Russia, the hosts of the recent G20 summit in September, is being accused of giving visiting heads of state goodie bags that contained, among other things, memory sticks that contained bugging software. The Russians are denying it. [Read more…]

It is rapidly becoming conventional wisdom, because of the determined effort to repeat it at every opportunity by supporters of the NSA and the national security state in general, that all these revelations of government spying is no big deal. Didn’t these people’s mothers’ tell them what mothers all over the globe tell their children when they ask to do something because all their friends are doing it: “If they jump over a cliff, are you going to jump too?” [Read more…]

The Daily Show looks at all the things that president Obama has been kept ignorant about. Or so we are told. [Read more…]

The war between the crazies and the not-crazies in the Republican party seems to be shifting into high gear. Always keep in mind that this division in not ideological at all, except on the most minor issues. The party is pretty much united in wanting to march lock step into a future in which the few rich control everything, the poor are kicked to the curb, the social safety net shredded, the diminishing middle class squeezed, and a backward Christian mentality determines all social values. [Read more…]

The revelations from the Snowden documents have been coming out slowly and as an analyst said on NPR, this is having a far greater impact than if they had been dumped all at once. Observers have noticed that the releases tend to coincide with important events where the people and agenda affected by the release are in the news. [Read more…]

The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi had an interview with a North Carolina Republican party official Don Yelton about why the state was passing new restrictive voting laws. He couldn’t seem to believe his ears at what the man was saying. [Read more…]