n2doc
n2doc's JournalWill Dianne Feinstein Investigate Her Own Leak Of Classified Info? Will She Face Espionage Charges?
So, we just discussed how it appears that Dianne Feinstein accidentally confirmed what was widely suspected: that the NSA is tapping the internet backbone to get access to emails. This is interesting on many levels, not the least of which is that Feinstein herself has been famously harsh against any kind of leak, regularly arguing that the leaks themselves are more damaging than what the leaks may reveal about US government abuse. In the past, Feinstein has raged against leakers:
Similarly, she has argued that Ed Snowden is a "traitor" for revealing information, though unlike her, he didn't reveal this particular program (or at least it hasn't been reported on yet).
Meanwhile, the Senate's current rules on revealing classified information suggest that an investigation is warranted:
If, for example, Senator Wyden had ever actually revealed the details of any classified program (as some had urged him to do), you can rest assured that such an investigation (along with a public tarring and feathering) would likely have occurred. It's also unlikely that he would be allowed to remain on the Intelligence Committee.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130927/16020924681/question-will-dianne-feinstein-investigate-her-own-leak-classified-info-will-she-face-espionage-act-charges.shtml
GOP Congressman On Obamacare: We're Just Like Flight 93 Passengers Fighting Terrorists
By John Amato
Check out this tweet from Culbertson.
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) September 28, 2013
Duncan's right. These tea party politicians are just horrible, stupid children.
Asked lasted about the analogy by a skeptical reporter, Culberson didn’t back down calling it “a good historical analogy.”
The path forward endorsed by Speaker Boehner and the House GOP leadership is quite popular with the more extreme elements of the party. Michele Bachmann gushed, “this is exactly what we asked for an we got it.”
more
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/gop-congressman-obamacare-were-just-fli
Shameless and completely insane.
The Guy Who Invented Whac-A-Mole Accidentally Blew Up a Florida Warehouse
By Tim Elfrink Fri., Sep. 27 2013 at 8:42 AM
Aaron Fechter must be one of history's strangest mechanical geniuses. After inventing Whac-A-Mole, the timeless game that allows children to beat the hell out of buck-toothed creatures popping out of holes, he rented a gigantic central Florida warehouse to create robotic, animatronic rock bands for Chuck E. Cheese's and ShowBiz Pizza Place franchises.
Lately, he'd turned his attention to an alternative fuel that supposedly burned cleaner than propane -- but apparently was equally explosive. Fechter's warehouse spectacularly blew up yesterday, causing chaos near downtown Orlando and leaving robots scattered around burning rubble.
The explosion rocked downtown Orlando around 12:30 yesterday afternoon, shaking nearby office buildings and sending workers running outside to see what had happened.
One wall of Fechter's building collapsed in the blast. Bystanders who arrived to check for casualties found a bizarre scene: No humans were hurt in the explosion, but robotic limbs smoldered amid the wreckage.
more
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2013/09/the_guy_who_invented_the_whac-.php
Bukowski’s Air and light and time and space illustrated,
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/62467682819/bukowskis-air-and-light-and-time-and-space
Tour CERN and the Large Hadron Collider with Google Street View
Few people without PhDs ever set foot inside CERN’s (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) lab in Geneva, Switzerland, home of the Large Hadron Collider. And although we have had the opportunity to share some stunning pics of the world’s largest particle accelerator before, Google is one-upping us (go figure) by letting you take a virtual stroll with Street View.
That’s right, we can now add CERN to the ever-growing list of awesome locations that Google is lets you tour from the comfort of your favorite chair.
When we shared The Atlantic‘s photos of the LHC, we pointed out the “beauty in the machine” that these photos captured. The Street View imagery is no different, except that now you can explore many more vantage points.
Acronyms like ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHC take on a new meaning when you get to see the massive underground machines with your own eyes.
more
http://petapixel.com/2013/09/27/take-tour-cern-large-hadron-collider-courtesy-google-street-view/
"I was a teenage girl wrestler in Indiana"
By E. Fye
Eye of the Tiger. (The photographer told us to look aggressive. My attempt wasn't convincing.)
My decision to join the middle school boys’ wrestling team was, like many of my life choices, an impulse decision motivated by a desire to piss off some fat old white guy on a sexist power trip.
I was 13 and in eighth grade at a combination middle/high school in the middle of an Indiana cornfield, where--I shit you not--one of the theme days during school spirit week was “Drive Your Tractor to School Day” (six students participated) and where my history teacher would go on rants about how the queers needed to be put on an island and how the red dot on the Japanese flag represented communism.
Anyway, I was wandering the halls during lunch, and a man seated behind a folding table made eye contact.
“Wanna join the wrestling team?” he asked, then chuckled and folded his arms, clearly pleased with himself. This irritated the shit out of me.
“Okay, sure. I’ll try it,” I said. I went over and signed my name on the sheet. The man’s expression faded into a scowl.
more
http://fightland.vice.com/blog/i-was-a-teenage-girl-wrestler-in-indiana
The Captain Ahabs of the House
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: September 27, 2013
How many more rounds of this must America take?
How many more times must the economic neck of the nation have a knife pressed against it by Republicans demanding a ransom?
It seems the answer is at least once more — or twice.
Washington is still wrangling over a way to avoid a government shutdown next week, while Republicans are already gearing up to refuse to raise the debt limit — something that no Congress under any other president has ever refused to do.
But those presidents were not Barack Obama, the bane of the far right’s existence, and those Congresses were not as infested with members who saw disruption as part of their duty.
As long as Obama is president, these folks will be flush with fever. Opposition to Obama is their raison d’être. America’s national interests are subordinate to their selfish ones.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/opinion/blow-the-captain-ahabs-of-the-house.html?_r=0
Failing Upward: Elizabeth O'Bagy's New Gig with McCain
After scandals, disgraces, and public embarrassments, Washington is generous with second chances, but usually only after a decent interval.
Not so with Elizabeth O’Bagy, the disgraced analyst who was fired by the neoconservative Institute for the Study of War (ISW) for masquerading as a Georgetown PhD student, who has reportedly been hired by Senator John McCain as a legislative assistant. O’Bagy claimed to have defended her dissertation to friends and colleagues, but there was one problem: no one at Georgetown had heard of a doctoral student by that name. She was never in the program.
O’Bagy rose to prominence as an employee of ISW where she conducted research on the Syrian civil war. Due to her contacts with Syrian rebel organizations (she also worked for a rebel advocacy organization in Washington) and purported field research on the ground, her work became widely cited by high-profile figures, including Senator John McCain. In a lengthy Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and General Martin Dempsey, McCain cited “Dr. O’Bagy” extensively, quoting her Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which she argued, “the war in Syria is not being waged entirely or even predominately by dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida die-hards.” Indeed, the moderate nature of the Syrian rebels is a trope of O’Bagy’s reports for ISW just as it has been in McCain’s calls on the White House to arm the Syrian rebels. It is said that O’Bagy even orchestrated McCain’s trip to Syria to visit rebel commanders.
But pride comes before the fall.
more
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/politics/failing-upward-elizabeth-obagys-new-gig-mccain-9148
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayMember since: Tue Feb 10, 2004, 01:08 PM
Number of posts: 47,953
