This seems to be the case. CNET has details here.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Read the entire article. I'm not really sure what to believe at this point. "Facts" about the NSA and its spying program continue to come out, however, only a handful of them appear to be actual...you know.. facts.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:38 PM | Comments (303)
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I think the guy's name translates from Farsi as "Moderate". Either way, the media has their story-line and they are sticking to it.

Lots of western diplomatic types are swooning because they know the guy from nuclear talks with Iran.

Rohani rose to international prominence as Iran's nuclear negotiator in talks with Britain, France and Germany from 2003 to 2005 that saw Iran agree to suspend nuclear fuel enrichment-related activities, tamping down Western pressure on Tehran.

He left the post when Ahmadinejad came to office in 2005. Tehran defiantly relaunched and expanded uranium enrichment, and there has been no substantive progress in intermittent negotiations with six world powers since then.

Naturally, The Diplomacy Will Save Us crowd is excited about the prospect of more....wait for it...diplomacy!

Rowhani win stuns #Iran clero-security elite that let its guard down; offers @BarackObama opening for big accords on nukes, #Syria. Seize it

— Jeffrey Laurenti (@J_Laurenti) June 15, 2013

I replied to Mr. Laurenti that Iran has repeatedly failed the test and it was up to them to test us. If President Moderate is the real deal, let him make some unilateral steps toward us. I was informed I was the kind of person who would not have trusted Gobachev (true I didn't and rightly so) and that Lucy will hold the football steady this time.

(I doubt Mr. Moderate got by "the clero-security elite" without anyone noticing since he's been the Supreme Leader's representative on Iran's Security Council for "two decades")

Here's my theory. First, the mullahs weren't caught sleeping. They are taking a calculated risk that they can give the Iranian people who they want (and they do seem to want this guy), keep control of the country and also buy time from the west by appearing reasonable.

Look at the first quote. When soon to be President Rohani negotiated a suspension of enrichment deal it helped keep the west from pushing hard on Iran. So then the Mullahs gave the world Ahmadinajad who pushed the program ahead while stalling the west with the hope of getting back to the Rohani era of "progress". Now that that string has played out and even Obama can't find a way to move ahead diplomatically, the mullahs comeback with Mr. Moderate and everyone's old friend the deal maker. Now the diplomacy crowd will tell us he wants to talk (and build nukes) but he's going to need some time to consolidate power and we can't push him too hard too soon or the hardliners will undercut him. We may even need to ease up on the sanctions as a show of good faith and to give our buddy President Moderate something tangible to fight off the hardliners. So hard nosed diplomacy let alone military action will be argued against for awhile. We'll get back to diplomacy in a year or so. Then we have to give it a year or two to work and by then....booom, the Iranians will have a nuke. But at least we can negotiate our containment strategy with President Moderate.

The diplomacy doves are playing checkers and the mullahs are playing Aussie Rules Football.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:47 AM | Comments (116)
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Busy day morons. Busy day. So depants, grab a drink and let's head on in to the ONT. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:57 PM | Comments (571)
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On Friday, ace had some choice words to say about witless boob Robert Mueller and his assurances that, as head of the FBI, he has top. men. investigating the IRS scandal:

He literally knows nothing. Obviously he could know these things, were he actually interested in the case.

Plainly he is not, and when the boss doesn't care about something, the employees quickly get that sense of it and comport themselves to the boss' actual feelings.

Emphasis mine. This reminds me of an article on the American Thinker blog that Rush mentioned a few days ago that makes the argument that conservatives who are looking for a smoking gun to link one or more of the current scandals directly back to Obama are going to be disappointed. The author supports his case by bringing up an historical fact I had not heard before:

Very few people are aware of this, but there is no document -- not one -- linking Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust. Why not? Because Hitler didn't need to sign a document ordering the slaughter of six million Jews. All he needed to do was to demonize his enemy in speeches at the Reichstag, on the radio, and from one end of Germany to the other -- then hire thugs like Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Goebbels. They knew what der Fuhrer wanted, and der Fuhrer knew he could trust his henchman to get the job done -- no matter how, no matter what may be the law -- and to not bother him with the gory details.

So all Obama has to do is publicly castigate and demonize his those who oppose his policies (which he has done many times), and thugs like Eric Holder and Lois Lerner swing into action. No need for anyone to tell them what to do. They know what pleases Obama, and they will use the means at their disposal to carry out his wishes, to wit: to suppress and neutralize his enemies. Conservatives get on Obama for being a crappy leader, but that's not completely accurate. This is leadership. It's leadership, Chicago-style.

The lack of direct documentary evidence linking Hitler to genocide is interesting and if he had been captured alive, I'm not sure how the Nuremberg prosecutors would have built a case against him. Especially if he had pulled an Obama, thrown Himmler and Goering under the bus and piously claimed that the first time he had heard of the whole death camp thing was when he had read about them in the papers.

(Disclaimer: No, I am not saying that Obama is contemplating mass murder. However, I am saying he is a punk and a thug who has surrounded himself with punks and thugs and we're seeing the result of his thuggery every day.)

Added: Video of Robert Mueller's testimony below the fold:
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:03 AM | Comments (338)
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“The parents really went the extra mile.”

Look, I just want to say up front:

I completely understand Janet and Francis Murnaghan's campaign to get their daughter, Sarah, a lung transplant at any cost.

They are parents. Their primary function is the continued existence of their daughter, and I doubt many parents in their situation and with their means would do less.

But, I can't help but think we have just turned the transplant business into a popularity contest.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:16 AM | Comments (326)
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Tweet of the week decade:

Posted by: andy at 02:22 AM | Comments (390)
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That rates an Emeril -- BAM!

....Just one-in-four Likely U.S. Voters (24%) now has confidence that when the federal government acts itÂ’s doing the right thing most or nearly all the time, but that includes just four percent (4%) who say it almost always does the right thing...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:03 PM | Comments (135)
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This is a two year old story-- it's coming out now because until recently, the dramatic video had been suppressed.

This woman was sexually assaulted and then threatened with arrest (and the suggestion her kid would be taken from her) if she continued saying she'd been sexually assaulted.

According to internal court documents, as Contreras was leaving, family court marshal Ron Fox ordered her into a waiting room for an unexplained drug search.

Contreras said Fox touched her buttocks, breast, and ordered her to lift up her shirt. A later internal investigation by Clark County courts validated her claims. Contreras went back into the same courtroom and told hearing master Patricia Donninger that her requests to have a female marshal handle the search were ignored.

Oh and the judge did nothing. Just sat there. And she's continued to sit on the bench since.

The marshal has since been fired.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Maybe the worst part is when she's forced, under threat of arrest and maybe of having her kid taken from her, to tell lies in court-- specifically, recanting her first truthful accusation.
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Posted by: Ace at 02:56 PM | Comments (191)
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Is it too early to speculate about the Sharyl Attkisson hack? You're darned right it isn't.

When she first tweeted this, I thought (and maybe wrote) "Aw, gee, all she's done is set herself up to be discredited. If she's right, she's merely informed us slightly early about it, and if she's wrong, her enemies get to label her a paranoid."

Well, I guess we're over that hump.

Powerline's up for some speculation, and notes that Watergate started with a seemingly minor break-in too.

Additional shoes may drop, e.g. with regard to personal computers or additional time periods. DOJ has already announced that “to our knowledge,” it has never accessed Ms. Attkisson’s computers.

And they've been so forthcoming with us on other matters. That quibble aside, let's move forward:

There are, of course, multiple people and entities who might be interested in information stored on a reporterÂ’s computer. Conceivably, a foreign government might want to know how much of a threat Fast and Furious posed to the Obama administration, for example. But the obvious potential culprit is the White House. If it turns out that the White House, or someone acting on behalf of the White House, carried out the illegal infiltration of AttkissonÂ’s computer(s), the scandals already swirling around the administration will be seen in an entirely different light. For the first time, there would be serious talk of impeachment.

Yes, the White House is indeed the obvious culprit, and while other culprits can be imagined, they seem a bit far-fetched.

The Chinese government wants advance word of a story that Sharyl Atkisson will likely break within days? Why bother with the risk? Why not just wait five days for the story?

How about a competiting reporter? This is of course beyond absurd; no other reporters are interested in Sharyl Atkisson's stories, as they've proven time and time again.

So who? Who has the motive, means, and opportunity? Who would want to do this who could do this?

Of course there are extremist-types on the left who enjoy gooning it up on behalf of the progressive caucus and Obama. I suppose it might have been a freelance hacker. But if that were the case, why didn't we see the eventual burn and lulzy ha-has? That is, don't they usually publicize their hacks? Don't they usually announce their "victory"?

Why was this one secret?

And why Atkisson? Why in late 2012? What would have been of interest to a hacker?

[C]hecking the record, we see that Attkisson had a very interesting scoop on October 20th, relying on anonymous military sources that called into question the Obama administrationÂ’s claim that they couldnÂ’t have responded in time to assist in the attack:

CBS News has been told that, hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.

The State Department, White House and Pentagon declined to say what military options were available. A White House official told CBS News that, at the start of the attack, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies.”

...

Retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen believes help could have come much sooner. He commanded CIA counter-terrorism missions targeting Osama bin Laden and led the team that responded after bombings of the U.S. Embassy in East Africa.

“You find a way to make this happen,” Berntsen says. “There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments. They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died.”

This is obviously a politically-motivated crime, not a personally- or economically-motivated one. That doesn't mean the government had anything to do with it, but it certainly seems that someone favorably inclined towards the government did.

Perhaps one of those legions encouraged to "get in their faces," like the staff of the IRS.

Hacking is a federal crime, is it not? Can we expect Robert Mueller to get his Top Men (whoever they are, he doesn't know) on this like he did with the IRS scandal?

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (261)
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@johnekdahl added this as an update to the Mueller post, but it's so important I want to highlight it.

Also, I need a post.

There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single tea party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, according to the groups the IRS abused.

“We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman.

“I have been very surprised that I have not heard from anybody and frankly, none of my clients have. I talk to other tea party leaders on a regular basis,” said Cleta Mitchell, the lawyer largely credited with pushing the IRS abuses to the forefront.

Yup, they're really determined to get to the bottom of this all.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (202)
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