By Steve Rhodes
“Former US president praises NSA leaks & Snowden: almost zero US media coverage,” Glenn Greenwald tweeted this morning.
Oh, but it’s worse than that.
“America has no functioning democracy,” Jimmy Carter said Tuesday in Atlanta.
I found out via Der Spiegel.
A search of the Tribune and Sun-Times websites this morning turned up nada.
The Snowden Effect
“The National Security Agency revealed to an angry congressional panel on Wednesday that its analysis of phone records and online behavior goes exponentially beyond what it had previously disclosed,” the Guardian reports.
If not for Snowden, those angry congressmen would never have known – and neither would we.
The Drone President
“I learned that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman – a United States citizen – had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died,” Nasser al-Awlaki writes in the New York Times.
“Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed. It was not until May of this year that the Obama administration, in a supposed effort to be more transparent, publicly acknowledged what the world already knew – that it was responsible for his death.
“The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not ‘specifically targeted,’ raising more questions than he answered.
“My grandson was killed by his own government. The Obama administration must answer for its actions and be held accountable.”
Obama’s Legacy
“A federal appeals court in New York on Wednesday held that the government could enforce a statute dealing with the indefinite detention without trial of terrorism suspects, reversing a district judge’s decision last year to permanently block the law, part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012,” the New York Times reports.
“The decision, a victory for the Obama administration, came the same day that the Justice Department persuaded another federal appeals court in Washington to block a district judge’s order last week that had barred the military from conducting groin searches of detainees in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
“Together, the rulings represented a double win for the Obama administration in its efforts to challenge attempts by district court judges to interfere with its counterterrorism policies and legal authority.”
I’m sure the president welcomes the debate, though.
Hooverville
“The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved President Barack Obama’s nomination of James Comey, a Republican who earlier served as an independent-minded official in the Justice Department, as FBI director,” Reuters reports.
Previously: Senate Set to Confirm New FBI Head Who OK’d Waterboarding, Defends Mass Spying, Indefinite Detention.
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Breaking News From The American Gulag
A joke of a trial MT @nathanLfuller BREAKING: Judge does not throw out either “aiding the enemy” charge against Bradley #Manning
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2013
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Congrats to the Obama admin on converting ordinary leaks to media outlets into a form of treason https://t.co/97XrzRFfpK
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 18, 2013
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See also: The Dangerous Logic Of The Bradley Manning Case.
Yeah, She Said It
‘Now, I ask you, is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award?” Irish lawmaker Clare Daly says. “Because we have to call things by their right names, and the reality is that by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal.”
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Never give up.
Posted on July 18, 2013