Matt Birk

What’s interesting in the news today?

The hits just keep coming. The DoJ is fighting the release of a court opinion that found the surveillance programs activities unconstitutional. From MotherJones

“In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.”

“For those who follow the secret and often complex world of high-tech government spying, this was an aha moment. The FISA court Wyden referred to oversees the surveillance programs run by the government, authorizing requests for various surveillance activities related to national security, and it does this behind a thick cloak of secrecy. Wyden’s statements led to an obvious conclusion: He had seen a secret FISA court opinion that ruled that one surveillance program was unconstitutional and violated the spirit of the law. But, yet again, Wyden could not publicly identify this program.”

More cover-up.

Not millions…. billions. From Bloomberg

“Collect telephone numbers for billions of U.S. calls, load the information into super-fast computers and you can start building a map of connections revealing patterns or oddities to help spot a terrorist.”

“The U.S. government’s primary electronic surveillance arm, the National Security Agency, is doing just that — vacuuming up U.S. phone records and, at least in certain circumstances, analyzing them to develop leads that authorities can pursue to identify and stop terror plots.”

Some of those hits are friendly fire too. From TheHill

“Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday disputed a claim President Obama made at a press conference only moments earlier, when the president said that every member of Congress had been briefed on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic phone surveillance program.”

““I knew about the program because I specifically sought it out,” Merkley said on MSNBC. “It’s not something that’s briefed outside the Intelligence Committee. I had to get special permission to find out about the program. It raised concerns for me. … When I saw what was being done, I felt it was so out of sync with the plain language of the law and that it merited full public examination, and that’s why I called for the declassification.”

There went the blame Bush meme too.

Even NBCNews?

“The National Security Agency has at times mistakenly intercepted the private email messages and phone calls of Americans who had no link to terrorism, requiring Justice Department officials to report the errors to a secret national security court and destroy the data, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials. “

“Another former senior official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed Blair’s recollection and said the incident created serious problems for the Justice Department, which represents the NSA before the federal judges on the secret court.

The judges “were really upset about this,” said the former official. As a result, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged to the judges that the intelligence agencies would take steps to correct the problem as a condition of renewing the NSA’s surveillance program. “

Next up, does the US want to destroy privacy around the world? From BusinessInsider

“”It’s well past time that we have a debate about whether that’s the kind of country and world in which we want to live,” Greenwald said on CNN. “We haven’t had that debate because it’s all done in secrecy and the Obama administration has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody who thinks about exposing it or writing about it or even doing journalism about it. It’s well past time that that come to an end.”

The Obama administration and some members of Congress have defended the use of the programs. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the NSA’s collection of phone data has been going on for seven years. Feinstein said it’s about “protecting America.”

“People like Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss can have press conferences threatening people for bringing light to what it is they’re doing, but the only people who are going to be investigated are them,” Greenwald said in response.”

And it’s starting to look like this isn’t just on foreigners as first claimed. From WeaselZippers

“Anyone can appreciate the need to go after foreign terrorists, even that some information might cross over to some Americans who might be in league with foreign terrorists. Yet the order that allowed this massive NSA grab didn’t even give that as a justification, the order says the following:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, the Custodian of Records shall produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or “telephony metadata” created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata.”

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And look what James Rosen found in the Friday Night News Dump. Susan Rice Benghazi documents. From TheGretaWire/FoxInsider

“State Dept does a ‘document dump’ late on a Friday – 97 pages of documents relating to Ambassador Susan Rice’s television appearances”

Hmmmmm……

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ObamaCare Navigators, coming to a red state near you. Or as I like to call it, ACORN Reborn. From WatchDog.org

“In those states where there is a significant level of hostility toward ObamaCare, trained “navigators” will be on the ground to ensure the program is successfully implemented, senior administration officials said Thursday during a conference call.”

“Another administration official on the call said funding is available through the Department of Health and Human Services for ObamaCare navigators who she described as “trained in-person consumer assistants.” The official also told reporters $150 million is available in supplemental grants for community health centers, which she said are “quite prevalent in Florida and Texas.””

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I’m not a Ravens fan at all. But I like this guy. 🙂 From TheWashingtonExaminer

“Retired Baltimore Ravens center Matt Birk, who won a Super Bowl with the team last year, skipped the team’s visit to the White House due to President Obama’s support for Planned Parenthood.

“I have great respect for the office of the presidency but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood,’” Birk, a former Minnesota Viking, told a local Minnesota sports blog. “I’m very confused by [Obama’s] statement,” he explained. “”For God to bless a place where they’re ending 330,000 lives a year? I just chose not to attend.”