When the feds claimed that information such as who the US is at war with is classified, Josh in CharlotteNC provided something quite rare: a fresh and original Orwell joke:

Even Orwell didn't go so far as to write:

"We've always been at war with [REDACTED]."

To balance the short and sweet, we've got the long and impassioned. Second place on the insightful side goes to Jay for his response to Obama's claim that the Boston bombings reinforce the need for NSA surveillance:

Let me get this [f'in redacted] straight...

I'm supposed to believe that the surveillance would help we, the people?

The security theater is ridiculous

It didn't stop the Boston Bomber. It didn't stop the Ft Hood bombing. It didn't even stop the Washington shooter. We shut down a city for Gods' sake and that wasn't what got the Tsarnaev. As soon as the police stopped their search a private citizen found the guy an hour later!

So now, our president, who supports these programs, wants to tell me that they needed these programs? NEEDED?!

No, you need a swift kick in the [redacted] for lying to the American people. You need a better strategy than taking away the freedoms of the Constitution and only giving it to your financial backers. You need to learn from history and quit repeating it. You need to fire the people that have you wrapped around your finger as a public figure while you support their policies (looking at YOU Keith Alexander!). Finally, you need to grow a pair and face the music that the American public DOES. NOT. LIKE. BEING. SPIED. ON. BY. OUR. GOVERNMENT.

Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.

The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington's leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation's politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, whose reporters have broken such stories as the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate scandals and disclosures about the National Security Administration's surveillance program in May.

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The FBI is pressuring internet service providers to install software inside their networks to allow real time government spying on users. The FBI claims real time collection of information is suddenly necessary for the agency to do its job. Any resistance to the FBI's demands for access is met with legal threats as the FBI claims the spying is authorized under the Patriot Act.

   The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts.

    FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI's legal position during these discussions is that the software's real-time interception of metadata is authorized under the Patriot Act.

Link

"Did you hear about the Tap Dancer who broke his ankle when he fell in the sink?"

On Saturday the New York Times published a story entitled "Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles" that said:

"Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency's troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans' privacy rights."

Bill Hicks once said:

"There are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in."

There. You got three good laughs in a row this morning. Free. And it's only Tuesday. Happy hour on Friday is aeons away in web time. If you don't feel better now do what I do. Go whack your forehead against a doorjamb or a concrete wall for awhile. It'll help to clear your mind.

Also:

Melky Cabrera - Toronto
Bartolo Colon - Oakland
Yasmani Grandal - San Diego
were named but since they served 50 game suspensions last year for effectively this same biogenesis investigation they are in the clear now.

That makes a total of 17 tied to the storefront anti-aging clinic run by a shyster who just happened to attend the same high school that Arod attended his freshman year before transferring. The person that blew the lid on the operation also attended that same high school in Miami. (It shall remain nameless because it's also where I attended high school)

While A-Rod's been suspended until Opening Day of the 2015 season for his part on the Biogenesis PED scandal, he has appealed the ruling, which under the terms of the present collective bargaining agreement allows him to continue playing for up to 45 more days while MLB considers his appeal.

By now, I assume many of you are quite familiar with the NSA's new data center in Bluffdale, Utah. Among other features, part of the site's claim to fame was the amount of electricity it would need -- leading local power company Rocky Mountain Power to build the NSA their very own substation -- just for the center. Lucky them. Of course, power doesn't come cheap, and James Bamford's article about the center estimated the energy costs to be around $40 million per year. However, that cost went up a bit due to a Utah state law that came into effect on April 1st (no, seriously) that would add a 6% tax on energy bills. That means, if the $40 million estimate was correct, it would be an additional $2.4 million per year for the NSA.

And the NSA threw a complete hissy fit, sending a series of complaints to Utah Governor Gary Herbert's staff about the law...
[...]
So, not only do the NSA get to keep spying on us, but they get to do it for tax breaks.

from the uh,-wait-a-second dept at TechDirt

Kewl.

So, why so long? For 34 years he had been consistently diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. This "should categorically exclude him from the possibility of execution under established Supreme Court precedent."

"In 1986, the Court held that to avoid execution, a prisoner had to be unaware of the fact of his impending punishment as well as the reason for it. In 2007, the Court expanded that standard to require that a prisoner must also have a "rational understanding" of the justification for his execution."

However, the current Florida Supreme Court found that Mr. Ferguson, who saw himself as the "Prince of God," and believed he could "control the sun," was not sufficiently mentally ill to avoid execution. (bold mine)

And, so, disregarding a consistent, unwavering diagnosis of severe mental illness by countless psychiatrists over 34 years, and two prior U.S. Supreme Court's rulings, Florida will have its lust for blood quenched one week from today.

Oh, and the Scalia/Alito Supreme Court has declined to stay the execution. So much for precedent.

When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.
[...snip...]
Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex: "Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.

So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

Instantly, we have the closing, with much fanfare, of plenty of US embassies and consulates in the "Muslim world" and a State Department "worldwide" travel alert - soon expanded by Interpol.
[...snip...]
Instantly, we also have US and Western corporate media falling in love with the Terra Terra Terra meme all over again. And woe to those who think this has anything to do with Islamophobia. You thought that Terra was gone? No, Terra is omnipresent, omniscient, lurking everywhere. Terra Wants You. Trains and boats and planes - you're nowhere safe.

Yet the fabulous specific intel unearthed by the Ministry of Truth amounts to some lowlife jihadi boasting on the net that he and his buddies will be doing something nasty someday somewhere in multiple, unspecified locations all across Middle East-Northern Africa (MENA).

Vol. 89
Vol. 88

Have a sweet Tuesday, peeps. Cold and overcast here on the northern SF peninsula. So what else is new?