Happy Monday.

Can we call Ed Snowden a traitorous crapweasel now? In addition to confirming some of our programs against the Chinese, he spilled the beans on specific operations targeting Russia.

BenK was appropriately skeptical of CNET's report (that was stealth-edited on Sunday, two days after initial publication) on Rep. Nadler's hearsay that he was informed (by Unnamed Official) that NSA listened to the content of phone calls at any analyst's whim. That report has been denied by NSA and walked-back by Nadler.

Some of the companies involved with PRISM have released statistics on their involvement providing governments with information.

There was a punchy op-ed in the NYTimes over the weekend disputing claims that the U.S. has fallen behind Europe in broadband internet tech.

"For the first time in Obama's presidency, half of the public says they don't believe he is honest and trustworthy." His approval rating fell 8 points in the past month to 45%. "The drop in Obama's support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30."

Speaker Boehner says he won't bring an immigration bill to the floor if it doesn't have majority support from Republicans.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (288)
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As someone who is opposed to “comprehensive immigration reform” of the kind moving through the Senate (though I do support legal immigration and legal immigrants) I was excited to see this from Congressman Paul Ryan.

"Earned legalization is not amnesty," Ryan said during a forum on immigration sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers. "I will debate anybody who tries to suggest that these ideas that are moving through Congress are amnesty. They're not. Amnesty is wiping the slate clean and not paying any penalty for having done something wrong."

I’m “anybody” and I certainly believe what’s moving through Congress is amnesty, so naturally I accepted the Congressman’s courageous offer and agreed to debate him.

My opening statement:

Congressman you say, "Earned legalization is not amnesty”. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to have this debate with. You should probably take that us with Senator Rubio who has said, “Earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty." Of course you’d need a time machine because he said that in 2010 when he was running for office against this very kind of amnesty the two of you are now pushing.

You say itÂ’s not amnesty because illegal immigrants will have to pay a fine (which can be waived), back taxes (which may not actually happen), undergo background checks and wait years to get citizenship.

Well, other than paying back taxes, thatÂ’s what anyone who wants to become a legal resident of the United States has to do. ThatÂ’s EXACTLY why this is amnesty. ItÂ’s actually worse than amnesty since the person who broke the law will get to live in the United States while undergoing the same process as the legal applicant who has to wait back home.

But look at all the crimes the illegal alien has committed in the process that wonÂ’t be punished.

If an illegal immigrant came here on a legal visa but didnÂ’t leave they are supposed to be removed and barred from the US.

The 1996 reform created two new grounds of inadmissibility for foreign nationals who remained in the US after the expiration of the period of stay authorized by the Attorney General through the immigration inspector at the time of entry.

a. The Three Year Bar: Persons who remain in the US after their authorized stay has expired for more than 180 days but less than one year, and who leave the US prior to the institution of removal proceedings, are barred from reentering the US for three years from their date of departure.

b. The Ten Year Bar: Persons who remain in the US after their authorized stay has expired for more than one year, and who leave the US prior to the institution of removal proceedings, are barred from reentering the US for ten years from their date of departure.

Since the Schumer-Rubio bill says the only people eligible for amnesty are ones who were here before 2012, that means that everyone who qualifies should be barred from entering the US for TEN YEARS.

Since staying in the country is the goal, it seems a simple fine isnÂ’t actually a punishment compared to removal and the inability to come back for years, if ever. Instead of being sent to the back of the line for entry to the US, they go right to front. How is that punishment?

As for people who simply cross the border illegally, right now the penalty is jail time.

a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection; misrepresentation and concealment of facts
Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States
at any time or place other than as designated by immigration
officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration
officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United
States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the
willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first
commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or
imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent
commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or
imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.

IÂ’m sure most Americans who commit a misdemeanor that leads to 6 months of jail time would LOVE to simply pay $500 to get out of it. But thatÂ’s a deal only open to non-US citizens under the Schumer-Rubio-Ryan approach to things.

Oh, about those back taxes Congressman Ryan mentioned. In order to owe taxes a person had to have had been employed. In fact, having a job is one of the requirements for amnesty according to Senator Rubio.

Well, to have a job a person have to fill out an I-9 from (pdf) certifying the are eligible to work. HereÂ’s the part where the employee has to sign.

Hmmm, penalties including jail time and fines for providing false information? Signing the form under “the penalty of perjury”? Will every illegal who comes forward and who claims to have worked illegally be prosecuted for those crimes? No? You mean it will be like, “wiping the slate clean”? But don’t call it amnesty!

Well, maybe all the illegals here started their own businesses and didnÂ’t fill out an I-9. Oh, thatÂ’s not legal either.

(d) Immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud
Any individual who knowingly establishes a commercial enterprise
for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws
shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined in accordance
with title 18, or both.

To sum up, the "punishment" that illegal aliens will go through involves complying with the the current legal immigration process. The crimes they won't be charged with or punished for include (but aren't limited to) border jumping/visa overstay, perjury and providing false documents to gain employment/illegally establishing a business.

How is that not amnesty Congressman?

Congressman?
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Posted by: DrewM at 05:52 AM | Comments (241)
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Anthony Weiner: A Grower, a Shower, and an Utterly Worthless Congressman

You might know him for his cock-tweets to young girls and his current campaign for Mayor of New York but there are other less well known aspects to his prickitude as this devastating NYT profile lays out. Here are just the opening paragraphs:

When President Obama needed every Democrat in Congress to back his health care plan in 2009, Representative Anthony D. Weiner threatened behind the scenes to torpedo the package in favor of a more sweeping measure. He backed off after he was promised a bigger share of the spotlight during the highly watched debate.

The previous year, when advocates of immigration reform invited Mr. Weiner to a round-table discussion with business leaders and more senior New York City members of Congress, he demanded to turn it into a hearing, featuring himself in a gavel-wielding role. Rebuffed, he failed to show up.

In 12½ years in Congress, he sponsored and wrote only one bill that he steered to enactment: a measure pushed by a family friend who gave his campaigns tens of thousands of dollars in donations.

Quote of the Day

I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you've made, I'm  able to determine every single person you talked to - I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. And the real question here is what do they do with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with al Qaeda? And we're gonna trust the President and the Vice President of the United States to do the right thing? Don't count me in on that.

  -- Joe Biden, May 2006

Well in Slow Joe's defense he may not even be aware of what the VP's office is up to these days.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:03 PM | Comments (556)
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Summer seems to really be here now. I've found I change my eating habits during the hot south FL summer days. Cold/chilled dishes seems to be the way to go.

This is my summer chilled EZ-prep "diner pasta salad" I've been grooving on for about a month now.

Rotini, about 1/3 of a can of garbanzo's, a small can of diced tomato, 1/2 a small bag of mixed frozen vegetables.

The frozen veggies can be cooked along with the Rotini's. Drain and add in the other stuff. Olives are an optional add if you have them, so is pepperoncini.

The seasoning is what makes it work.

Badia makes some stuff called "complete seasoning". Its awesome. Dump a bunch on. Also dump in a healthy dose of oregano, and some rosemary.

Can you sense the Mediterranean theme starting to show yet?

Now the secret ingredient -- Italian salad dressing. Sprinkle in enough that it'll lightly coat everything when you mix it all up.

Shove the bowl in the fridge for an hour and let it chill down before snarfing.

Anyone got their own favorites? Fire away

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:46 PM | Comments (103)
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It's been a while since I've posted anything about art. Tiny confession: I haven't visited a gallery or museum in a few months. I guess I need to get out there a bit more, what with LACMA dashing itself to pieces. But recently, I've run into a conundrum, one I've hinted at a few times before. I'm turning the floor to the horde to help me out here.

What is art?

Not what isn't art, which tends to be the immediate answer to this question. "I hate x" and "x is bullshit" feels great to say, but doesn't bring us any closer. Blame the relativists I suppose, but even if you ignored the last 125 years of art, you are still left with a surprisingly difficult question: what is art?
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Posted by: CAC at 12:14 PM | Comments (203)
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This might validate some of the opinions of the Morons who are less than enthusiastic about the glory that is NYC.

Follow-up article below the jump [courtesy of commenter "Paul"] more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:22 AM | Comments (146)
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The Obvious Choice

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the the award-winning AoSHQ's Sunday Morning Book Thread.

This Week

I survived yet another company reorganization. Usually one of these reorganizations happens after a period of wailing and caterwauling from management about having to cut expenses, and having to work smarter, not harder, and all that crap, and then is followed by a bunch of worker bees getting laid off, while all the managers get to keep their phoney-baloney jobs (harumph! harumph!). My company is ridiculously top-heavy with managers. This has been obvious for years, but nothing's ever been done about it. But lately, the company has been floundering, so a new CEO was brought on board to straighten things out, and the first thing he said was "Holy crap, this company is ridiculously top-heavy with managers. We're going to have to turn the pyramid right side up." During subsequent company meetings, he made it very clear that a major part of his agenda for getting the company back on course was going to involve cutting loose a crap ton of managers.

And so on Thursday, that's what he did.

Very few worker bees received layoff notices. The CEO kept his word, and, as an added (albeit unintended) bonus to me, included in the managerial layoffs were some bad eggs in my chain of command who many of us in my department felt really needed to be in another line of work. So, overall, it was very positive and things are definitely looking up, thank God.

Now on to teh books...

On Kindle

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor have been released for the Kindle for the not-too-bad price of $7.99 (Vic: "that's too damn high!"). I wish I could say to you all to go out and buy this book, you'll absolutely love it, but I really can't. This author is like strong, hot black coffee, definitely an acquired taste. For those of you who don't know about her, O'Connor was a devout Roman Catholic who lived in the deep south during the middle part of the 20th century. She died early, from lupus, before the age of 40. She believed that she was living in a spiritually deaf and insensate age, so in order to make herself understood, she had to shout. Her writing is filled with jarring, disturbing images and characters wrapped up in a complex matrix of Biblical allusions and references. I really like some of her stories, but others are very difficult to read. A good many years ago, I started reading one of O'Connor's two novels, Wise Blood, got about 3 chapters into it and gave up, it was so bizarre. Maybe I'd like it now that I'm older, though.

So O'Connor is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. She may not be my cup of tea. But I think everyone who reads should be at least passing familiar with her work. For starters, I would recommend two of her short stories, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", and "The Displaced Person" as being the most understandable.
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:05 AM | Comments (181)
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I'm going to drop the usual format today and dedicate the thread to my dad, who taught me how to shoot. I'm fortunate to still have him around, and sending lead downrange a couple of months ago when I went turkey hunting with him was really a reminder of all the fun we've had out in the field and on the range.

The first gun I ever shot, if I recall correctly, was his Ruger MK I, .22 auto. Many, many guns and chamberings have been passed between us since. We learned reloading together and spent countless hours tinkering with different bullets and powder charges to wring every ounce of accuracy out of all our gun/cartridge combinations.

My love for the M1911 ... came from dad. The Remington Models 700 & 870. Ditto.

Shooting his M1 Garand a few weeks ago in Georgia finally prompted me to get off my ass and order one from CMP myself.

My two favorite memories of shooting with my dad are probably the following, although it's a crowded field.

First, there was the time he shot a golf ball in midair with his 4" S&W Model 25-5 in .45 Long Colt. My role: thrower of said ball. Now, he missed it a few times too and grazed it once, but when he finally centered it, that thing took off like a rocket. We were able to find it, and if I looked hard enough around his house, I'm sure it's still around somewhere. Hitting that target stationary isn't easy; hitting it in the air ... damned impressive. The man can shoot.

The other top memory is back from when he was the sniper on the sheriff's department SWAT team. They had a custom Remington M700 in .30-06 with a barrel so heavy that the thing tipped the scales at around 15 pounds, IIRC. Felt recoil was about like a .22 at that weight.

The sheriff's department had a 200 yard range, but there was an obstacle course behind the firing points. On the course, there was a large corrugated steel pipe that the ends were capped on to make a tear gas training room, and from the top you could see the target stands on the 200 yard range that were, at that point, now a skitch over 300 yards away.

There was all sorts of debris down at the end of the range from practicing door breaching operations, etc. So we took some little bitty pieces of cinder block that were scattered around, set them on top of the target stands, and proceeded to vaporize them from the top of that pipe with the sniper rifle. That was the first time I had ever shot anything that far, and my love of long-range shooting was cemented right then and there (no pun intended).

The left likes to deride the "gun culture" at every turn, but they mean something completely foreign to my way of thinking when they use that term. To me, guns and shooting have always been synonymous with quality time with dad, and for that I will be forever grateful.

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)

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Posted by: andy at 10:46 AM | Comments (105)
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Surely all the actual terrorists, various and sundry super villains, and other miscreants who intend to do the US harm made far more than 300 calls last year.

...It was made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Sunday.

The document appears to be an attempt to counter accusations that the government went too far in investigating potential militant plots...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:29 AM | Comments (154)
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Happy Father's Day.

Posted by: andy at 03:41 AM | Comments (195)
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