Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have an amendment to the PATRIOT Act that makes it clear the Obama Administration briefed the Intelligence Committees in February on an intelligence collection program, conducted under PATRIOT authority, that interprets the language of the law so broadly as to mean something it really doesn’t say. The amendment reads, in [...]

I sort of get the feeling that the entire legislative effort on cyberwar is going on in a classified annex. Nevertheless, even from what we can see, we’ve got a dispute. As I noted a few weeks back, The House Armed Services Committee included a provision that explicitly granted DOD the power to conduct clandestine [...]

The Administration just issued its official position on the House Armed Services Committee Defense Authorization bill. In it, Obama issues veto threats on several issues, including an extra engine for the Joint Strike Fighter and limits on START nuclear reductions (but not, it must be said, on any delay of DADT repeal, though he did [...]

We’re on our second near-record tornado this year and summer hasn’t even started. Joplin, MO and Birmingham, AL have been especially hard hit, but much of flyover country is set to spend the summer hunkering down to hide from truly horrifying weather. Yet Eric Cantor wants to hold disaster relief hostage to debt hysteria. (h/t [...]

The DNC and Midwestern state Democratic Parties are rolling out an extravaganza today, using the occasion of Chrysler paying back some of its federal loans to mock GOP presidential candidates for opposing the auto bailout. The DNC had a press conference with Jennifer Granholm, Ted Strickland, and Bob King to mock people like Mitt, T-Paw, [...]

The government appears to hope three time’s a charm. The last two times they subpoenaed James Risen in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, Judge Leonie Brinkema quashed the subpoena. But they’re trying again, this time to get him to testify at Sterling’s trial. It appears likely they planned to do this all along and crafted [...]

I’ve been reading the National Academy of Sciences Anthrax Report and noted something odd in follow-up to the McClatchy report of the other day describing unexplained tin and silicon in one of the anthrax samples. (Here’s Jim White’s post on the report.) As McClatchy reported, there’s some weird data about silicon and tin in some [...]

I’ve been reviewing the docket on Thomas Drake’s case to see whether it touches on the privacy concerns Drake had about NSA’s post-9/11 activities. It appears it doesn’t, even while there was an ongoing dispute about whether or not Drake will have access to the materials he submitted to the DOD Inspector General in support [...]

Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower, was on 60 Minutes this evening. I’ll have more to say about his appearance and case going forward, but I just wanted to highlight a critical detail revealed by 60 Minutes: the relative cost of Trailblazer–the SAIC implemented program Michael Hayden championed–and ThinThread–the program Drake and others claim was more [...]

I’ll admit, I was merely disgusted when Mickey Mouse tried to trademark Seal Team 6. But Mickey’s seeming embrace of GateGrope is far more disturbing. (h/t Bruce Schneier) In a press release boasting about changes to Walt Disney World’s Star Tour ride, Disney boasts of their imitation TSA checkpoints! The second room of the queue [...]