NSA Having Flashbacks to Watergate Era (+video)

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NSABy Ken Dilanian

The National Security Agency is facing its worst crisis since the domestic spying scandals four decades ago led to the first formal oversight and overhaul of U.S. intelligence operations.

Thanks to former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden’s flood of leaks to the media, and the Obama administration’s uneven response to them, morale at the spy agency responsible for intercepting communications of terrorists and foreign adversaries has plummeted, former officials say. Even sympathetic lawmakers are calling for new curbs on the NSA’s powers.

“This is a secret intelligence agency that’s now in the news every day,” said Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and later led the CIA. “Each day, the workforce wakes up and reads the daily indictment.”

President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that many Americans have lost trust in the nation’s largest intelligence agency. “There’s no doubt that, for all the work that’s been done to protect the American people’s privacy, the capabilities of the NSA are scary to people,” he said in a CNN interview.

He added, “Between all the safeguards and checks that we put in place within the executive branch, and the federal court oversight that takes place on the program, and congressional oversight, people are still concerned as to whether their emails are being read or their phone calls are being listened to.”

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Corker: Congress Doesn’t Know Extent of NSA Surveillance

By Washington Free Beacon Staff

Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) told Fox News Sunday even he was not sure to what extent the National Security Agency kept tabs on Americans, adding he wanted the NSA to brief Congress “from top to bottom” to explain the programs in place and help ensure appropriate oversight.

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Court: No Mail-In Ballots for Colorado Recall Election for Anti-Gun Legislators

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

With mail ballots out of the question, recall elections for two Democratic state senators who backed new firearm restrictions will test how enthusiastic their backers are about getting to the polls in person — and how badly gun-rights advocates want to kick out the lawmakers.

At a time when most Colorado voters prefer voting by mail, a court ruling this week that requires in-person voting injects uncertainty about which side has the advantage in the state’s first legislative recalls…

Democrats were hoping that an elections law they passed this year requiring mail ballots to all voters would boost turnout with their base. But a Denver district judge ruled this week that third-party candidates should have until Aug. 26 to qualify for the Sept. 10 recall ballot. That means there won’t be enough time to send mail ballots to everyone, except for overseas voters and those requesting one in an emergency.

Recall supporters say the court decision gives them an advantage because gun-rights advocates who pushed for the election are more driven to go to the polls and make sure Morse and Giron are kicked out of office.

“We happen to be pleased with the decision. We think it’s in our favor that people actually have to show up at the ballot box to vote,” said Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for the Basic Freedom Defense Fund, which is supporting the recalls. “We feel like we have a very motivated base.”

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Doctors’ Organization Demands Hospitals Perform More Abortions, Young Doctors Eager to Learn Killing Art

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In a statement set to be published in the September issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 100 ob-gyns condemn new state restrictions on abortion as a “political regression.” The article, obtained by TIME, criticizes hospitals for relinquishing abortion to stand-alone clinics that are easily targeted by abortion activists, and calls on the medical community to integrate the procedure into women’s-health services and medical training…

It’s a rare call to arms for the medical community, which tends to lay low when it comes to abortion. A 2011 study from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that while 97% of ob-gyn doctors in the U.S. have met with a patient who wants an abortion, just 14% actually perform the procedure.

Hospitals provide just 4% of abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit sexual-health-research organization, and many facilities limit the procedure to rare cases, like fetal abnormalities or when the life of the woman is at risk. The majority of hospitals perform fewer than 30 abortions per year. Others refuse to provide the procedure at all…

Despite these obstacles, however, pro-choice physicians say they have already made progress toward normalizing abortion in the medical community, most notably by expanding training through residency programs and family-planning fellowships. About 50% of the 200 ob-gyn residency programs in the U.S. now integrate abortion into training requirements, up from just 12% in 1992. Professors believe that a new generation of doctors will use their training to bring abortion back into hospitals and doctors’ offices. A 2011 study of ob-gyns found that female doctors and those ages 35 and younger were far more likely than their colleagues to perform abortions.

“It is very unusual for us to find new residents who don’t want to learn abortions,” Darney says. “They may find it difficult to practice, but we have a whole new generation of young women who are replacing the old men, and they have a very different view about their relationships with their patients. It’s very promising.”

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Alaska May Make Gay Partners ‘Family’

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Photo Credit: Wonderlane

Photo Credit: Wonderlane

The Alaska State Personnel Board is considering including same-sex partners of state employees in the definition of “immediate family” for purposes of leave.

A proposed change in rules also would allow state employees to take leave due to a serious health condition of a same-sex partner.

Same-sex marriage is not legal in Alaska because of a state constitutional amendment. Nancy Sutch, a deputy director within the state Division of Personnel and Labor Relations, said by email that the proposed change in rules stems from a recent review of a 2005 Alaska Supreme Court decision.

That decision, in a case over health insurance and other benefits, found it is unconstitutional to offer valuable benefits to the spouses of public employees but not to same-sex domestic partners.

Sutch said the proposed regulations will set out requirements that are similar to those for insurance coverage, which have been in effect since 2006. Fuller descriptions of the proposed changes were not immediately available.

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U.S. Spy Agency Edges into the Light After Snowden Revelations

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

There was a time when the U.S. National Security Agency was so secretive that government officials dared not speak its name in public. NSA, the joke went, stood for “No Such Agency.”

That same agency this month held an on-the-record conference call with reporters, issued a lengthy press release to rebut a newspaper story, and posted documents on a newly launched open website – icontherecord.tumblr.com (which stands for intelligence community on the record).

The steps were taken under pressure as President Barack Obama’s administration tries to calm a public storm over disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the surveillance agency and its British counterpart scoop up far more Internet and phone data than previously known.

The NSA’s moves out of the shadows were meant to show that it operates lawfully and fixes mistakes when they are detected, but not everyone is convinced that it is a fundamental shift toward more openness at the intelligence agencies.

Some steps toward openness were unprecedented.

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When Energy Dreams Fall Short

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

If the energy visions of past years had come true, throngs of Americans would be using switchgrass to fuel their cars and running their homes on electricity from nuclear fusion or carbon-capturing coal plants.

But reality has worked out differently.

Many of the nation’s most ambitious energy projects have fallen far short of their lofty goals, either because they were unrealistically optimistic, took too long develop or were abandoned as markets shifted. EPA offered a reminder of that reality this month, when it made sharp cuts in its production estimates for an advanced biofuel called cellulosic ethanol.

Some experts caution that struggling technologies can still strike gold, making it hard to judge when it’s too soon to stop investing in them.

“When do you know when to cut your losses?” asked Margot Anderson, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy project. “When is a flop a flop?”

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Texas Rodeo to Feature Obama Clown

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Texas rodeo isn’t shying away from controversy — instead, they are doing the opposite and promoting an appearance of a rodeo clown wearing a mask of President Obama this weekend.

“You’ve heard about the controversy surrounding the Obama clown in Missouri,” read an announcement from the Mesquite Rodeo, according to the Dallas Observer.

“This weekend, an Obama clown is a special guest star as the Mesquie Rodeo puts on the grand finale to its 2013 season with non-stop action you will only find in the aptly named ‘Rodeo Capital of Texas,’” the announcement added.

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No, Obamacare Is Not A Good Deal For Young People In The Long Run, Not Even Close

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Photo Credit: LaDawna's pics

Photo Credit: LaDawna’s pics

Progressives are becoming increasingly concerned at the prospect of millions of uninsured young people deciding to push the easy button next year by simply paying a very small fine[1] rather than obtain health coverage. Consequently, they have turned to a new argument to get those under 30 to act against their self interest by signing up for the Exchanges. Now we are being told that Obamacare will be a good deal for young people in the long run since whatever short-term losses they incur in the form of higher premiums will be more than made up later when they are older and get to pay lower premiums than they would in today’s market.

But those making these arguments haven’t offered any analysis to back up their claims. The conceptual point evidently is supposed to be intuitively obvious. As Ezra Klein puts it:

Young people grow old. Healthy people get sick. Rich people become poor. The people overpaying to keep costs low today are the people underpaying 10 or 20 years from now.

As a health policy skeptic, I know that lots of intuitive ideas—such as that prevention saves money—turn out to be false upon closer examination. So when I did some actual analysis of this latest idea, it did not surprise me to learn that this claim is dead wrong. Once the time value of money is taken into account, the average young person will be worse off under Obamacare even if they live long enough to be a near-elderly person who pays premiums that are well below actuarially fair rates.

In the short run, millions of young will be better off without Obamacare

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Egyptians are convinced Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

By Jay Newton-Small

There seems to be something of a disconnect between who Egyptians think America is supporting, and who America actually is supporting in Cairo. In the U.S., story after story has been written about how the Obama Administration has bent over backwards not to call this latest change in government a “coup” and has been relatively muted in its reaction to the deaths of so many civilians – upwards of 1,000 in the last week alone.

Yet Egyptians remain convinced that President Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed President Mohamed Morsi. At a lunch at the Egyptian Ambassador’s residence on Thursday, Dr. Mohamed Abou El-Ghar, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, bluntly warned a small gathering of journalists and policy wonks that he fears, “America is losing Egypt…There is a very strong perception that they are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and they are against other parties,” he said.

The perception began even before the Egyptians elected Morsi, Abou el-Ghar said, when Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and 2008 GOP presidential nominee, met with members of the Muslin Brotherhood in February 2012 but not representatives from competing parties. The headlines were: U.S. Warms to the Muslim Brotherhood. It was furthered when U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson criticized Egypt’s military for interfering in July when opponents deposed Morsi. That view has become more widespread since, with the Pentagon’s decision to defer delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt and the Administration’s review of aid to Cairo.

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Photo Credit: Bryan Denton

Photo Credit: Bryan Denton

As Egyptians Ignore Curfew, Talk of a U.S.-Brotherhood Conspiracy

By Rod Nordland

The sounds made lately by curfew violators here are mostly not shouts or gunshots, but the clacking of dice on wooden backgammon boards, the clicking of dominoes on cafe tables crowded with hookahs and grumbling fueled by years of upheaval.

When the conversation turns to politics, the predominant topic is a surprise to American ears: the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt.

However crackpot that view may sound, it is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month.

For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation of the curfew, the biggest danger was not from police officers and soldiers at checkpoints, but from angry men with a chip on their shoulders and a grudge against Al Jazeera, the Western press and America.

The “people’s committees,” which sprung up in Egyptian neighborhoods as a counterweight to the Muslim Brotherhood, in theory were disbanded last week. But that did not stop self-appointed guardians in the Zaki Street market of the Maadi neighborhood from repeatedly demanding identity documents, letters of permission and, especially, proof of not being affiliated with Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network, which is reviled because it is owned by Qatar, a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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FAA OKs Drones Over Alaska Oil Area

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drones_The FAA has cleared the way for unmanned aircraft, or drones, to fly for the Alaskan oil industry.

The Petroleum News reports approval for two remote-controlled aircraft to fly over the Arctic Ocean is an aviation milestone.

ConocoPhillips requested permission for the drone flights. But the company says it’s not quite ready to put them to use.

Read more from this story HERE.