US Politics Mega-thread - Page 282

On June 08 2013 08:24 farvacola wrote:

Lol, LSD has rather dramatic effects on hand eye coordination as well as decision making and reaction time. On public roads, it's use while operating a motor vehicle absolutely affects public safety. Helmets are slightly different, but still add to the general safety of roadways through reductions in blunt force trauma related fatalities.

On June 09 2013 18:50 renoB wrote:
And while I realize we all can accept a little lack of freedom (i know its really not much freedom being taken away and that it's silly) for safety for all motorcyclists, the reason I stand firm is because it sets precedent. What risks are okay to take? Whose arbitrary lines of allowable risk do we take and extrapolate for the whole of society and enforce with the power of the state?

On June 09 2013 18:50 renoB wrote:

Well of course it does. I can see where the hilarity is. But driving while influenced by something is completely different than just taking some form of drug. We allow people to drink even though it negatively effects judgement and hand-eye coordination, but because when they take their car on the road it puts others at risk, there are rules against it. Someone drinking or taking acid doesn't mean they're going to drive, get into a fight or put someone else in danger. Is there risk? absolutely. But there's lots of risks in life that we allow, like with drinking.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) announced her support Sunday for bipartisan immigration reform legislation currently under debate in the U.S. Senate.

“I looked at the border security provisions, the E-Verify to make sure we control who’s getting a job in this country, and also making sure that there’s a better legal immigration system, bring the high-tech workers here to make sure that we can have the best and the brightest here in this country to grow our economy,” Ayotte said on CBS r. “This is a good bipartisan solution and I look forward to supporting it.”

Ayotte commonly aligns with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ), two of the bill's co-authors. Ayotte's support is a significant blow to the immigration reform opposition, led in the Senate by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL). But more Republicans will ultimately need to announce support for the legislation to guarantee its eventual passage.

The National Security Agency pushed for the government to “rethink” the Fourth Amendment when it argued in a classified memo that it needed new authorities and capabilities for the information age.

The 2001 memo, later declassified and posted online by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, makes a case to the incoming George W. Bush administration that the NSA needs new authorities and technology to adapt to the Internet era.

In one key paragraph, NSA wrote that its new phase meant the U.S. must reevaluate its approach toward signals intelligence, or “SIGINT,” and the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Mississippi Delta
Scratching a living



... The Delta was already poor before these setbacks, a legacy of slavery. Issaquena County, which has suffered the most severe depopulation, had 7,224 slaves in 1860 and just 587 whites. Its total population today is 1,386. Their average income is just over $10,000, half the level for Mississippi as a whole, and 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 17%, more than twice the national rate. The entire county has ten private businesses (other than farms), employing just 99 people. Like the region as a whole, it suffers from low rates of education and high rates of obesity and diabetes.

“You can’t out-poor the Delta,” says Christopher Masingill, joint head of the Delta Regional Authority, a development agency. In parts of it, he says, people have a lower life expectancy than in Tanzania; other areas do not yet have proper sanitation. Persistently poor places, in turn, naturally experience high levels of emigration, says John Cromartie of the Department of Agriculture, as people leave in search of a better life. It is not just the lack of jobs, points out John Green of the University of Mississippi: even those trained in fields where openings are available, such as nursing, say they would rather move away, to provide their families with better schools and greater opportunities.

Local officials talk optimistically of reviving the Delta’s economy. Mr Masingill predicts a resurgence of manufacturing, thanks to the region’s cheap labour, plentiful land and bountiful natural resources. But local businessmen complain that because of poor health and education, the Delta’s workers are not up to snuff. Mr Angel of Lake Village prefers to hire itinerant Mexican labourers, rather than locals, to man his cotton gin, for example. Moreover, manufacturing in rural areas has suffered an especially severe decline in recent years, presumably because it tends to be of the low-tech sort most vulnerable to foreign competition. ...

On June 10 2013 03:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Dat delta... yeash...

Anyone else tempted to just suggest paying Issaquena County residents to move away and turn the area into a national park? Or the opposite - flood the area with immigrants. Seems something radical would be needed...

On June 10 2013 03:41 aksfjh wrote:

I'd be down for the national park idea, but the immigration idea would just be roughly the same as returning the region to a slave economy.

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he wants to mount a Supreme Court challenge to the federal government logging Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.

Paul, R-Ky., a leading voice in the Libertarian movement, told “Fox News Sunday” he wants to get enough signatures to file a class-action lawsuit before the high court and will appeal to younger Americans, who appear to be advancing the cause of less government and civil liberties.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington.”

Rail Project At Los Angeles Port Draws Environmentalists' Ire

In California, a high-profile lawsuit is seeking to halt construction of a new $500 million rail yard next to the Port of Los Angeles. Activists, including a national environmental group that's spearheading the opposition, say the massive project would mean even more pollution for nearby neighborhoods that already have some of the worst air in the country.

The planned Southern California International Gateway is part of a multibillion-dollar effort that aims to ensure that L.A.'s sprawling port doesn't lose business once the expansion of the Panama Canal is completed.

Combined, the side-by-side ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles handle almost half of all the consumer goods shipped into the U.S., and this clearinghouse of globalization takes up a lot of real estate. ...

Senate Democrats are rebuffing a tough GOP border security “trigger” amendment, putting Republicans in a predicament over whether to support immigration reform anyway and risk angering conservatives, or back away and face the wrath of Hispanics.

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), the author of the provision, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have suggested the amendment is important to holding their support for reform. But on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called their bluff and rejected the measure.

“I will not accept any poison pills,” Reid told Univision. “I mean, we have a senator from Texas, Senator Cornyn, who wants to change border security, a trigger, saying that it has to be a 100 percent border security, or they’ll be no bill. That’s a poison pill. If people have suggestions like they did in the Judiciary Committee to change the bill a little bit, I’ll be happy to take a look at that. But we’re not going to have big changes in this legislation.”

Cornyn’s RESULTS amendment forbids undocumented immigrants from obtaining permanent residency until four criteria are met: 100 percent surveillance of the southern border, a minimum 90 percent apprehension rate for illegal border crossings, an operational biometric ID system at air and sea ports, and implementation of E-Verify nationally. He says the measure is critical to ensuring border security.

“The choice for Senate Democrats when I offer my amendment is very simple: if they are sincere about securing the border, here is their chance,” Cornyn said in a statement. “If they oppose my plan, their claims of securing the border are nothing but lip service designed to manipulate the American people into supporting this flawed bill.”

A bipartisan group of eight prominent US Senators announced a new bill today to declassify the court opinions that give the US National Security Agency the legal power to carry out the sweeping internet surveillance program known as PRISM and the separate phone records surveillance program, both revealed last week by leaked documents. “Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law," said Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the architect of the bill, a version of which he originally introduced last December, but which failed to gain traction at the time.

Now that surveillance is back in the news in a big way, Merkley is trying again to pass his bill, getting the backing of seven of his colleagues, including prominent privacy-advocating senators Al Franken (D-MN), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Republican senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Dean Heller (R-NV) are also endorsing the bill. The bill specifically targets the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secret legal system set up in 1978 that issues classified orders requiring companies to hand over information as part of investigations into foreign threats, including suspected terrorist plotters.

Washington (CNN) -- Senior State Department and Diplomatic Security officials may have covered up or stopped investigations of inappropriate or even criminal misconduct by staff, according to an internal memo from the department's Office of the Inspector General.

The timeline surrounding the allegations places the incidents during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's tenure, opening the possibility that a widening scandal might taint both her record and her possible political aspirations. Clinton has also taken heat for the department's response to the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Regarding the latest allegations, CNN was provided the documents by a lawyer for a whistle-blower who is a former senior inspector general investigator.

They include:

• An active U.S. ambassador "routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children," the memo says. The ambassador's protective detail and others "were well aware of the behavior," the memo asserts. When a diplomatic security officer tried to investigate, undersecretary of state for management Patrick Kennedy allegedly ordered the investigator "not to open a formal investigation."

On Tuesday, CNN obtained a statement from the ambassador, who vigorously denied the allegations, calling them "baseless."

On June 10 2013 03:36 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Link

Dat delta... yeash...

Anyone else tempted to just suggest paying Issaquena County residents to move away and turn the area into a national park? Or the opposite - flood the area with immigrants. Seems something radical would be needed...

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said on CNN's "AC 360" Tuesday night that reporters should be prosecuted for publishing stories with leaked classified information.

After King explained why he believes the recent NSA leaks pose a grave threat to national security, host Anderson Cooper asked him if he thinks the reporters who break stories off of leaked information should be punished in some way.

"If they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude," King said.

"I think on something of this magnitude, there is an obligation both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something that would so severely compromise national security."

On June 12 2013 13:03 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Thus ends the AP reporters scandal, now Reporters should be jailed:



Source

On June 12 2013 16:48 Melliflue wrote:

Weren't the recent NSA leaks done via The Guardian, which is a paper in the UK? How would it make any difference if US journalists could get jailed for reporting on leaked classified information? I imagine it would just push any leak-source to a foreign newspaper.

It would be weird if all US news outlets were banned from reporting on it but Americans could still see the information on foreign newspaper sites. Then either the US would have to censor foreign news sites from American citizens or be able to punish any journalist for reporting on leaked classified information.