Not sure where Ace is but consider this...you've never seen him in the same room as Edward Snowden. Think about it.

Also, no content, no data collection. Suck on it NSA!

Posted by: DrewM at 09:56 AM | Comments (209)
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Having already flipped or lied (depending on how charitable you are) about his definition of "amnesty", Marco Rubio is now talking out of both sides of his mouth about whether or not border security is a priority of his reform bill.

To conservatives he says legalization of any kind is contingent upon the fraud of a border security "plan".

Linking Temporary Status To Security Triggers: No undocumented immigrant is eligible to apply for temporary status until the border security and fencing plan is in place. After being in the temporary status for at least ten years, no currently undocumented immigrant can even attain permanent residence, much less citizenship, unless the border security, employment verification and exit system triggers have been achieved.

To Hispanics he says something very different.

In his own appearance on the Spanish-language Univision network, Mr. Rubio tried to assuage some Hispanics who fear that their legal status will be held hostage to border security. Mr. Rubio said illegal immigrants will get quick legal status and work permits regardless of whether the borders are secure — but won’t be given a full pathway to citizenship until more enforcement is imposed.

“Nobody is talking here about preventing legalization. Legalization will take place,” Mr. Rubio told Univision in an interview scheduled to air Sunday.

“First comes legalization, then comes this border security measure and then comes the permanent residency process. What we are talking about here is the permanent residency system,” Mr. Rubio said. “Regarding legalization, a vast majority of my colleagues have already accepted that: that it must take place and that it must start at the same time we start with what has to do with security. That is not conditional. Legalization is not conditional.”

Let's just be honest about this...Rubio is as dishonest as any politician out there.

Speaking of which...Kelly Ayotte is now on Team Amnesty.

This will come as news to people who supported Ayotte all the way back in way back in the dark ages of 2010.

As New Hampshire's former Attorney General, Kelly understands the urgent need to stop the dangerous flow of illegal immigrants into our country. Arizona's move to address this issue at the state level reflects a failure of leadership in Washington to solve this problem once and for all. With a wave of violent crimes in the state, Kelly believes Arizonans were fully justified in passing their law.

In the Senate, Kelly's top immigration priority will be to secure our borders -- no excuses. Simultaneously, she will work to ensure that existing immigration laws are enforced and is against amnesty. Kelly knows that Americans can solve any problem if they put their mind to it -- and she will bring that results-oriented approach to this critical issue.

Just another word about "amnesty" as a term. Aside from Rubio's definition in 2010, here's what he says now.

“This is not amnesty. Amnesty is the forgiveness of something. Amnesty is anything that says do it illegally, it will be cheaper and easier,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Ask yourself this, would the millions of people who are on the waiting list to come to this country legally gladly exchange their years long wait to come here for the chance to go through the amnesty system Rubio and the rest support? My guess is HELL YES. All they'd have to do is pony up $1,000 (which is less than it costs to go through the full legal process) and they are in.

By Rubio's own definitions, old and new, this is amnesty.

Immigration miscellany:

- The anti-amnesty strategy in the Senate is taking shape. Basically it's "make them live by their own words".

And

- A short guide to the fraud that is the Schumber-Rubio plan.

(I accidentally stepped on John's post, so I pulled this down and am reposting it)

Posted by: DrewM at 06:55 AM | Comments (717)
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From WaPo.

Hundreds of federal employees were given advance word of a Medicare decision worth billions of dollars to private insurers in the weeks before the official announcement, a period when trading in the shares of those firms spiked.

The surge of trading in HumanaÂ’s and other private health insurersÂ’ stock before the April 1 announcement already has prompted the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Wall Street investors had advance access to inside information about the then-confidential Medicare funding plan.

Posted by: JohnE. at 06:22 AM | Comments (134)
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• Greenwald To MSNBC News: The WH Talking Points That You're Using Are Completely Misleading And False
  
• When Everything Is A Crime, Government Data Mining Matters
  
• Quint Will Take Care Of This Problem For Ten Thousand Dollars
  
• Goldberg: We Shouldn't Get Too Comfortable With Gov't Data Mining
  
• 23 Million Households Use Food Stamps
  
• Energy Sec Steven Chu Thinks Our Green Energy Investments Have Been A Success
  
• Assad May Win The Syrian Civil War
  
• Prelude To The Coming Water Wars Of The 21st Century
  
• Why "Trust Us" Won't Work
  
• Obamacare To Increase Premiums In Ohio By Up To 88%
  
• Greenwald: US Wants To Destroy Privacy World Wide
  
• Danube Reaches Record Levels
  
• Has The US Become The Kind Of Nation From Which You Have To Seek Asylum
  
• Jury Selection Begins In Zimmerman Trial
  
• NSA Surveillance, The Latest News
  
• John Malkovich Helped Save A Man's Life
  
• Taliban Lay Siege To NATO Airbase
  
• Some Changes For IOS 7
  

Follow me on twitter

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:34 AM | Comments (224)
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Happy Monday.

Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, claimed the name "Verax" for himself -- "truth teller" -- in his communications with the Washington Post.

In his interview with the Guardian, he paints himself as a very Manning-esque "whistleblower," although he takes pains to distinguish his own leak on the grounds that he carefully selected the classified information he released.

Snowden told the Guardian he doesn't fear the consequences of going public . . . which is why he fled to China, of course. Also, the term "whistleblower" doesn't seem to fit his case any more than it does Pfc. Manning's. Whistleblowing occurs when someone with inside knowledge of criminal wrongdoing brings it to the authorities -- but it doesn't seem like a crime occurred here. Some so-called whistleblowers occasionally run to the press instead, which -- in the case of leakers of classified information -- is itself a crime. No wonder he's running.

Slate, of all places, points out that in Snowden, we've been betrayed by the IT guy. And that is a parallel to the Manning case that should be noted. Disillusioned, idealistic computer geeks make all of our offices run. Someone on twitter pointed out that IT folks with "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation" stickers are about to have a rough week. Oh, and it looks like Snowden was a Ron Paul supporter. Naturally.

Also having a rough week will be the tech industry, which is having a crisis of confidence. I'm reminded of the movie 'Sneakers,' except this time, the corporate giant is working with NSA, instead of against it, and the lonely, honorable thief is just trying to set information free.

The Atlantic's Conor Freidersdorf raises a few nightmare scenarios with the NSA's trove, starting with: "what if China hacks it?" Indeed, the question of what China would do with the information -- or information like it -- is why we need to come to grips with whether we want this, what we want to do with it, or what we want our government to do with it. We can wish away the surveillance, but we can't wish away the technology. China, the Middle East, Russia are doing the same thing while we grapple with whether or not to unilaterally disarm.

Finally, a caution against making an idol out of Snowden or out of the idea of Snowden from my pal, the Anchoress, here and here.

The Anchoress has an insightful, witty, and important book out on this sort of idolatry in modern life -- which (full disclosure) she sent me weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to write about yet. This Snowden event, and his startlingly fast canonization by certain sorts, might just be the hook I was looking for.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (533)
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A List of Conservative Songs

As collected by the Conservapedia. Some of these seem like a reach but then I'm sorta lyric-deaf so maybe I'm missing some kind of sub-text.

Here's a quick sampling:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:35 PM | Comments (566)
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Soooo.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

...

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
...

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

Scariest part of this is he took off for China before the news broke. That's...bad.

I hate leaks but this maybe something so massive that the public has to know. We've built a lot of security systems in the 11 years since September 11, 2001 and I think it's time, it was awhile ago, we figure out what we are ok with and what we're not. Ideally it wouldn't involve this kind of massive intelligence leak but it was inevitable this is what it would take to get it going.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:16 AM | Comments (885)
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Every world dignitary needs lawn furniture, right? Its right up there with gifting an original Frederic Remington...or an iPod full of Obama speeches.

Knoller posted the pic of this grand world class implement of outdoor reclination. Its for the ages. The kind of stuff one finds in the tombs of pharaohs and god kings or maybe your own backyard...

...probably mostly in your own back yard. Xi probably would have had more use for a bag of Kingsford.

UPDATE: The bench looks to be a "customized" version of http://www.foreverredwood.com's "Luna" model. By "customized" I mean cheaper with less woodworking effort and detail the back's top rail and spindle/slats. The stock Luna model has the attractive fully arched top rail which of course requires each spindle/slat to be a different size. The cheapened Obama world leader international gift grade model™ has the flat bottomed top rail allowing for identical size spindles/slats.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:30 AM | Comments (311)
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Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the the award-winning AoSHQ's Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Leftovers

This was a comment from Vic in last week's thread I wanted to address:

Just Downloaded Dominatus from Amazon. Once again had to go around my elbow to get to my ass. Amazon just does not appear to want to download to an android. Had to download to "cloud" which took forever to load. The move from cloud to Kindle, then copy from Kindle to Android.

This is some major suck.

I don't understand why you have to do this. I was able to register my Nexus with my Amazon account, so when I buy a Kindle book, it gives the option over on the right side of the page to deliver to "OregonMuse's Android Tablet." Which I do. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

However, if this is just not working for you, another thing you can try is giving the book to yourself as a gift, perhaps from another Amazon account. I have done this myself from Mrs. Muse's Amazon account, and it works great.

Two Blegs

Bleg #1: Would somebody please tell me what happened to Andy Weir's book, The Martian? All you morons were raving about it, and when I went to buy it for myself, it seems to have disappeared from Amazon, except for an audio book version.

Bleg #2: And speaking of science fiction books written by smartass morons, I remember reading one when I was a teen that I cannot remember the title or author, but maybe someone else does. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of clues, but what I remember is that it was not a recent book, it was written perhaps in the 40s or maybe earlier, back when author didn't have their characters cuss, but rather just told you that they did. Anyway, everybody's on an exploration rocket ship heading for the planet Venus, and when they get there, it's all lush jungle vegetation (yeah, right), and, of course, perfectly breathable air. But one of the things they ran into was that the vegetation oozed some kind of sticky sap that bonded like super glue and caused a bunch of problems and the main character found himself glued to a tree until they came up with an acetone(?) compound that dissolved the sap. I also remember one of the crewmen falling off of a tall tree with the branches slapping him as he fell all the way to the ground, and the author said something like "he fell at the rate of several vulgar adjectives per foot". I suppose it's not all that humorous now, but I thought it was howlingly funny when I was 11. The entire book was written in a smartass style that they used to call "cracking wise" and which makes me think that the author would make a pretty good Moron if he were around today. I know this isn't much to go on, but if this rings a bell with anyone, please let me know. Thanks.

Update: Thanks to Mr. Matamoros and kent18 for identifying this as "Men, Martians & Machines" by Eric Frank Russell, written in 1955. And right smartly, too. My bleg didn't even last 15 comments. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:27 AM | Comments (155)
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How's The Ammo Situation?

I was at a local gun shop last weekend, and it looked like the shelves were pretty well stocked with most calibers, but limitations on the number of boxes that can be purchased at a time were still in place and prices were still high.

It seems like there's a little more supply available at the websites I shop for both loaded ammo and handloading components, too.

What are you seeing in your area?

Where Do You Shoot?

Something I never really thought much about growing up was having a place to go shoot. We always had a bunch of farmland, so a range was basically anywhere you could pop up a target where there was a good backstop. Plus, my dad was a deputy sheriff, and in small-town Georgia in the 80s, the Sheriff's department didn't think twice about deputies' kids shooting on the range unaccompanied.

I'd imagine that's changed by now with both liability and public relations concerns taking precedence (and as a side note, we had hunting guns hanging in gun racks of cars parked in the high school parking lot then too. Bet that doesn't fly now either).

But living 1,200 or so miles from the family farm, as the crow flies, isn't really conducive to a convenient trip to the range. So I just joined a gun club here in MA to have somewhere to shoot on a more consistent basis. And I did it just in the nick of time, too, since the increase in demand for all-things-gun includes club memberships around here, and there are only 10 slots out of 250 left in the one I'm now a member of.

So, no poll question on this one, but in the comments maybe throw out a mention of where you usually shoot.

Gun Of The Week

(answer below)
more...

Posted by: andy at 06:10 AM | Comments (160)
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