In response to my e-mail on an Oct. 8th  decision on McCutchen vs Federal Election Commission by the Supreme Court that could expand the role of money in elections, Beverly Mann writes:   … the argument in McCutchen is that it makes no sense to have this artificial divide between “issue” advocacy and candidate advocacy—that is, to […]

This is pure political fantasy. I will pretend to take Republicans seriously. They claim that Obamacare is unpopular (true) and tha the people want them to defund Obamacare. It is clear that the most unpopular part of Obamacare is the mandate (the Medicare entitlement reform which is included in House budget resolutions and of which […]

Disingenuous? or heading toward defiant and impudent. Yves Smith says: One of the aggravating facts of life in bureaucracies is having to contend regularly with misrepresentation. And I don’t mean faux friendly corporate bromides like “We’re here to help,” but weasely, technically accurate but substantively misleading statements. A Treasury reply to some questions from Elizabeth […]

  I received the following email from Dan Crawford last evening: Fwd: Blog Post Idea: SCOTUS Must Protect Free Speech in Ohio and Beyond Is this interesting? ———- Forwarded message ———- From: Kristen Thomaselli <kristen@keybridge.biz> Date: Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 6:25 PM Subject: Blog Post Idea: SCOTUS Must Protect Free Speech in Ohio and Beyond To: angrybearblog@gmail.com […]

Via Huffington Post Elizabeth Warren’s letter to Attorney General Holder on “timid enforcement strategy” of the DOJ concerning monetary penalties, admissions of wrongdoing, and clearer signals regulators are attending to the public good. (Excerpts under the fold)

From the Huffington Post comes a note on who else is using NSA data in some fashion: A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases […]

Glenn Greenwald offers his thoughts on the issue of NSA surveillance: On Wednesday morning, I’ll be testifying, by remote video, before an ad hoc committee in the House of Representatives about NSA disclosures. It begins at 9:30 am ET and will, I believe, be broadcast on C-SPAN. Following my testimony will be an excellent panel […]

This is likely to be a hot issue tomorrow. Today, Italy’s highest court of appeals is hearing Berlusconi’s appeal of his conviction for tax evasion and embezzling from his firm. As I wait for their decision, I write about the issue in general. Things are very different here East of the Channel. There is a […]

Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts: Minesweeper in the Washington Post. “It’s like Minesweeper,” former Wyden staffer Jennifer Hoelzer told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in June, referring to the computer game in which players slowly probe unknown territory, looking for bombs. “You just have to ask questions to try to get the outlines of what they’re not […]

Wired points to lawsuits fizzling so far, but also more secrecy and claims it is off limits to courts. The Obama administration for the first time responded to a Spygate lawsuit, telling a federal judge the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach […]