US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

huh ok. makes you wonder tho.

Hillary denied she was going to be SoS too.

was running for prez at the time iirc tho

and now she has different reasons to not want to look like she's job hunting

Trying to fill Robert MacNamara's shoes, eh? Not a bad move for her, No more elections, doesn't have to share power with 99 other prissy millionaires, could still show up on Sunday morning political shows and dispense words of wisdom. What they used to call a sinecure.

she hasn't killed quite as many ppl as McNamara, but give her a year and a half.

Does the World Ban have a quota?

Suggest World Ban

ty sir

Glad to see the Drake whistleblower prosecution largely fall apart.

Here's part of the NY Times take on the plea bargain:

A former spy agency employee agreed late Thursday to plead guilty to a minor charge in a highly publicized leak prosecution, undercutting the Obama administration’s unusual campaign to prosecute government officials who disclose classified information to the press.

The National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake, had faced a possible 35 years in prison if convicted on felony charges under the Espionage Act. Instead, he agreed to admit to a misdemeanor of misusing the agency’s computer system by providing “official N.S.A. information” to an unauthorized person, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. Prosecutors said in the written plea agreement that they would not oppose a sentence under which Mr. Drake would serve no time.

A formal plea hearing was set for Friday morning in Baltimore. The presiding judge, Richard D. Bennett of the district court, could impose a sentence of up to a year in prison. But legal experts said it would be highly unusual to impose a prison term when the Justice Department was not seeking incarceration.

The deal represented the almost complete collapse of the government’s effort to make an example of Mr. Drake, who was charged last year in a 10-count indictment that accused him of obstructing justice and lying to investigators. It is uncertain whether the outcome will influence the handling of three pending leak cases or others still under investigation.

The case against Mr. Drake is among five such prosecutions for disclosures to the news media brought since President Obama took office in 2009: one each against defendants from the National Security Agency, the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the military and the State Department. In the past, such prosecutions have been extremely rare — three or four in history, depending on how they are counted, and never more than one under any other president.

Officials say they have been prompted by a bipartisan belief in Congress and in both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations that leaks were getting out of hand.

The flurry of criminal cases has led to both praise and criticism for Mr. Obama, who entered office promising unprecedented transparency but in less than three years in office has far outdone the security-minded Bush administration in pursuing leaks. Some political analysts say Mr. Obama’s liberal credentials may give him political cover for the crackdown.

The Drake case was seen as a test of the tougher line against unauthorized disclosures. But news media coverage of the charges against Mr. Drake, 54, an introspective computer specialist, has highlighted his motivation for sharing information about N.S.A. technology with a reporter for The Baltimore Sun in 2006 and 2007: the agency was rejecting a $3 million in-house program called ThinThread in favor of a $1-billion-plus contractor-run program called Trailblazer. His supporters have portrayed him as a diligent public servant who was trying to save taxpayers’ money and strengthen national security, not damage it.

Jane Mayer, who broke the original news.

More Republican hardball hostage-taking:

From the Washington Post

An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that the lawmaker stands by his vow to block any candidate. Late last month, McConnell led 44 senators in a letter to the White House calling for structural changes to the bureau. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has accused GOP opponents of discriminating against Warren because she is female, but McConnell’s complaints are much broader.

“It’s not sexist. It’s not Elizabeth Warren-specific,” McConnell spokesman Donald Stewart said. “It’s any nominee.

That's regarding the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

"It's any nominee"

put this on a bumper sticker!

So this line of discussion has been done to death, but I think one of the biggest frustrations that will plague me to my dying day are the conservatives so willfully ignoring their own histories to pretend that they were never immigrants themselves. I mean, jesus.

nazareth immigrant iirc

lol

That's possibly the first place I go with relatives who complain about The Messicans, but my mom's response is 'my grandparents played by THE RULES' like she'd know their circs, since adults in the early part of the century really well known for being honest with their kids about whatever.

also dutifully filled out all their clear and concise paperwork properly

it was the style of the time

Yeah, apparently Swedes don't lie? Other migrant grandparent of my mother's was an illiterate Polish girl of 11 upon arrival in Duluth.

I'm up tonight
Because my Swedes don't lie
And I'm tryin' to feel ya, boy

my mom was an illegal iirc

http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/weinergate-effect.jpg

really wish this said "the weiner effect"

Palin e-mails released today. Fun fun fun:

Tim Crawford, the treasurer of her political action committee, Sarah PAC, said in a statement that everyone should read the emails. "The thousands upon thousands of emails released today show a very engaged Governor Sarah Palin being the CEO of her state," he said.

"The emails detail a Governor hard at work," he said.

Hard at work till she quit halfway through her term.

The major dailies are trying to crowdsource this, right?

I hate Palin as much as anyone, but is there anything really newsworthy in this? We're just trying to accumulate even more evidence that's she's an idiot?

Or is this supposed to potentially shed light on the scandal(s) around her leading up to the 08 election, where (can't remember this exactly, but) she tried to get some state trooper fired because he did something to Todd, or whatever?

and had a grandchild out of wedlock?

yeah, i know, there's probably juicy stuff there. but NYT going to the length of crowdsourcing the examination of the document, and all of that...just seems odd.

anything to keep your mind off the heartache of Bam

wait I thought Bam and Palin were the same person

Never said that (one's killed people, another just wants to)

Wasn't there some article posted here saying that Palin was a somewhat decent governor of Alaska?

i dunno but there was one in the atlantic.

yeah thats the one posted earlier iirc

Dude who wrote it was on Maher last night. After laying out some of the things she did, Garofalo was all "yeah but she still tried to ban books and she rigged elections etc"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/interactive/palin-emails/2011/6/10/my-sarah-how-youve-changed

huh.

I read articles about her elsewhere that were very critical of her half-term as governor and her stint as Mayor in Wassilli.

I <3 Garofalo, but how is she still visible?

She falls in the wavelength range from about 380 or 400 nanometres to about 760 or 780 nm with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz.

good for her

...wow!

must admit this is fairly cool

until the net gets regulated like it will be here.

Janeane Garofalo is a textbook case of why people hate celebrity liberals.

Weiner "seeking treatment"! What a fucked-up pandering joke.

Garofalo is on the new Criminal Minds show, which might give her mad cred with idiots.

Weiner "seeking treatment"! What a fucked-up pandering joke.

― already president FYI (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 12 June 2011 14:15 (6 hours ago)

I dunno, I'm on the fence about this one. His behavior was pretty pathological and crazy. "Seeking treatment" is a lame way to describe it but dude definitely needs some therapy.

His behavior was MALE! His embrace of Zionist loons is more pathological.

Morbs OTM.

His behavior was MALE!
― already president FYI (Dr Morbius), Sunday, June 12, 2011 8:29 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

It just was SO extreme. And so totally reckless. I know the general consensus is that he's just an idiot, but it has this feeling of self-destruction and addiction to me.

his embrace of Zionist loons isn't pathological, it's a good career move!