"We just had five congressional hearings about the Internal Revenue Service, full of sound and fury, but, we now know, signifying nothing. Despite all the hoopla and headlines about IRS personnel targeting conservative tax-exempt organizations, there is no real scandal here. IRS staffers acted not only legally but, given their impossible task, quite rationally. They forgot, however, that they not only work in a political fishbowl, they swim in a sea of politics. Faced with internally contradictory regulations laid out in vague terms, and with little guidance from higher-ups, they botched it. Republicans may now finally get the chance to pour unlimited amounts of secret money into elections." (06/17/13)

"At the heart of the latest feud between business groups and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an 11x17 sheet of paper that blandly recites the basics of a statute. But depending on whom you ask, the future of labor, the First Amendment, and freedom from state interference are at stake. On Friday, the Fourth Circuit became the second federal appeals court to strike down the NLRB's requirement that employers hang a simple poster advising employees of their right to join a union—the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reached a similar ruling last month. The notice resembled the signs in so many break-rooms and copy nooks that advertise the minimum wage or anti-discrimination and health-and-safety laws." (06/17/13)

"Since it was signed into law in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has survived a constitutional challenge before the Supreme Court and 37 attempts by congressional Republicans to kill it. Now, as the deadline for implementation of the legislation looms, 'Obamacare' faces another hurdle: making the ambitious, byzantine plan actually work. By October 1, the Obama administration must have the people and procedures in place to administer the vast new program mandated by the ACA." [editor's note: Nice to see a "progressive" pundit acknowledging this very real possibility; when "hope and change" have to operate in the real world, it gets messy! - SAT] (06/17/13)

"It is all too easy to look back on some moments in the past and claim their significance was obvious at the time. That it was clear -- even as the event unfolded and you frantically scribbled details down in a notebook: that you were witnessing a historic moment. Certainly that was the case when Barack Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Boston convention that anointed John Kerry as the champion of a Democratic party frantic to defeat George W Bush. Obama, then a state senator from Illinois, delivered one of the finest speeches in modern times. His oratory lit up that dull Boston shindig like 4 July fireworks. Or at least I remember it that way. The morning after his speech, I trailed Obama through a series of events, seeking an interview. It was too late. He already become a political rock star, viewable only behind a freshly-minted posse of minders." (06/15/13)

"Here’s a question for the White House: Do you think it’s a good idea to greet the new president of Iran, who might be willing to seek a long-lasting accord with the United States, with a head-on confrontation with Iran and Russia in Syria? Hint: the answer is no. Hassan Rouhani, who’ll take over as president of Iran in August, stunned the world with an outright, 50-percent-plus victory in the June 14 election. By all accounts, he’s a thoughtful, centrist cleric with a moderate outlook." (06/17/13)

"Many Americans ... clearly do find the idea of government agents snooping through their phone calls and emails a good bit unnerving. But Americans have more on the surveillance front to worry about than overzealous government agents. Government personnel aren’t actually doing the snooping the 29-year-old Snowden revealed. NSA officials have contracted this snooping out -- to private corporate contractors. Let’s place private corporations with government contracts under surveillance -- to make sure no one is getting rich off our tax dollars." [editor's note: This actually does make sense! No company getting government contracts should be immune to oversight!! - SAT] (06/17/13)

"The 1960s was the first time since WWII when it seemed to dawn on a significant portion of the public that 'another world is possible.' Since then, management of public opinion to engineer consent has been doubly important to them. That’s why the 'national security' community engages in psychological operations to manage public perceptions, the same way they’d manage the perceptions of a wartime enemy -- in both cases, the goal being to manipulate the desired reaction out of us. See, we really are the enemy. Every once in a while one of them slips up and reveals that all that stuff about government representing the sovereign will of the people is so much buncombe." (06/15/13)

"The United States' perennially mistaken Iran 'experts' are already spinning Hassan Rouhani's victory in Iran's presidential election as a clear proof of the Islamic Republic's ongoing implosion. In fact, Rouhani's success sends a very different message: it is well past time for the US to come to terms with the reality of a stable and politically dynamic Islamic Republic of Iran." (06/16/13)

"Apparently Lind doesn't understand where libertarians come from. He seems to have the common misconception that libertarianism is a strictly right-wing movement, which it isn't, because it champions individual liberty and personal responsibility over 'group rights' and government entitlements, while apparently being unaware that as many libertarians come to the Modern American Libertarian Movement from the political left as from the right." (06/15/13)

"Iran’s interior ministry confirmed on Saturday that Hassan Rouhani, the standard-bearer of the reformist movement and a decided moderate in Iran’s political spectrum, will be the next president, succeeding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August. His election means big changes, and a new attitude that will eventually carry over into foreign policy. Celebrations, including dancing in the street, greeted the announcement that Rouhani had won." (06/15/13)

"Whether in celebrity culture or in our Facebook-mediated interactions, we live in the age of the human being as a public brand. So there's nothing surprising about the reaction to this week's disclosures about the National Security Agency's unprecedented surveillance program. In our cult-of-personality society, that reaction has been predictably -- and unfortunately -- focused less on the agency's possible crimes against the entire country than on Edward Snowden, the government contractor who disclosed the wrongdoing. Almost universally, the government officials, pundits and reporters who comprise Permanent Washington have derided Snowden." (06/14/13)

"My guess is Ed Snowden already knows which actor he wants to play him in the movie. My suggestion for a film title: 'Verax.' It’s Latin for truth teller, and the term Snowden gave himself for communications with reporters. ... I am not sure what will happen to Snowden, but he already has made some big enemies. News about NSA datamining established that National Intelligence Director James Clapper misled Congress in May when, in response to a question by Sen. Ron Wyden, Clapper testified that the government did not keep records on millions of Americans, at least 'not wittingly.'" (06/13/13)

"As happens with so much news these days, the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) spying and just how far we’ve come in the building of a surveillance state have swept over us 24/7 -- waves of leaks, videos, charges, claims, counterclaims, skullduggery, and government threats. When a flood sweeps you away, it’s always hard to find a little dry land to survey the extent and nature of the damage. Here’s my attempt to look beyond the daily drumbeat of this developing story and identify five urges essential to understanding the world Edward Snowden has helped us glimpse." (06/16/13)

"One of the more striking facts about Edward Snowden, the Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who recently disclosed details concerning the National Security Agency’s various domestic surveillance programs, is that he is apparently a successful autodidact. After dropping out of high school, Snowden developed a very rigorous academic curriculum for himself, drawing on community college courses, online education programs and self-directed reading and programming. The fruit of these efforts was a lucrative job with an elite consulting firm, and a top secret clearance that gave him access to a treasure trove of state secrets." (06/14/13)

"Would you lose your job if, for a few months, you had to run to the bathroom more often than your coworkers? Or your doctor told you to carry a water bottle and drink as often as possible? Or if you were told you couldn’t lift more than twenty pounds for a few months? Probably not, if you’re a white-collar worker. And probably not, if you’re a blue- or pink-collar worker ... who’s strained your back or has some other condition covered as a temporary disability by the Americans with Disabilities Act’s Amendments Act of 2008. But yes, you might well lose your job for that if you’re pregnant. Pregnancy doesn’t qualify as a disability." (06/14/13)

"As Senator Rand Paul delivered his keynote speech on immigration reform at yesterday's gathering of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, anxieties about the GOP’s identity crisis rippled through the room. The likely 2016 presidential hopeful spoke briefly in Spanish before discussing his Christian faith and opposition to abortion. He assured his audience he got them: 'Man’s humanity to man is how we will be judged,' he said. The religious undertone of Paul’s remarks stood in stark contrast to the rest of the event, which focused on the economic and border-security provisions of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, currently being debated on the floor of the Senate." (06/13/13)

"Bloggers and experts in the tech world have been raising an important caveat to a key aspect of Glenn Greenwald’s world-shaking scoop about the NSA’s PRISM story -- an aspect my friend Karl Fogel, an open-source software guru, blogger and the proprietor of QuestionCopyright.org, calls an 'epic botch' by Greenwald. People outside of the tech world absolutely need to know about this debate too, which is why, though I’m no expert, I’m sharing it with this wider audience. I deeply admire what Greenwald and his team at The Guardian are doing. I write in the interest of helping them do it better." (06/13/13)

"If you’re reading this, the federal government probably already knows it. Sure, that's being sarcastic ... but not really. The Washington Post first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI are 'tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time' through a secret program called PRISM, which dates back to 2007. The NSA’s eavesdropping on innocent civilians joins a number of 4th Amendment violations in the U.S. that have surfaced in recent months." (06/13/13)

"The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has just released a report on tax havens, Corporate Pirates of the Caribbean. The report shows that the corporations engaged in the 'Fix the Debt' austerity push would gain up to $173 billion in tax breaks from their proposal for a 'territorial tax system.' So under the guise of cutting deficits (because the public thinks they want that), these companies are actually pushing a plan to line their pockets while adding to deficits." (06/13/13)

"The Republicans may have taken a drubbing in the presidential election, but they’re winning the bigger ideological battle. Neoliberalism -- the doctrine of cutting government, reducing social services and then letting market forces run wild -- remains the dominant ideology, regardless of its obvious, staggering failures. You have to hand it to them: Republicans stay on message -- helped along by the mainstream media and, of late, the government itself. The IRS bungling of a profoundly important investigation into the legality of the activities of 501(c)(4) nonprofits instantly became a media firestorm." (06/13/13)

"Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that the crowd filling Gezi Park in the scruffy center of Istanbul is the most precious creation of Turkey’s boom: an ambitious, creative, new generation. Erdogan doesn’t see the beauty in this kaleidoscope of mini-groups -- Turkish and Kurdish, Marxist and Kemalist, Armenian and Islamist -- all demanding that he listen to the public, rather than bulldoze Istanbul in his image. Instead he sees in the Gezi Park protests the work of plotters and foreign bankers, the opposition Republican People’s Party -- even a mysterious international 'interest lobby.'" (06/13/13)

"As long as we’re opening a discussion about data mining, might we consider the fact that it’s not just the government that’s paying attention to our digital entanglements? There’s a reason the National Security Agency was interested in accessing the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. When you’re mining, you go where the precious resources are, and technology companies have got the gold. Data is digital gold. Corporations know that. They’re big into data mining. But it’s not just profits that data can yield. Data is also mined by those who seek power." (06/12/13)

"From their inception, most New Left movements of the Sixties offered a radically democratic vision of America’s future -- critical not only of capitalism, then in its supposed golden age, but also of much about the Old Left, 'real existing socialism,' and Cold War liberalism. As both scholars and activists, Staughton Lynd and Gar Alperovitz were two leading proponents of that democratic critique and of a decentralized alternative directly controlled by citizens and workers." [editor's note: The initial meaning of "libertarian" came from this tradition, before it was co-opted by the pro-government statist "progressives" - SAT] (06/12/13)

"Friday’s White House event in San Jose was the oddest presidential appearance I’ve ever covered. To start, the White House did not schedule the event until after The Chronicle ran this story by Carla Marinucci about Democrats' resentment at the Obama White House’s failure to schedule public events when making fundraising forays in the Golden State. Then the White House scheduled an event on California’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but it wasn’t open to the public. At a press call the day before the event, unnamed administration officials said that there would be no questions for the media, only a statement on the Affordable Care Act." (06/12/13)

"This is a fascinating account of how the Grand Bargain came to be the tired conventional wisdom among the Village wonk crowd. (I’m characterizing it that way, not the author, the esteemed Larry Mishel. ) It’s required reading for anyone who has been following this story for the past few years." (06/12/13)

"The session that ended recently in the Colorado General Assembly was 'a hot, noisy spectacle people aren’t likely to see again for some time,' as the Denver Post described it. It was also startlingly productive. The Assembly enacted some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. It approved same-sex civil unions. It created the nation’s first regulatory system for marijuana, which Colorado voters legalized in a ballot initiative last fall. And it passed legislation that gives undocumented students the in-state tuition rate at state universities." (06/11/23)

"The Senate is on the verge of preventing an initial filibuster of the bipartisan immigration reform bill, with several Republican votes in support of proceeding. Despite all the trumped up 'scandals,' the Republican Party shows little interest in derailing the top item on the President’s second-term agenda. The path to final passage is still tricky, as Republicans will try to pull the bill rightward, and Democrats will have to warn them how far is too far to keep the coalition intact. But this is a clear sign that the GOP leadership wants this bill to pass." (06/11/13)

"I’m watching an overloaded internet feed from ERT, the Greek state broadcaster, which has been shut down by the Greek government tonight, laying off all its 2,700 workers, on six hours notice, with no discussion and no vote in parliament. One by one, the transmitters around the country are being turned off. Journalists and production staff are occupying the broadcaster’s Athens headquarters; the network’s musicians are playing protest songs in the courtyard. Many thousands of protesters are gathering outside; so are busloads of riot police." (06/11/13)

"It may be ironic, that as one major whistleblower stands trial on espionage charges, another stands before television cameras to declare his deed to the world, most assuredly sealing his own fate as a free man for some time to come. But it should come as no surprise. Bradley Manning, and to the same extent, Julian Assange, have risked everything -- their freedom of movement the gravest of sacrifices -- so that other people of conscience would feel compelled to do the same, creating a 'culture of conscientious whistleblowing' that has turned an underground movement of support into an emergent mainstream community that now includes major media, elected officials and a phalanx of legal minds on both sides of the political aisle." (06/11/13)

"As the U.S. senate considers an immigration reform bill in June that includes a path to citizenship for currently undocumented residents—a very long path, at least 13 years—border security has emerged as the great bugaboo in the debate. The bill, put together by the bipartisan team of senators called the Gang of Eight, cleared the Judiciary Committee after more than 300 attempts to amend it -- including many by conservative Republicans intended to kill it by piling on provisions that couldn’t pass. And, in fact, the bill only made it to the Senate floor because the Gang accepted at least eight amendments from GOPers requiring symbolically enhanced border security as a condition for any kind of road to citizenship." (06/10/13)