HIT & RUN BLOG

Credit: © Purmar | Dreamstime.comMarriage recognition is currently a man-and-wife only affair in The Grand Canyon State, thanks to a constitutional amendment passed in 2008.

But as gay marriage recognition is seeing increasing public support, there’s a new effort in Arizona to modify the state’s definition to allow for same-sex couples, and this new effort is being led by a libertarian and a Republican. Equal Marriage Arizona, co-chaired by libertarian blogger and business owner Warren Meyer and Arizona Log Cabin Republican caucus chair Erin Ogletree Simpson, filed their petition Monday and have begun collecting signatures to bring it to a vote.

The wording of the initiative is very simple: It changes the definition of recognized marriages in Arizona from a man and a woman to two people, gender neutral. An added section declares that religious organizations will not be obligated to solemnize or officiate at such ceremonies.

I spoke with Meyer briefly earlier today about his involvement. He said he worked with Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s campaign and had gotten involved with the Our America Initiative, the pro-liberty group Johnson formed prior to his run for president. Meyer said the group contacted him to see if he would be interested in taking on leadership of an initiative effort in Arizona, and he agreed. Johnson, too, has declared his support for the effort and is listed as an honorary chairman for Equal Marriage Arizona.

Asked whether Arizona’s conservative political reputation meant this push had a better chance succeeding if it came from the right, Meyer agreed, though emphasized this is a nonpartisan effort.

“This is an individual liberty issue, and we’re hoping to get to the point in Arizona that people are okay with this with addition of some liberty protection,” he said.

• Credit: Felix Hammer, Florian Thauer, Lothar May, Oskar Lindqvist / Foter.com / CC BY-SAIn a speech in Berlin, where they love him far more than Americans do, President Barack Obama defended the United States' surveillance program, proposed new talks with Russia to cut back on nuclear weapons, and promised to keep trying to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.
• Online poker saves lives! A friendship that resulted from two people playing online poker together eventually led to lifesaving surgery for one man’s young Pakistani son.
• Outgoing LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says he expects to run for governor of California. If the state’s Republican Party can’t put up somebody capable of beating him there truly is no hope.
• Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has become the third Republican senator to declare support for gay marriage recognition.
• A documentary alleges a cover up at the National Transportation Training Board obscured the real reasons behind the explosion of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, in which 230 were killed. Former members of the investigation team have come forward to say the explosion came from outside the plane, not due to an internal accident.
• The FBI has abandoned its latest effort to dig up the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.

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Over the years, Obamacare’s defenders have made plenty of absurd arguments in service of the law, but perhaps the most absurd argument of all is that the language of the law does not actually mean what it plainly says. Yet that is essentially the argument that some of the health law’s defenders are making in public and that they are preparing to make in court.

The law expands health coverage by providing subsidies to people buying health insurance through government-run health exchanges—online marketplaces intended to allow people to compare and purchase health plans. But the text of the law clearly states that those subsidies are only available to individuals who purchase insurance in exchanges erected by states. The Internal Revenue Service, however, has ruled that the subsidies will be also be available in the 34 exchanges run by the federal government. 

Obamacare's backers now have to defend the IRS ruling, as a challenge to the tax agency's rule makes its way to court. It's no mere legalistic squabble. Senior Editor Peter Suderman writes that the outcome of this dispute could eventually determine whether the IRS has the authority to disburse some $800 billion in federal funds—the estimated value of the subsidies in the 34 states where the federal government has taken responsibility for creating the exchanges.

The energetic and powerful young journalist Michael Hastings, most famous for his reporting on the follies of our Afghanistan intervention, who died yesterday in a car crash in Los Angeles went out with an interesting and iconclastic (especially for a guy known for his Rolling Stone reporting) piece for Buzzfeed attacking the Democrats on privacy issues.

revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security.....

Many....Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008....

Now, we’re about to see if the Obama administration’s version of the national security state will begin to eat itself.

Unsurprisingly, the White House has dug in, calling their North Korea-esque tools “essential” to stop terrorism, and loathe to give up the political edge they’ve seized for Democrats on national security issues under Obama’s leadership....

Outside of Washington, D.C., the frustration that [Democratic Senators who have been properly alarmed] Wyden and Udall have felt has been exponentially magnified. Transparency supporters, whistleblowers, and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.

Credit: Michael Kappel / photo on flickrThe $1 trillion farm bill is working its way though Congress (well, it has been doing so for the last two years), and this round of revisions contains some new winners in the always-contentious race to gobble up taxpayer dollars:

Tucked deep in the 629-page U.S. House agriculture policy legislation is an initiative to guarantee prices for sushi rice. So too is insurance for alfalfa and a marketing plan for Christmas trees.

Catfish farmers also get a morsel in the proposal being taken up this week: profit-margin insurance. The products represent a tiny fraction of the $440 billion U.S. farm economy. Yet each is slated to receive special treatment—either through subsidized insurance, promotional programs or protections against imports—in the bill that carries an estimated 10-year price tag of $939 billion.

From the cellar.

On June 18, I talked about NSA and other forms of government spying on American citizens.

About 2.30 minutes. Go here for more info.

The High Country News has published an interesting article headlined "How right-wing emigrants conquered North Idaho." It's about a process comparable to the influx of hippies who pushed Vermont to the left a few decades back, or the effort by the libertarians of the Free State Project to do something similar in New Hampshire. In this case the migrants are conservative Republicans of the old southern California variety -- indeed, many of them used to live in southern California -- who have moved to Kootenai County, Idaho, quadrupling the place's population and transforming it into "the most Republican county in the most Republican state in the nation." (You can debate that status, but let's stipulate that it has few rivals for the title.) The piece is locked behind a paywall, unfortunately, but this should give some of the flavor:

Southern California was struck by a series of disasters in the early 1990s -- a recession, an earthquake, race riots -- that together marked the beginning of an exodus. Between 1992 and 2000, excluding birth and death rates, California lost 1.8 million more people than it gained; collectively, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona gained 1.4 million more than they lost. More than half of the immigrants to Idaho in that period came from California. Of the top four counties that lost emigrants to Kootenai, three were in California -- San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange.

Like many other mass movements, this one spread by word of mouth. In 1990, the Coeur d'Alene Press reported that one Orange County family had convinced "half its neighborhood" to relocate to Coeur d'Alene. A pastor told me that "whole (evangelical) ministries" came north together. By the end of the 1990s, more than 500 California police officers had retired to North Idaho, among them Mark Fuhrman, who committed perjury in the prosecution of O.J. Simpson. One officer told the Los Angeles Times that he left Anaheim because "the narrow roads got wider, orange groves became tract homes and street gangs became too numerous to count." He went looking for "another Shangri-La," and found it in Kootenai County.

Indeed, as the county's population soared above 100,000, it began to look less like Idaho and more like suburban California. The prairie was paved with curling cul-de-sacs and gridded with Starbucks, Del Tacos and Holiday Inns. The old Potlatch Mill on Lake Coeur d'Alene became a golf course, and another mill site, just past the outflow into the Spokane River, became an office complex and parking lot....

I stopped by the Audit the IRS rally today at the Capitol Building in D.C. Here's part of what I saw.

I left before most of the speakers began, so I can't comment on that, but a lot of the crowd and signage seemed to be as geared toward questions about immigration reform as it was about reducing spending and the intrusion of government bureaucracy into the daily life of Americans.

That broadening in focus is unfortunate. As the website of rally organizer Tea Party Patriot attests, the group seems as exercised by pending immigration reform as by spending (the issue that actually sparked the tea party movement). As Matt Welch and I wrote in The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, the power of rapid- and intense-response coalitions is directly related to their ability to target a specific issue and stick to it. As with the old rainbow coalitions of the left (where a rally about, say, the minimum wage would devolve into a general gripe session about vaccination, El Salvador, and the Christic Institute), the broader the set of issues engaged at any one time, the less impact you're going to have.

Credit: UK Parliament/flickrBritish Prime Minister David Cameron has said that his government reserves the right to arm rebels in Syria without a vote in the House of Commons, saying that not holding a vote will allow the government to act “very swiftly.”

Cameron’s comments are contrary to what was said by the speaker of the House of Commons, who has said that members of parliament will get a vote on any decision to arm rebels in Syria. Eighty of Cameron’s fellow Conservative members of parliament have signed a letter urging him to allow a vote on what action to take in Syria.

From the BBC:

More than 80 Conservative MPs have signed a letter calling for a full Commons vote before any decision to take action against the Assad government.

Asked about this demand, Mr Cameron said: "You are absolutely right to make the point that we make a big commitment to come to this House and explain, vote and all the rest of it, but obviously governments have to reserve the ability to take action very swiftly on this or on other issues."

The British government has been one of the most vocal in not only its opposition to the Assad regime but also in its support of increased involvement in Syria.

It is hard to see what would have to happen in Syria for Cameron to take swift action without first putting the issue before the House of Commons. British national security has yet to be compromised by the war in Syria, chemical weapons have been used, and Hezbollah and Al Qaeda-linked groups are already involved. What more would have to happen for Cameron to think increased involvement in the region would require swift action without a vote in the House of Commons has not been fully explained.

Taking military action without a vote in the House of Commons is not unprecedented. British forces entered Afghanistan without a vote in the House of Commons, unlike the invasion of Iraq. British members of parliament did vote to approve U.N.-backed action against Gaddafi in Libya.

While Cameron and others in the British government may want to take action in Syria he would do well to remember that the majority of the British public are against arming rebels, Islamic militants are increasingly sidelining moderate rebels, and a member of his own government says that there are no “palatable options” when it comes to dealing with the conflict in Syria.  

credit: Medill DC / Foter.com / CC BYNo real surprises from the most recent meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. Despite some talk in the press of possible "tapering," the Federal Reserve's governing board said today that it will continue with its existing, open-ended bond-buying program, at least for the moment.

From the press release:

To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month. The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. Taken together, these actions should maintain downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative.

The Fed announced its open-ended bond-purchasing program—the third such round of quantitative easing (QE) it has undertaken since the start of the recession—back in September. The basic idea was that rather than pursue bond-buying programs designed to last for a set period of time, the Fed would continue to offer what it describes as "accomodative" monetary policy for as long as the Fed's governors thought it was necessary to help the support the economy. What today's decision to keep that program going tells us is that the Fed still thinks the economy is in weak enough shape that continued monetary support is necessary.

The Fed's statement, however, also suggests that it believes that such support might not be necessary for much longer. "Labor market conditions have shown further improvement in recent months, on balance," the statement says. The Fed's governing board also believes “downside risks to the outlook for the economy and the labor market as having diminished since the fall.” In other words, the FOMC thinks the risks of a major economic decline are smaller than they used to be. So although the Fed still believes the economy needs help, it might not need it (or need as much) for much longer. Maybe the taper's coming soon after all?

Next Thursday, June 27th the Network of enlightened Women (NeW) will kick off its Eighth Annual National Conference with a networking night from 5:30pm-7:30pm at the Heritage Foundation. Please RSVP by Thursday, June 20th here.

This is an excellent opportunity to meet, greet, and mingle with some of the top libertarian and conservative women in the liberty movement and learn more about NeW.

The National Conference continues on Friday, June 28 from 10am to 4pm at the Heritage Foundation. The keynote address will be given by Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys. The event will include student speakers, an alumnae panel and a professional development training.

Register for one or both events by filling out this form by Thursday, June 20, 2013. For more information and pictures from the events last year, visit the NeW website If you have any questions, please contact Sarah Davis at sarah@enlightenedwomen.org. Please feel free to invite friends and colleagues who would be interested in learning more about NeW.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, PoolThe Ryan Lizza-authored New Yorker article about immigration reform that I referenced last night in a post about John McCain's zig-zagging immigration politics contained several paragraphs that illustrate the unseemliness of Washington micromanaging and dealmaking. Two of my favorites:

An equally delicate set of negotiations, by Senators Bennet, Rubio, Dianne Feinstein, of California, and Orrin Hatch, of Utah, brought the agriculture industry on board. "In Arizona, we want workers to pick lettuce three months a year," McCain said. "In the Southeast, where they process chickens, they want 'em twelve months a year. In the Northeast, because of dairy, for some reason—I guess it’s .001 per cent of the economy—but, still, the dairy farmers need a certain kind of program as well. So you've got a disparate agricultural-jobs issue. [...]

As for high tech, several staffers involved with the bill started to notice that every time the Gang satisfied the industry its lobbyists returned with new demands. "They keep coming back for more," [Sen. Lindsey] Graham told me. But he didn't mean it in a bad way. "This is America I don't know how you say that in Latin. That should be on some building somewhere: You have the right to come back for more when you don't get what you want. The country where you can ask for almost anything!"

It's an old insight, but worth remembering in the context of the immigration debate: The more the federal government controls, regulates, and decides which micro-sub-category of human activity is legal or illegal, the more that succeeding in America will depend on one's ability to "come back for more" from Washington, D.C. No wonder the District of Columbia is a boomtown these days.

The lower house of Russia’s parliament, the Duma, has overwhelmingly voted to ban adoption not only for foreign gay couples but single foreigners from any country where same sex marriage is legal. The bill was passed by an overwhelming 443 votes to 0. The bill is widely expected to be confirmed in its third reading on June 21, where it will proceed to the upper house and be signed into law by President Putin.

The BBC:

The amendments to Russia's family code say those banned from adoption would include "persons in a marriage union between people of the same sex registered in a state where such a union is allowed, as well as citizens of such states that are not married"."Adoption of this bill de-facto eliminates the chance for foreign persons of so-called non-traditional sexual orientation to adopt Russian children," said one of the bill's authors, Yelena Mizulina, in televised remarks.

The rationale behind this move was explained by the deputy speaker of the Duma Sergei Zheleznyak: 

“If a child ends up brought up by a gay couple, the child of course is seriously traumatized and develops a distorted notion of the surrounding reality.”

This latest anti-gay spasm comes hot on the heels of a new law introducing fines of up to $3,000 for individuals who promote "non-traditional relations." These new laws represent a major setback for LGBT and civil rights campaigners. Gay rights activist Nikolai Alekseev expressed his outrage at the law:

"The State Duma is following a trend of the government trying to appeal to the illiterate, who are very homophobic."

The new laws demonstrate the increasingly incestuous  of the relationship between government and the Orthodox Church, as chronicledby Contributing Editor Cathy Young in Reason's January issue.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia in 1993, however the Orthodox Church still seeks to prevent further reform to grant equality to homosexuals. In 2012, 40 percent of Russians disagreed with the statement ‘Homosexuals should enjoy the same rights as others in Russia.'

The negative attitudes towards homosexuality are rooted  in Russia’s recent history; the Soviet Union criminalized male homosexuality. The penalty for disobeying these laws could be a sentence of up to five years in a hard labor camp.

LGBT activists fear that the increasingly hostile stance of the government and wider society towards homosexuals may have contributed to a rise in the kind of homophobic attacks seen earlier this year.

While Pres. Obama and Congressional Democrats promised to restrict gun ownership in early 2013, the opposite is happening. Not only are firearms sales on the rise, the industry is attracting customers who had never previously owned a gun. Fox Business News reports:

In its annual Firearms Retailer Survey Report, the National Shooting Sports Foundation said there is an upward trend in the number of first-time buyers purchasing firearms, while more women are frequenting gun shops and ranges.

[…] for the third year in a row, the number of female customers continued to rise. For 2012, 78.6% of retailers said more women came to their stores versus the prior year, compared to 72.8% in 2011 and just 61.1% in 2010.

From 2010 to 2012, the number of annual first-time purchases shot up from 20.8% to 25.8%. Furthermore, 10.1 million background checks, which are used to gauge firearm purchases, were processed through May. This sets the pace to outdo last year's total of 19.5 checks. As is often the case, the threat of new gun control laws has been a boon for major firearms manufacturers. Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. are reporting substantial profit growth:

On Thursday, Smith & Wesson (SWHC) said it expects fourth-quarter results to surpass previous expectations, now calling for a 38% increase in sales compared to the year-ago period. Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR) reported first-quarter earnings in April, saying its profit raced 53% higher and sales were up 39%.

In fact, with $588 million in sales, Smith & Wesson saw a record setting year. It's not just manufacturers who are reaping the benefits of Americans' demand for self-defense.

Popular hunting and outdoor retailer Cabela’s (CAB) has also reported a significant benefit from firearm sales. Same-store sales climbed 24% in the first quarter but were up 9% excluding firearm sales.

Mark Malkowski, President and CEO of Connecticut-based Stag Arms, said his company has seen a “big increase in first-time buyers” during the last five years or so. He added that AR-15 rifles, which Stag Arms manufactures, are “turning into a staple” for those starting a collection of firearms.

Stag Arms is one of 34 firearms companies that Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has invited to leave its restrictive home state and operate out of Texas, where legislation and culture are more receptive to gun rights. 

Reason 24/7Not satisfied with how expansive and pervasive the surveillance state is in 2013? Put this in your pipe and smoke it, preferably somewhere out of sight of the authorities.

From USA Today:

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that the agency has deployed drones to conduct surveillance in the U.S., and that the bureau was developing guidelines for their future law enforcement use.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the un-manned aerial vehicles, whose use by law enforcement has raised questions from privacy advocates and civil liberties groups, are deployed in "a very minimal way and very seldom.''

"Our footprint is very small,'' the director said. "We have very few.''

In addition to setting rules to govern the use of drones, Mueller also promises to provide the Congress with more information on how it collects (which definition?) and uses data, which he promises is narrow. Oversight in action!

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don't forget you can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us at @reason247.

Whitehouse.govWill Obamacare’s federally run health insurance exchanges be ready on time? In a report released today, the Government Accountability Office has weighed in on the question, and its answer is…maybe? But the federal watchdog can’t say for sure—and federal officials will face additional challenges between now and October, when the exchanges are scheduled to open for enrollment.

Under Obamacare, each state will have its own health insurance exchange, and 34 of those exchanges will be run by the federal government. (States will assist with some of the work in 14 states.) Those exchanges are supposed to start accepting enrollees on October 1 of this year, but for the last few months reports have suggested that federal officials may be having a difficult time with the implementation effort, and in particular with the database technology that is supposed to make up the heart of the exchanges. Health and Human Services representatives have continued to insist that the exchanges will be up and ready on time, and they still do today. But the GAO’s report isn’t exactly confidence inspiring.

“Much progress has been made,” the report says, “but much remains to be accomplished within a relatively short amount of time.” Medicare officials have a timeline in place that they say will allow them to open the exchanges on schedule. But that’s only if they can stick to the timeline. The agency has missed multiple deadlines so far, the GAO report says, and that could be a problem: “While the missed interim deadlines may not affect implementation, additional missed deadlines closer to the start of enrollment could do so.”

Meanwhile, the federal government is still relying on states to do some of the work, but the GAO report found that “many state activities remained to be completed and some were behind schedule.” Even with the contingency plans that federal health officials say they are developing, GAO concludes that it’s tough to say whether the federal exchanges will be ready on time. "Whether CMS’s contingency planning will assure the timely and smooth implementation of the exchanges by October 2013 cannot yet be determined," the report says.

There’s plenty that’s not finished on the federal side too. Federal health officials have “many key activities remaining to be completed across the core exchange functions—eligibility and enrollment, including development and implementation of the data hub; program management; and consumer assistance.” That’s a lot to not have finished with just a few months to go, especially since GAO reports that federal officials are already behind schedule on some of those activities, like consumer assistance planning.

Some of the key technological features of the exchanges haven’t been tested yet: Functionality intended to offer real-time verification of income, citizenship, and eligibility for insurance subsidies hasn’t happened so far, and the federal government told GAO it still needs to complete additional steps in order to do so. The plan is to have those steps completed by July. But, as previously noted, sticking to deadlines has proven difficult in the past. 

In other words, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and the conclusion one ought to draw from the GAO report is that it’s not entirely clear that federal officials can complete it all on time.

Nor is the GAO the only organization reporting that government officials setting up exchanges have a rocky road ahead of them. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published a report this month looking at exchange implementation efforts in three states: Alabama, Virginia, and Michigan. And it too found a variety of struggles with the process.

Credit: U.S. Embassy in the U.K.

World leaders of the wealthiest countries at the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland have new ideas to stop the flow of corporate profits toward business-friendly countries.

World leaders at the G-8 summit have declared that governments must work together to close loopholes that allow multinational companies to avoid paying taxes in their home countries.

Their collective statements on tax issues have focused on evasion, which is illegal in the United States, but the above statement and others have also attacked the practice of tax avoidance, which uses tax laws to minimize companies' tax burdens and is legal. 

The G8 called on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which advises rich nations on economic policies, to develop a template under which multinational corporations could be required to report profits and tax payments on a country-by-country basis, to tax authorities.

Tax campaigners had called for published country-by-country reporting to help shame companies into paying their fair share of taxes.

The G8 also said countries should change rules that let companies shift their profits across borders to avoid taxes.

The leaders of the world's wealthiest countries want to make successful private businesses feel bad about not paying more in taxes. Canada was reportedly the only holdout in opposing the initiative.

“We did not expect to see Canada as a holdout,” said Richard Murphy of the Tax Justice Network. He said he believes Canada is being difficult for philosophical reasons, believing that competitive tax systems are important drivers of investment.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose not to embrace his country's free-market renaissance, but said instead that action would require the consultation of his country's provinces (still—when was the last time we've heard that on this side of the border?)

The new initiative against tax-dodging was foreshadowed in May when the U.S. Senate hauled Apple CEO Tim Cook into a hearing on the company's offshore profits in relation to its Irish holdings. Check Reason's coverage of the hearing here, what Katherine Mangu-Ward thinks of The New York Times' questionable comparison to the IRS scandal, and read J.D. Tuccille's piece on what to expect when tax collectors comefor all of us.

House Intelligence CommitteeAlthough the witnesses at yesterday's House Intelligence Committee hearing could not cite a single case where the NSA's phone record database was crucial in preventing a terrorist attack, they did describe a few cases where they said plots were uncovered based on information obtained by monitoring the communications of foreign targets under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Nick Gillespie recently explained the grounds for skepticism about two of those cases: Najibullah Zazi's plan to bomb the New York City subway system and David Headley's participation in a conspiracy to bomb the offices of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. At yesterday's hearing Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce offered a fresh example, involving an alleged plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange:

Monitoring a terrorist in Yemen, the N.S.A. discovered that he was talking to a man named Khalid Ouazzani in Kansas City, Mo. After applying for a separate warrant for Mr. Ouazzani’s communications, they identified two additional conspirators and discovered they were "in the very initial stages" of the stock exchange bomb plot, he said.

Mr. Ouazzani pleaded guilty in 2010 to sending money to Al Qaeda but was not charged with any domestic plots. Later on Tuesday, law enforcement officials said Mr. Joyce had been referring to Sabirhan Hasanoff and Wesam El-Hanafi, two Brooklyn men who pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.

A sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors contends that in 2008, "at the direction of a senior terrorist leader," Mr. Hasanoff conducted surveillance of the New York Stock Exchange and sent the leader a one-page report on it.

"The report was rudimentary and of limited use" for any terrorist operation, the memo acknowledges, while nevertheless contending that Mr. Hasanoff's willingness to conduct such surveillance bolstered the case for giving him a 20-year sentence.

At the hearing, [Rep. Mac] Thornberry [R-Texas] asked Mr. Joyce whether the stock exchange attack was a "serious plot" or just "something that they kind of dreamed about." Mr. Joyce replied, "I think the jury considered it serious, since they were all convicted."

Evidently Joyce forgot that the case was a matter of public record:

Joshua L. Dratel, a lawyer for Mr. Hasanoff, called Mr. Joyce's portrayal "astonishing" because none of the defendants was charged with the stock exchange allegation and there was no jury trial in any of the cases. 

As is often the case with the foiled terrorist plots highlighted by the government, this one does not even rise to the level of a half-baked scheme, so it is a bit of a stretch to count it as an example of how Section 702 saves Americans' lives.

Addendum: More than a bit of a stretch. Wired reports that "even the government's own sentencing memorandum shows that the defendants called off a proposed plot on their own, without involvement from federal authorities." Here is the relevant passage from the memo:

Hasanoff relayed that the New York Stock Exchange was surrounded by approximately four streets that were blocked off from vehicular traffic and that someone would have to walk to the building. The Doctor [an undisclosed high-ranking al-Qaida operative] revealed that, although the information provided by Hasanoff could be used by someone who wanted to do an operation, he was not satisfied with the report, and he accordingly disposed of it. (The report apparently lacked sufficient detail about New York Stock Exchange security matters to be as helpful as the Doctor had hoped.)

Curious GoodsRemember the advertisements in the back of comic books promising bulging muscles in no time, potato-shooting guns and other unlikely attractions? To my taste, the ads that promised the most and delivered the least touted X-Ray Specs, with the sometimes explicit assurance that they'd let you see through clothing. Sadly, they didn't. But a working model delivering true Supermanish sees-through-walls vision is what it would take to render the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court transparent, despite President Obama's empty assurances to the contrary.

As Jacob Sullum and Ed Krayewski have noted, President Obama sat down with Charlie Rose the other day to assure America that the surveillance state is a swell thing. Loss of privacy? Hey, everything is a tradeoff! Security!

And then, Charlie Rose asked about the process:

Rose: Should this be transparent in some way?

Obama: It is transparent. That's why we set up the FISA court.

As Jacob pointed out, "That would be the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the decisions of which are shielded from public view." But just how truly physically shielded the surveillance court actually is was revealed by the Washington Post three years ago, when its new digs were constructed.

Wrote Del Quentin Wilber for the Post:

First, the workers encased the room in reinforced concrete. Then came the thick wood-and-metal doors that seal into the walls. Behind those walls they labored in secret for two years, building a courtroom, judge's chambers and clerk's offices. The only sign that they were done came recently, when biometric hand scanners and green "Restricted Access" placards were placed at the entrances.

What workers have finally completed -- or perhaps not; few really know, and none would say -- is the nation's most secure courtroom for its most secretive court. In coming days, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will move from its current base at the Justice Department and settle into a new $2 million home just off a public hallway in the District's federal courthouse.

If the federal government had hung a sign on the door reading, "Not So Transparent," it couldn't be any clearer that the court is not intended to be subject to public scrutiny. Biometric hand scanners, concrete walls and restricted access all scream "secret" as loudly as can be heard past the wood-and-metal doors.

The Post quoted U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth insisting that the new chambers were a demonstration that the court is no rubber stamp for the government, but it's hard to see how that can be true when we have no idea how it operates. What we do know is that the court rejected just 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance requests received from the government over 33 years.

The gag orders that forbid surveillance order recipients from revealing that they've been ordered to surrender data to the government also suggest a little ... opacity in the whole snooping operation. Google is suing for permission to simply reveal how many such orders it receives. Not the details, mind you, just how often the feds come sniffing around with FISA orders.

If you want to know what sort of deliberations lead to a vanishingly small rate of refusal of surveillance orders that recipients are forbidden to discuss, well, you'll need X-Ray Specs to see how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court goes about its business.

House Intelligence CommitteeAt a Senate hearing last week, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, said the NSA's mass collection of Americans' phone records via Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act has "helped prevent...dozens of terrorist events...both here and abroad." Later in the same hearing, he retreated from that claim, saying he could not "state unequivocally" that the phone record database "contributed solely" to preventing any particular attack. The equivocation continued at yesterday's House Intelligene Committee hearing, where Alexander paired the phone record database with monitoring of foreign targets' communications under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act:

In recent years, the information gathered from these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world. FAA [FISA Amendments Act] 702 contributed in over 90 percent of these cases. At least 10 of these events included homeland-based threats. In the vast majority, business records, FISA reporting contributed as well.

Alexander is moving further and further away from answering the question posed last week by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who wanted to know "how many times phone records obtained through Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act were critical to the discovery and disruption of terrorist threats." So far neither Alexander nor any other administration official has cited a single case that fits this description. Even when phone records help to flesh out a lead obtained through other means, it is not at all clear why the NSA needs to collect everyone's information in anticipation of that possibility, as opposed to seeking specific orders as the need arises. Consider how Alexander responded to that question yesterday:

MashableAs Americans obsess over NSA spying, abuse by the IRS and other assaults on our freedom, John Stossel can't get his mind off the thousand other ways politicians abuse us. Some of the things they do seem like bigger assaults on our freedom than NSA spying, he argues, although we've become accustomed to the older abuses. Take the drug war.

ResasonBill Ayers, the former University of Illinois professor and former member of the Weather Underground, has said that Obama should be put on trial for war crimes. However, Ayers insists that he still likes Obama on a personal level.

From The Huffington Post:

Bill Ayers, former University of Illinois professor and co-founder of the violent anti-war group Weather Underground, said Tuesday that President Barack Obama should be put on trial for war crimes, according to RealClearPolitics.

"Every president in this century should be put on trial," Ayers told Charlie Stone on RealClearPolitics' "Morning Commute." “Every one of them goes into an office dripping with blood and then adds to it. And, yes, I think that these are war crimes. I think that they’re acts of terror.”

Ayers, whose Weather Underground bombed police stations, the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during its anti-Vietnam War crusade in the 1960s and 1970s, said he'd give Obama a failing grade based on his presidency's policy and politics. Nevertheless, Ayers said he likes the president.

"He's a curious person. One of the things I like about him is he's curious. He wants to know things. He asks questions, he's not just charming, he's also interested. He reads," Ayers said. "I liked him personally -- he's a really good guy."

It’s worth remembering that Ayers doesn’t have any regrets about his own history of violence, having claimed that he participated in the bombings of the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during his Weather Underground years.

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UFCWVia National Review comes this disgusting ad cut by the United Food and Commerical Workers of Pennsylvania Wine and Spirits Council, which is the public sector union that represents government liquor sellers. The ad is meant to dissuade lawmakers from privatizing liquor sales in Pennsylvania: 

For those who can't watch the video right now, here's the script:

Little girl: You'll never walk me down the aisle on my wedding day, or send me off to college. And you'll never even see me off to high school. A drunk driver took your life and changed mine forever. 

Female narrator: Thanks to current laws and the effectiveness of wine and spirit stores employees Pennsylvania has the lowest death rate associated with alcohol consumption in the nation. Tell your state senator to say no to liquor privatization. We don't want other children to lose their parents. 

As you can see on the Century Council's website, Pennsylvania doesn't appear to actually have "the lowest death rate associated with alcohol consumption." Though I think it's fair to say that it has some of the most tin-eared and shameless public sector employees in the nation. 

Credit: VOA/wikimediaIslamists fighting against the Assad regime in Syria are increasingly sidelining other rebels, who in many cases are not as well equipped or as funded as jihadists like Jabhat al-Nusra.

In an article published today at Reuters Oliver Holmes and Alexander Dziadosz highlight the effect that that the increasing influence of jihadist fighters is having on the conflict in Syria:

(Reuters) - As the Syrian civil war got under way, a former electrician who calls himself Sheikh Omar built up a brigade of rebel fighters. In two years of struggle against President Bashar al-Assad, they came to number 2,000 men, he said, here in the northern city of Aleppo. Then, virtually overnight, they collapsed.

Omar's group, Ghurabaa al-Sham, wasn't defeated by the government. It was dismantled by a rival band of revolutionaries - hardline Islamists.

The Islamists moved against them at the beginning of May. After three days of sporadic clashes Omar's more moderate fighters, accused by the Islamists of looting, caved in and dispersed, according to local residents. Omar said the end came swiftly.

The Islamists confiscated the brigade's weapons, ammunition and cars, Omar said. "They considered this war loot. Maybe they think we are competitors," he said. "We have no idea about their goals. What we have built in two years disappeared in a single day."

The group was effectively marginalized in the struggle to overthrow Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. Around 100 fighters are all that remain of his force, Omar said.

It's a pattern repeated elsewhere in the country. During a 10-day journey through rebel-held territory in Syria, Reuters journalists found that radical Islamist units are sidelining more moderate groups that do not share the Islamists' goal of establishing a supreme religious leadership in the country.

The moderates, often underfunded, fragmented and chaotic, appear no match for Islamist units, which include fighters from organizations designated "terrorist" by the United States.

Recently the Obama administration said that it would send military aid to rebels in Syria, a move that some fear could see weapons fall into the hands of Islamists, whose increased popularity can be attributed in part to the social services they are providing. 

The Reuters article points out that Western officials plan for military aid to be passed through the Supreme Military Council, an organization that still lacks credibility. The head of the Supreme Military Council, Gen. Salim Idriss, has said that there is no chance weapons will find their way to Islamists like Jabhat al-Nusra, despite not having much control of the situation on the ground or of the rebels themselves.

Yesterday, G8 leaders backed plans for a peace conference on Syria. Given that Islamists are sidelining moderates it is hard to see how effective a peace conference could be. It is not as if Al Qaeda-linked fighters are going to consider whatever proposals come out of any peace conference as legitimate or binding, especially consider that they have ambitions beyond Assad’s removal.

The series of rapes in India—the latest involving an American student, which comes just weeks after two separate attacks against two 5-year-olds, one of whom died from her injuries—is prompting calls from feminists that India’s rulers need to do more to fight the country’s deep-seated patriarchy. But as Shikha Dalmia observes, the Indian government has been following the feminist script for nearly half a century with little effect. It would serve the cause of gender equity far better if it simply did its job and provided safe streets, timely justice, and other basic public goods for everyone. The absence of such amenities that are taken for granted in the West is arguably the strongest pillar of patriarchy in India.