Needlenose

Remember the awful Total Information Awareness project and the great hullabaloo  that killed it (or more likely drove it underground)?

Spy buddy sends me this guest post on a similar ‘mass surveillance’ system used to spy on folks abroad:

Mass Surveillance by the US Intelligence Agencies

Here is a greatly disturbing post (sounds like the stuff my schizophrenic cousin would say when he wasn’t on his meds) that summarizes a portion of Project PM Wiki. Smith describes a mass intelligence surveillance program with no government oversight that is funded by the US government and operated by federal agencies and US companies called Romas/COIN. According to Smith, Aaron Barr had a leadership role in the putting together the team of companies that bid on this contract. (Remember Barr? He resigned from his own firm after he was discovered to have planned a full-scale information war against political activists at the behest of corporate clients.)

Ms Smith describes a sophisticated mass surveillance campaign called Romas/COIN- soon to be replaced by a similar program known as Odyssey. For two years, the U.S. has been conducting mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world. What is interesting is that despite listening into phone calls, monitoring activities of individuals, and reading emails the Intelligence community was surprised by all the uprisings in the Arab world. Hmm, they really know how to use this stuff.

Most importantly Smith notes that this program was headed up by agencies, individuals and corporations who seem to have no government oversight-despite US taxpayer funding- while having carte blanche to monitoring the public.

It seems like Cheney is just asking for it with his continuing crticisms of the Obama Administration.  I guess he didn’t bother to read the memo that says former Administration members should just shut the fuck up and let the new guy do his job.

Yesterday, I was idly thinking of posting advice to Obama to consider opening up a Torture Truth Commission to put a little pressure on Cheney and maybe get him to shut up that way, but I figured Obama really isn’t interested in spending any political capital on going after Shrubya-era crimes, no matter how egregious, so I didn’t bother.

Imagine my delighted surprise with Obama’s pronouncement that he won’t give immunity to the architects of torture.

Maybe that’ll shut Dick up.

Muriel Kane reports for Raw Story:

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an “executive assassination ring” throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

. . . “It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” he explained. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.”

My first reaction to reading this was skeptical: “Who did they assassinate?” After all, how could the claim be true if they completely failed to accomplish anything?

Then I remembered who was in charge.  Failure would be the expected result, wouldn’t it?

Eric Black has more on Hersh’s comments, in a less snarky vein. Ditto Emptywheel, with more on the incompetence angle. Kinda like the Keystone Kops, only with more dead bodies.

Some rock bands are upset that Shrubya has been using their music to illegally torture illegal detainees.  The reporter had some fun with this one, raising the obvious question – are they more upset about the fact the music is being used without authorization to torture people illegally, or the fact that listening to their music could be preceived as torture?  He even found one self-unaware musician, Stevie Benton of Drowning Pool:

“People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,” he told Spin magazine. “I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”

Some questions weren’t posed, though.  Are they really as concerned about the use of their music in illegal torture, or the fact that the Military isn’t paying them royalties (notice RIAA-friendly Metallica not mentioned among the complainers) for the songs.   And why has it taken them so damn long to complain?

Just released (PDF):

Finding Number One

For the reasons explained below, I find that Govemor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

…

CONCLUSION
…
The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in “official action” by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation]. She knowingly, as that term is defined in the above cited statutes, permitted Todd Palin to use the Governorʼs office and the resources of the Governorʼs office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. Her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act. That statute provides that:

“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired. She had the authority and power to require Mr. Palin to cease contacting subordinates, but she failed to act.

…
For all the above reasons, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power as Governor in that her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act.

Yesterday I warned that the Repugs were cleverly ‘purging’ registration rolls again to suppress Dem turnout.  Well today, Film Critic Buddy was complaining to me that Ohio wouldn’t let him register to vote!  Film Critic Buddy, originally from New Jersey, moved to Ohio 15 months ago for work.  He’s been faithfully paying Ohio state taxes, patronizing Ohio businesses, and generally – living in Ohio.

But Ohio doesn’t want him to vote!  An African American living in Hamilton County, Film Critic Buddy noted numerous election ‘irregularities’ in a previous local election around polling places in lower income and minority neighborhoods – i.e. polling stations that closed early after running out of ballots, polling stations that opened late. 

In this election Ohio has changed the rules, to the point now where an Ohio voter can potentially register and vote in the same day.  How is that working out?

Well Film Critic Buddy has been trying to register in Ohio for over two months now.  First he filed for an absentee ballot.  That registration was rejected on a technicality – the stupid company he works for had his old address filed on his payroll records (ignoring, of course, his numerous other ‘proofs of residency’ he submitted).   He got that corrected, then tried again to register at a registrar’s office.  They wouldn’t let him vote ‘same day’ because of the previous rejection, but told him that everything was in order.

Today, he just got notification that his registration was denied because there is ‘no record of his residency in Ohio’ – in spite of the fact that last year he filed his state income tax!!  Anyway he is thinking of giving up as the 30 day advance registration notice is now up, and filing for an absentee ballot in New Jersey – but I am encouraging him to contact one of the numerous groups like People for the American Way (the group I volunteered for to assist voters in 2004), which offer legal services to help get this sorted out.

Deliberate attempt to disenfranchise a voter, or just stupid bureaucracy?  It’s hard to tell unless we could see the pattern of denied registrations, but given Hamilton County’s unbelievably crappy record with ‘voting irregularities’ I’d say they are just tried to screw Film Critic Buddy out of his right to vote in this critical swing state.  I hope he takes my advice and gets some free legal help and gets some representation with his taxation!

Your government, in bed with big business interests:

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties improperly engaged in sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Once again, parody is struck dumb, wondering how it can ever top reality.

P.S. Yes, I know this obvious joke has already been made (and rightly so).

Talk about trashy! Read the full dirt on Governor & Veep Wannabe Sharah Palin’s jihad against Officer Wooten (who had a trashy breakup with Sarah’s sis) and anyone who has gotten in her way in her attempts to get him fired.

Talk about vindictive! Her vendetta makes Cheney/Rove’s smears against Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame seem tame by comparison. And if McCain wins, this bit of nastiness is just one more heart attack away from the White House! She’d probably ship Wooten off to Gitmo if she gets the chance!

Hell hath no fury like a beauty queen (whose sister has been) scorned.

Earlier today, Matt Yglesias mused about how Richard Nixon’s illegal acts caused him to be forced out of office, while any suggestion of such accountability for Dubya’s flagrant disregard for the law (for instance, regarding FISA and torture) has been marginalized or ignored as “lunatic” extremism.

Atrios offered an explanation that the Republican establishment is simply stronger now than it was then (to the point where it “is almost indistinguishable” from the Washington, D.C. establishment), but Kevin Drum took a different tack:

I agree that the David Broders of the world have been far too sanguine about the abuses of the Bush administration. At the same time, the difference here really is pretty obvious. Nixon broke the law repeatedly for purely political purposes: to help his friends, punish his enemies, and keep tabs on domestic groups he happened to personally dislike. There was no ideological dispute about the value of what Nixon did . . .

In contrast, Drum says, Bush’s lawbreaking was ideologically based:

He approved torture of prisoners and violated FISA because he genuinely thought it was necessary for national security reasons after 9/11 — and unfortunately, lots of people agreed with him at the time and continue to agree with him today. I too wish there were a broader consensus that Bush has acted illegally and ought to held accountable, but the fact that he hasn’t met Nixon’s fate doesn’t really say all that much about how tolerant we are of executive lawbreaking. Ideological disputes are simply a different kettle of fish than personal vendettas.

Kevin is already in the middle of a severe beatdown from his commenters for this claim, but I think he’s partially right, although he doesn’t grasp the exact reason why.

The whole “unitary executive” claptrap and all the other pseudo-ideological manure put out by the Bushites is simply a flimsy fig leaf over the kind of naked power grab Nixon thought was his right (indeed, Kevin seems to have forgotten that Tricky Dick tried to use “national security” as an excuse, too).

The difference now is that the petty political vendettas pursued by Nixon have been raised to the level of ideology by the modern GOP. Unrestrained use of power for its own sake is their sine qua non, their raison d’etre (and probably a bunch of other foreign phrases, too). Whatever interest they used to feign in the common good, they’ve dropped that particular mask now.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)