza A Republican?

Paul Krugman has an answer of sorts, and I suppose it's plausible, though the whole notion that pizza is partisan strikes me as... ahem... un-American. (Except pizza from Papa John's, of course... now that's partisan... RWNJ-partisan! [CORRECTION: Pizza Hut is even MORE Republican than Papa John's!])

Here's Krugman:

No, really. A recent Bloomberg report noted that major pizza companies have become intensely, aggressively partisan. Pizza Hut gives a remarkable 99 percent of its money to Republicans. Other industry players serve Democrats a somewhat larger slice of the pie (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but, over all, the politics of pizza these days resemble those of, say, coal or tobacco. ...

I'd be willing to bet that if you assessed the pizza Americans eat according to a single categorization, pizza shop or grocery store, you could still detect the partisan difference. Most of the pizza I eat is from the grocer. These days, who can afford to order a fancy pizza out? Republicans, that's who! (YMMV. Just an opinion.)

Loretta Lynch Confirmation Held Up... And Held Up... And...

... held up, by the GOP, of course. Pretty much everyone admits she is well-qualified and will be confirmed if she ever gets a vote in the Senate.

Lynch

At this point, according to President Obama (heard here on CNN), her nomination has been held up "longer than the five previous attorney general nominees combined" [note: Yahoo! News says seven, not five] delayed each time on an issue completely unrelated either to Lynch herself or to the Attorney General's office, each issue deliberately introduced by the GOP to prevent any advancement of the confirmation process.

Maybe this is politics as usual.

Or maybe this is further evidence that today's GOP is incapable of governing.

WTF Would NSA NOT Do?

Apparently it's a short list, and this, from Bruce Schneier, didn't make it:

Last May, we learned that the NSA intercepts equipment being shipped around the world and installs eavesdropping implants. There were photos of NSA employees opening up a Cisco box. Cisco's CEO John Chambers personally complained to President Obama about this practice, which is not exactly a selling point for Cisco equipment abroad. Der Spiegel published the more complete document, along with a broader story, in January of this year:

...

Now Cisco is taking matters into its own hands, offering to ship equipment to fake addresses in an effort to avoid NSA interception.

...

Wassamatter, NSA guys; you not competent to collect what you want without physically installing sh!t on the router while you have it in your clammy hands?

I know no one gives a fv<k whether I approve of any given NSA activity, but c'mon, this is outside the pale. I find myself really tempted to violate Godwin's Law on this one...

‘New’ Sherlock Holmes Story By Conan Doyle Found After 80 Years

No beating about the bush: it can be read here.

Holmes

This sort of thing is not unprecedented. Like many authors in the days before authors were owned by publishers and kept confined in stables like race horses, one of the most effective charitable gestures a well-known author could make was to write and contribute his or her own story, using the author's own (in)famous character(s), indirectly urging the reader to participate in that same charity. In this case, Conan Doyle was trying to save an old bridge in Selkirk. The story contains many local references, most of which are beyond my reach, but you may be sure the gentleman reaching for his purse to contribute would have known them all.

Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle wrote enough such stories that I have run across and read one before, but it was in a dead-tree source which I cannot put my hand on at the moment. If I run across another, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, enjoy this one.

H/T ellroon, who finds and points us to a wealth of interesting things!

Gaaaack! Cough Not Worst Ever, But Bad Enough...

This is truly unpleasant. Stella or I (I don't know which yet) will pick up one of my regular meds, not a cough med but one of my ongoing prescriptions, by Sun. at the latest; meanwhile, I feel like a bucket of warm spit. I got little if any sleep last night due to this cough. It's raining, again, not the worst I've ever seen, but enough to inconvenience us. Sometimes the good Dog just doesn't want you to get out of bed, and like a fool, I ignored her and did that anyway. Now I'd better go empty the spit bucket. Don't expect a lot of blogging today, or tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

Boy Howdy, Are Tom Engelhardt And Crew Thought‑Provoking Lately...

Start with the moment's topmost post, Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is a New Political System Emerging in This Country?, and read straight through at least Nan Levinson's cheekily titled sub-post, The Big Dick School of American Patriotism And What We Make of It. Have you read it? Now tell me: does something feel out of balance, and I don't mean the prose?

Let me be clear: I admire Engelhardt and other authors on his site greatly. But in our era, the out-of-balance sensation is sure to afflict any sensible writer, and they are not exceptions to that rule. Now pardon me for a few minutes; I need to have my brain washed... I need water; please hand me a Glass.

The Community Cold

Stella has had one version of it for over a week; she got it from literally half her coworkers and brought it home to me. I've had it for 3-4 days, the version that is mostly a head cold and a sore throat... yucky and unpleasant, but not life-threatening.

At night, I have adequate concentration to read novels, news and blogs, but not to follow anything complex or to write anything of much substance; don't expect any intellectual tours de force from me this week. I've successfully read a not unduly challenging private eye novel and had rather less success facing some of Noam Chomsky's oeuvre for the first time... and I do want to give Chomsky his due; IMHO he deserves my close attention.

Beyond that, my intake has been confined mostly to PBS Kids, probably entertaining because I don't have kids, PBS or otherwise.

I'll check in occasionally, but don't expect any great works from me until I stop drowning in my own fluids and rasping every word I speak.

Cassini Spacecraft Notes Saturn Moon May Support Life In Its Subsurface Ocean

Andrew Coates at Juan Cole's Informed Comment:

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has an Ocean, Geysers and maybe Life

The Cassini mission that has investigated Saturn since 2004 has revealed much about the giant planet and its many moons. Perhaps most tantalising is the discovery that the moon Enceladus is the source of strong geysers ejecting plumes of water and ice.

A new study of Cassini data published in Nature by Hsiang-Wen Hsu and colleagues reveals these plumes are laced with grains of sand. This indicates that hydrothermal activity may be at work in Enceladus’ sub-surface ocean, and propels this tiny moon into the extremely exclusive club of locations that could harbour life.

The club’s only current member is Earth, of course – although it’s very possible that Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is, like Enceladus, also a candidate. What they have in common is that they host liquid oceans of salty water that exists in contact with a rocky, silicate seabed from which the oceans can absorb complex minerals and elements.

...

Cool! There's still no certainty, but as recently as a decade ago, I'd have put my money on "Earth alone" as the home of life in our Solar System. Now we have several possibilities. Enceladus was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel; between that long history and the Cassini mission, there is basis for some credible speculation about how it works, subsurface ocean and all. Here's a diagram of one of the models of its cryovolcanism (click for larger image):

Even if this tiny moon doesn't support life, its name could serve to advise you what to order if it's your very first trip to a Mexican restaurant...

‘CISA Isn't About Cybersecurity, It's About Surveillance’

It seems these days that no bad bill that's been killed (*cough* CISPA *cough*) stays dead, and these undead bills, in this case transparently renamed CISA, stalk the halls of Congress looking to give America's law enforcement entities surveillance powers over its citizens, powers unheard of in the entire history of the Republic. Here's some of what you need to know, from

• security expert Bruce Schneier (latest book, Data and Goliath, on this very subject) (H/T CTuttle at FDL),
• the ACLU, and
• an assortment of "civil society organizations, security experts and academics" writing in a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (.pdf).

This bill as it stands is condemned by every one of these experts, yet is under consideration now by the Senate Select Committee. If CISA should pass and be signed into law, at least... at the very least... your Fourth Amendment rights will lie dead in the street, trampled by the forces who believe every American should be subject to surveillance, everywhere s/he goes, in every activity, at any time.

How little difference one letter makes!

How does that sound to you? Right... me too. Please read the linked articles and then HOWL to Congress, for all the good it will do...

Alzheimer's Disease: Possible Breakthrough Treatment — Ultrasound

If you have a family member who suffers Alzheimer's disease, you know firsthand how devastating the condition is to the sufferer and his/her family. Even as one who never for a moment contemplated a career in medicine, I spent many hours attempting to read medical journal articles on Alzheimer's research published between about 1986 and 1990, the year my mother died of this relentless destroyer of the human brain. At the time, no one, medical professional or otherwise, had any idea that 25 years later medical science still would not have a sufficiently clear understanding of the nature of the disease to undertake to use available techniques to treat it, let alone cure it.

Fast-forward past 25 years of Alzheimer's research and many hopeful but failed attempts at finding effective treatment... it's been a bleak quarter century for families like mine, especially those families in which there are indications of a genetic component, a family connection, in the propagation of the disease.

Finally (we can hope it's "finally"), Walter Einenkel at Kos points out an article in The Guardian detailing how researchers at University of Queensland in Brisbane undertook a wholly new approach, using ultrasound to break up the tangles of plaques in the brain that are a primary manifestation of Alzheimer's. So far, tests have been done only in mice, but the resulting improvement in function in most of the treated mice is very promising. One problem in many previous attempts at drug-based treatments is the blood-brain barrier, which is apparently no barrier to sound waves.

(I was already having difficulty sleeping tonight; now I know I may as well give up... at least for a change it's good news keeping me awake!)

Rev. Franklin Graham Employs Aggie Pistol

Graham

There is no version of the Far-Right Rev. Franklin Graham's argument here that does not point, like the infamous Aggie pistol, right back at the Rev. himself. Brendan James at TPM:

The Rev. Franklin Graham on Wednesday hypothesized that President Obama's hesitancy to fight the Islamic State terror group was because Obama's mother "must have been a Muslim."

In a clip flagged by Right Wing Watch, the son of renowned pastor Rev. Billy Graham spoke to Family Research Council head Tony Perkins in a radio interview.

"His mother must have been a Muslim," Graham said. "We don't know that, but she married two Muslim men, so there must have been something there."

"And the framework that the President has growing up, his influences in his life, was that of Islam," he added.

...

Aggie pistol

OK. Let's accept the Rev. Graham's stated opinion at face value, and render the quotation just a teensy bit different for the sake of argument:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday hypothesized that Rev. Franklin Graham's eagerness to fight the Islamic State terror group was because Graham's father "must have been a radical Christian fundamentalist."

[etc. ad nauseam]
...

Sauce for the goose and the gander, eh? D'ya think Billy just shifted a bit in his grave when his son let fly with that? [CORRECTION: per Mustang Bobby in comments, Billy is still alive. According to Wikipedia, he is 96.]

I'm A Little Busy Here...

... with household duties, medical matters, feeding cats, herding cats, etc., all things that cannot be put off but are nonetheless not paid work. Have patience,please; I haven't forgotten the blog.

My State Rep, A Republican, Says Women Will Die If Texas Lege Renders Cancer Screening Unavailable By Forcing Planned Parenthood Clinics To Close

Sarah Davis
(R-TX134)

It is hardly news that the Texas GOP has made repeated attempts to impose the harshest strictures on women's health clinics that offer abortion in Texas, such as Planned Parenthood, no matter what other essential medical services those clinics offer women. It is news (from Tara Culp‑Ressler at Think Progress, March 10) that a Republican legislator has come out in opposition to her party's attempts to kill women by denying them high-quality cancer screening in an attempt to deny them constitutionally protected access to abortion.

That legislator, State Rep. Sarah Davis (R-TX134), represents my district.

I have long since taken a solemn vow not to vote for any Republican unless Abraham Lincoln rises from the grave and runs in a district in which I am registered to vote. At least Lege elections are in even-numbered years, so I have some time to think about this race.

The problem, of course, is not what Rep. Davis would do independently; rather, it's what she could be pressured into doing along with her party. And the R-dominated Texas Lege, under a new, presumably ideologically driven Repub governor, could make laws that could literally kill women by the thousands, and GOPers in the Lege have not been shy about attempting those very laws.

I have often wished for an active pro-choice or at least pro-women's-rights movement within the GOP. All that proves is that one should be careful what s/he wishes for!

OK TP/GOP State House Candidate Advocates Stoning Gay People To Death

... here. And I don't mean with newly legalized marijuana. The craziness gets worse every day...

Americans: Did You Set Your Clocks Forward? Good For You!

Last night was the night...

18 Years — Cause For Celebration

 As of today, Stella and I have been an "item" for 18 years. This Lichtenstein-like work shows "Stella," but with all due respect to people who love their kids, the woman depicted here expresses (sarcastically) an attitude for both of us. Search the Web for "forgot to have children" and you'll learn how very many people feel that way!

We plan a splendid meal (probably at Vietopia), a walk in a park (weather permitting) and... our signature activity for most such celebrations... a trip to a bookstore!

‘Chocolate Snorting’? Tell Me You're Joking, Please!

No, apparently not; someone actually sells a device for it. Here's Miranda Alexander Webber at Reuters:

(Reuters) - When Belgian chocolatier Dominique Persoone created a chocolate-sniffing device for a Rolling Stones party in 2007, he never imagined demand would stretch much beyond the rock 'n' roll scene. But, seven years later, he has sold 25,000 of them.

I like chocolate as much as the next blogger, and I generally have a box of cocoa around the kitchen for the few recipes that call for it... but I think I'll pass on this delivery method!

(H/T Avedon.)

---

In other food-related news, you can add bacon to the list of inadequately inspected foods. (FWIW, Morningstar Farms offers a perfectly acceptable vegetarian bacon substitute; we consume quite a bit of it around Our House. Try some; go whole hog!)

NASA Study: Mars Oceans Larger, Deeper, Lasted Longer Than Previously Thought

Michele Starr at c|net gives the particulars. Some people (John Gribbin comes to mind) are not going to be happy with the increasing likelihood that Mars long ago had sufficient water that the question of whether it ever supported life will surely now have to be reevaluated.

NASA/GSFC

Oldest Known Footage Of NYC Appears

Jen Hayden at Kos tells us about it; some of it predates the turn of the 20^th century. The World Trade Center is superposed for a few seconds to show its later (and former) location. If you're a New Yorker, 120 years old and nostalgic, this should be good viewing...

(Watch on YouTube.)

SCOTUS Will Hear King v. Burwell, Affordable Care Act Case, Today

A straightforward explanation of the points at issue is available from Jessica Mason Pieklo at RH Reality Check. A live-blog of the decision as it is issued is provided by SCOTUSblog's Kali Borkoski. Note that only decisions will be live-blogged; live-blogging of arguments from within the chamber is not permitted. (SCOTUSblog has a workaround: aperiodically one of their attendees leaves the chamber and reports. If I recall, that person cannot be readmitted, but I'm not sure of that.)

ACA (Anti-Care Actors)?

If plaintiffs petitioners succeed in persuading the Court to rule that, based on four words in isolation, Congress really intended to punish citizens of states that did not set up their own exchanges (depending instead on the federal exchange), millions of Americans will lose their newly acquired health insurance.

This is Chief Justice John Roberts's second chance to kill and bury the Affordable Care Act... or not. He is regarded as the swing vote on this case. The Act survived the Court's first ruling.

A subset of Republicans has been trying again to kill the ACA ever since. Very probably, if Roberts votes against it, the ACA will go down in flames; if that happens, Roberts will earn his "ace" rating for exhibiting the baldfaced inconsistency of voting against his own earlier ruling. Republicans in Congress whine endlessly about the ACA, but they have carefully avoided constructing their own viable alternative. As always, they'd rather spite the President than save your health insurance.

Is this a great country, or what? (Hint: I'm betting on "what.")

---

AFTERTHOUGHT: Scalia is a piece of work. Here's Sahil Kapur at TPM, quoting parts of the verbal sparring in the hearing...

WASHINGTON — Justice Antonin Scalia expressed confidence on Wednesday morning that Congress would act to mitigate the damage if the Supreme Court ruled to invalidate Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans.

"You really think Congress is just going to sit there while all the disastrous consequences ensue?" he asked Obama administration lawyer Don Verrilli.

The U.S. solicitor general had a sarcastic retort.

"This Congress, your honor?"

The audience in the packed courtroom laughed.

"Yes," Scalia protested, "I think this Congress would act."

...

NO rational person... no RATIONAL person... could come to that conclusion about the TP-controlled Congress we have right now. If the Supreme Court kills Obamacare, I am sure as I'm sitting here that it will stay dead.

---

UPDATE: No decision in King v. Burwell today. Not too surprising...

Netanyahu May Reveal US-Iran Negotiation Secrets

CNN:

Washington (CNN)The Obama administration is bracing for Benjamin Netanyahu to spill secret details of Iran nuclear talks, as both camps traded last-minute political jabs ahead of the Israeli prime minister's controversial address to Congress at 11 a.m. EST on Tuesday.

The White House is uncertain what precise details may come out but aides spent Monday frantically mobilizing after Israeli officials said that the prime minister planned to disclose sensitive details of an agreement taking shape in talks between six world powers and Iran, which has entered a delicate final stage.

...

This man is not an ally of the United States. If he leaks American secrets for political reasons, there must be diplomatic consequences.

---

ADDENDUM: Juan Cole's article "4 Things more Dangerous to Israel than Iran’s civilian Nuclear Enrichment" is well worth reading.

Feeling No Pain — DOGGEREL!

Ah, modern medicine! Stella has been suffering sustained headaches for about 24 hours now; I don't know if they're migraines but if they are, I hope this new procedure developed at Albany Medical Center and SUNY Empire State College can help her. First a few details:

Minimally invasive migraine treatment 'reduced painkiller use in 88% of patients'

At the Society of Interventional Radiology's Annual Scientific Meeting, clinicians from Albany Medical Center and the State University New York Empire State College in Saratoga Springs, NY, explained how the new treatment - image-guided, intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG) blocks - provided ongoing relief to migraine patients.

"Migraine headaches are one of the most common, debilitating diseases in the United States, and the cost and side effects of medicine to address migraines can be overwhelming," says Dr. Kenneth Mandato, the study's lead researcher and an interventional radiologist at Albany Medical Center.

"Intranasal sphenopalatine ganglion blocks are image-guided, targeted, breakthrough treatments," he elaborates. "They offer a patient-centered therapy that has the potential to break the migraine cycle and quickly improve patients' quality of life."

...

The treatment is minimally invasive and involves 4% lidocaine being administered to the patient via a "spaghetti-sized catheter" inserted through the patient's nasal passage. Through this route, the lidocaine is delivered to the patient's sphenopalatine ganglion - a bundle of nerves just behind the nose that are associated with migraines.

...

Well, OK, that sounds good! Now the doggerel...

Research and Envelopment

Your head hurts? Great!
Now Empire State
Has something for your pain:
If you're not dead,
They've got a med
That goes against migraine.

With Albany,
Their SPG
Is playing with your blocks:
Their tiny hose
Goes up your nose...
Don't squirt it on your socks!

The lidocaine
Will ease your pain
(For eighty-eight percent of you);
Now bring your purse:
You won't get worse...
But they will have their rent of you!

- SB the YDD

‘Justice Deferred [sic]’ And ‘Too Big To Jail’

First, let me offer my thanks to friends/neighbors George and Barbara B-not-Bush, who provided me unasked with their print copy of this month's New York Review of Books. And while I do not know the man face to face (perhaps fortunately, as that is because I have not confronted the federal bench), I have come to have great respect for Jed S. Rakoff, US District Judge for the Southern District of New York, writer for NY Review of occasional reviews of nontechnical legal books, such as the one this post focuses on, Brandon L. Garrett's Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations.

I don't think I need to explain to any of you why you should care about this matter, but here's the short of it: in the past couple of decades, Justice departments of presidents of both major political parties have worked out agreements with large corporations such that the corporation is not prosecuted and not punished for clearly illegal misdeeds... and the persons responsible, be they board members, upper-level managers, legal teams, professional investment staff, or anyone else employed by these corporations, are not prosecuted or retrained at all. In other words, crimes are committed and noted, slaps on wrists are administered, and the people who committed them are not so much as formally reprimanded, let alone charged. Needless to say, the frequency of such crimes is growing greatly; that's what happens when felonies are simply neglected without any attempt to punish their perpetrators or to repair the faulty corporate procedures that allow them... indeed, encourage them... to be committed.

Judge Rakoff outlines the contents of Mr. Garrett's book much better than I can. Please read the review at the link above.

(Aside: regrettably, HPL seems not to have even one copy of this book, though they have at least one other book by Garrett in their catalog. Too Big to Jail is not even an expensive book on Amazon; I may get one myself.)

In Case You Had Forgotten, Bill Moyers And Two Legal Scholars Explain How Citizens United Allows Corp's To Buy Elections

The video below appears originally as the first video on this page. Please watch Bill Moyers interviewing Monica Youn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham School of Law, on the direct and indirect consequences of Citizens United:

If we want to preserve any semblance of democracy in America, we must find a way to rid ourselves of that execrable Supreme Court ruling. Otherwise the Golden Rule applies ("those who have the gold make the rules"), and we the people (except for the very wealthy) will have no participatory role in our government, and our flag may as well look like this:

I understand Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has a good campaign underway to rid us of Citizens United; perhaps you can join his effort. If that doesn't suit you, please find something, or prepare to lose your democracy.