US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1163

On July 12 2014 01:58 oneofthem wrote:
if you have a poll showing 90% of americans are in favor of cannibalism or something it does not make cannibalism good. at some point the poll numbers become less pivots against issues and more of an issue in themselves, depending on the poll question.

The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;

• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;

• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;

• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

The individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called “FISA recap”—short for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under that law, the Justice Department must convince a judge with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe that American targets are not only agents of an international terrorist organization or other foreign power, but also “are or may be” engaged in or abetting espionage, sabotage, or terrorism. The authorizations must be renewed by the court, usually every 90 days for U.S. citizens.

The spreadsheet shows 7,485 email addresses listed as monitored between 2002 and 2008. Many of the email addresses on the list appear to belong to foreigners whom the government believes are linked to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Among the Americans on the list are individuals long accused of terrorist activity, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, who were killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.

But a three-month investigation by The Intercept—including interviews with more than a dozen current and former federal law enforcement officials involved in the FISA process—reveals that in practice, the system for authorizing NSA surveillance affords the government wide latitude in spying on U.S. citizens.

WASHINGTON -- The GOP-led House of Representatives embraced a former stimulus measure Friday, voting to make it and another related tax cut permanent, adding $287 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

The largest part of the cut, worth more than $263 billion, is making permanent so-called bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to write off the cost of capital investments and improvements much more quickly.

It was enacted twice during the administration of President George W. Bush, and the most recent version expired last year. The idea behind it is that if lawmakers give businesses a break during tough economic times, they will speed up major equipment purchases and stimulate economic activity.

Those who support making such a stimulus measure permanent argue that it would give businesses the certainty to be able to plan their investments.

But opponents -- primarily Democrats -- mocked the idea, pointing to Congressional Research Service reports that found the break was a weak stimulus to begin with, and that the stimulative effect is likely to fall even further if the break becomes permanent.

"Even as a stimulus, the analysis shows that for every dollar that is invested we get 20 cents of growth," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), a member of the Ways and Means Committee. "A fellow could go bankrupt with that kind of economics, and that's exactly what they would have the country doing and not meeting its other needs while funding something that doesn't work."

Doggett and others noted that while Republicans have been adamant about finding ways to pay for other things, from unemployment insurance to the money the federal government needs for its highway funds, they appeared to have no problem with simply tacking the enormous cost of the tax cuts onto the deficit.

"Yesterday, the Ways and Means Committee was working on a markup of legislation for another short-term extension of the highway trust fund -- you know, the transportation infrastructure investment we desperately need in this country," said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.). "We were scratching and clawing to try to find an additional $10 billion over the next 10 months to try to keep some of these projects moving forward, and yet here today, we have another permanent change to the tax code at a cost of $287 billion over the next 10 years and not a nickel of it paid for."

On July 12 2014 10:18 Wolfstan wrote:
Disagree with the vote, work on the deficit, keep some ammo in the chamber for stimulus. If a business doesn't see investing in depreciating assets during the last 5 years of growth as necessary, it shouldn't be worth it during periods of negative growth.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the Obama administration's environmental protections designed to reduce water pollution from mountaintop-removal coal mining.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Environmental Protection Agency acted within its authority when it instituted two measures under the Clean Water Act that address damage from surface mining.

Under a process set up in 2009, EPA began screening mining permit applications made to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, initiating discussions with the Corps on proposed mining projects that EPA considered likely to damage navigable waters.

In 2011, the EPA recommended that states impose more stringent conditions for issuing mining permits. EPA may object if the permit, in the agency's view, does not meet state water quality standards or other provisions of the Clean Water Act.

In the appeals court ruling, Judge Brett Kavanaugh said the EPA's recommendation, known as a "final guidance," is not an agency action reviewable by the courts. If an applicant is denied a permit, the applicant may then challenge the denial in court.

In a statement, EPA welcomed the ruling and said it is committed to consistently using its authority under the Clean Water Act to protect the health and environment of Appalachian communities.

The agency says it is working with states, mining companies and the public to enable environmentally responsible mining projects to move forward.

Mary Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, said the EPA has a critical role to play in ensuring the safety of Appalachian waterways and that states simply cannot do the job themselves.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) said Friday that his campaign and his supporters have found "over 8,300 questionable ballots cast" in the runoff election for U.S. Senate, which Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) won.

"For the last two weeks, more than two hundred volunteers for from all over Mississippi have worked tirelessly in an effort to gain access to election records in order to ensure the integrity of the primary process in Mississippi," McDaniel said in a statement on Friday. "We have found over 8,300 questionable ballots cast, many of which were unquestionably cast by voters ineligible to participate in the June 24th runoff election."

The statement is the latest claim by the McDaniel campaign about the evidence it has been hoping to find over the runoff election. Since the runoff, McDaniel and his supporters have accused Cochran, who McDaniel challenged, of foul play and also claimed the runoff was rife with voter fraud. Cochran reached out to African Americans and Democrats to win the runoff.

Earlier in the week McDaniel's lawyer said the campaign had found proof that "several thousand" ineligible voters cast their ballot in the runoff. Cochran won the runoff by 7,667 votes. McDaniel's campaign is hoping to prove that Cochran was only declared the winner through counting faulty votes and there should be a new election.

McDaniel, in the Friday statement, also called on the Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (R) to allow McDaniel's campaign access to voting records which McDaniel said they have not had access to yet.

"As a result of the misleading information coming from the Secretary of State's office, many Clerks were confused about proper disclosure of election materials to the candidates," McDaniel said. "This has forced the Clerks and my team to needlessly expend resources on mandamus requests for materials that the statutes clearly say I am entitled to review."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Friday blasted Sen. Rand Paul's "isolationist" foreign policy, calling the Kentucky Republican "curiously blind" to the threat Iraqi militants pose to U.S. national security.

Perry wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he found it "disheartening to hear fellow Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), suggest that our nation should ignore what’s happening in Iraq." That argument is flawed, he wrote, because "it means ignoring the profound threat that the group now calling itself the Islamic State poses to the United States and the world."

The Texas governor wrote that the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was "well-trained, technologically sophisticated and adept at recruitment" and equipped with passports that could allow militants to show up in the U.S. without a visa and potentially wreak havoc, a threat "to which Paul seems curiously blind."

Perry also slammed Paul for invoking former President Ronald Reagan in the Kentucky senator's own op-ed advocating against military intervention in Iraq. Paul was "wrong" in writing that Reagan wouldn't have intervened in Iraq because he "conveniently omitted Reagan’s long internationalist record of leading the world with moral and strategic clarity," the governor argued.

On July 13 2014 09:29 coverpunch wrote:
I think it is so interesting to see the glacial 180 of Republicans becoming interventionists (and separately, Democrats wanting less engagement with the world but not quite isolationism).

On July 13 2014 09:29 coverpunch wrote:
I think it is so interesting to see the glacial 180 of Republicans becoming interventionists (and separately, Democrats wanting less engagement with the world but not quite isolationism).

On July 13 2014 10:03 Mindcrime wrote:


republicans becoming interventionists? wait, what? neither party has advocated non-interventionism since before wwii

On July 13 2014 10:57 coverpunch wrote:

No, but Republicans have been far more reluctant to exercise American power except for direct threats to Americans or American interests (e.g. oil). Democrats have been far more willing to intervene to go to spread American values or to topple leaders they feel are tyrannical (e.g. Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Milosevic).

On July 13 2014 10:57 coverpunch wrote:

No, but Republicans have been far more reluctant to exercise American power except for direct threats to Americans or American interests (e.g. oil). Democrats have been far more willing to intervene to go to spread American values or to topple leaders they feel are tyrannical (e.g. Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Milosevic).

On July 13 2014 10:57 coverpunch wrote:

No, but Republicans have been far more reluctant to exercise American power except for direct threats to Americans or American interests (e.g. oil). Democrats have been far more willing to intervene to go to spread American values or to topple leaders they feel are tyrannical (e.g. Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Milosevic).