Discuss. Carney's and Holder's press conferences were hilarious. Holder held a press conference and spent the entire time saying "I have nothing to do with this investigation," and as for Carney:

i'm not surprised at all at this. pretty standard fare: power abused, sloppily and pointlessly (i don't think the IRS wasn't going after really big money conservative orgs). and the AP thing is right in line with obama's whistleblower crackdown.

and holder's defense of it:

"we weren't looking to stop reporters, we just wanted to know who the leak was."

this doesn't comfort anyone.

i hate the patriot act.

Its not readily apparent that national security was harmed if the AP waited until after the raid to release the story. Do y'all have any further informationon this?

I remember reading somewhere the Holder was the lead attorney advocating for Countrywide's MERS to replace traditional mortgage deed recording, which in turn enabled the whole MBS mess that wiped trillions from the economy. I don't see this guy being held responsible for anything, ever.

I am fascinated by the argument that Obama's senior staffers knew of the IRS debacle, but chose not to inform him prior to the election. What does that say about their level of trust in and respect for the guy, as the sitting POTUS, that they keep him in the dark of something so politically explosive?

i agree. what is also amazing is how this isnt garnering the hatred and flaming that would occur had this been W

I'm concerned with "the most transparent government ever" blatantly trampling on the freedom of the press to cover just how nefarious and shady they really are.

the transparency thing is in hindsight pretty fucking funny.

Would certainly make for some pretty good political cartoon fodder anyway.

The line forms here, America.

Give us your gun, open your mouth for a swab, sign up for your mandatory "healthcare", and turn over your phone records.

You either get security or you get liberty.

It's not really possible to do both well.

This country for the last 13 years has consistently voted to have their rights taken away in the name of security.

I don't really blame the intelligence community for gathering intelligence.

in the last thirteen years, when has the country had a choice on the ballot? if anything, they chose against the surveillance state with obama, at least in term one.

i want to see a candidate emerge who's a centrist on the economy, shielding himself from calls of socialism on the right and heartless destroyer of the world economy on the left, and a civil liberties advocate. it seems like that would be way more common, and like that type of candidate would win elections. idk. though i guess obama sort of fit that mold until he abandoned civil liberties.

Don't we all, most of America is centrist, but the environment of the last decade plus and the GWOT in particular has changed things.

Everytime there is an attack (hell even a storm) on the country people (especially our media) clamor for the government to do something about it. The Patriot Act has been a great destroyer of civil liberties while being an incredible asset for the intelligence community who are generally at war with liberties.

The point is that we keep voting for more government intrusion and less independance and then get frustrated when the government intrudes.

I doubt this will be the moment that people decide that they should look outside of the two party system for thier champions, but maybe it will divide the parties further.

man, this guy HATES this administration... calm down dude:

I was kinda annoyed about the phone thing, But I think David Simons blog just turned me around.


http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

Thanks for sharing that

Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks


http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/ ... 0K20130608

It was a decent article, but I'm not encouraged by the, 'it's legal' justification. That doesn't mean that it should be so or that its a desirable activity. The example he provided was in the service of a ruinous drug war. Maybe we wouldn't have to surveil all the pay phones in Baltimore if we didn't insist on prohibition. The drug war provided the initial justification to shred the 4th amendment and the war on terror allows the authorities to practice what they initiated in previous decades.

this whole thing is ineffective and only bags little fish (or misses them completely like in Boston). consider that when it was actually exposed that HSBC was funding terrorists, nobody was put in jail. imagine what policing the actual supporters of terrorism would do "to keep us safe." add to this the FBI creating terrorist plots to "thwart" and their use of actual drug and human traffickers as "informants" and i'm dumbfounded by people's outrage over pointless surveillance.