Neocons: Alligator Mouths Writing Checks They Can’t Bring Themselves to Cash

The use of overwhelming force to defend the U.S. from our enemies is not a neocon notion, it is a conservative one – in the paleo sense of conservatism.

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...heck of a job by Boehner and Cantor yesterday. Instead of waiting for Obama to make his case they came right out and supported him.  In thanks, Obama blamed Congress for putting the country in this position.  They are so afraid of being called bad names they simply cave for no reason and get smacked around anyway for their efforts.

I want to see one -- just one -- set of balls from the Republicans in Congress.  I want one guy to stand up, declare this the bullshit it is,vote ‘‘No’’, and get in front of the cameras and explain why King Shanksalot and his merry band of Ivy Leaguers have no clothes.  My kid could do it, and she’s in the first week of Government class.

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[quoting the Associated Press]

The Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed this week on the willful violations by the NSA’s inspector general’s office, as first reported by Bloomberg.

‘‘The committee has learned that in isolated cases over the past decade, a very small number of NSA personnel have violated NSA procedures — in roughly one case per year,’’ Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement Friday.

Of course, this is the same Dianne Feinstein who, exactly a week ago, said the following:

As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.

Yeah.  Because apparently the NSA chose not to tell the committee until a few days later, despite it happening for years.
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In the meantime, the NSA just made Senator Feinstein look like a complete fool...  At this point, it’s abundantly clear that Feinstein’s ‘‘oversight’’ of the NSA is a joke.  She’s either incompetent or lying.

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Ace:

I could almost support giving the NSA wide latitude if one condition were present:

That accidental violations would be punished by serious discipline -- say, two months off with no salary -- and that multiple accidental violations would be punished by a firing, and that intentional violations would be punished by a prosecution.

That, in theory, could keep this very dangerous and worrisome ability in check.

But it's only a theory, because as John Kerry and Eric Holder and Barack Obama demonstrate on a daily basis, The government never fires or disciplines anyone, no matter how serious or deadly or constitutionally-foul their transgressions.
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So we're left with a very unsatisfying choice between ‘‘Let the NSA run rampant’’ or ‘‘Let terrorists run rampant.’’

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COMPETENCE:  Report: NSA doesn’t know the extent of Snowden damage.  ‘‘The National Security Agency (NSA) doesn’t know how much information leaker Edward Snowden was able to obtain because of an underdeveloped capacity to audit its own data, according to a NBC News report released late Tuesday.’’

This is criminal.  Every single thing he did should have left an audit trail, both as a guard against misuse, and for damage assessment in a case just like this.

I didn’t say ‘‘criminal incompetence,’’ because if the need for an audit trail is obvious to such as me, it surely must have been obvious to higher-ups at NSA.  If the systems lack the capacity for this, it’s because somebody doesn’t want the records kept.  That suggests abuse at a systemic level.

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