Texas GOP state Rep.: No need for abortion rape exemption since women get “cleaned out” with “rape kits.”

There’s a new Snowden article out in the Times that’s well worth your time to read. I suspect it will confound at least a few of the assumptions held by people on either side of the Snowden divide, sympathetic or not. The gist of the article is that Snowden’s decision to leave Hong Kong came rather late, after one meeting with his Hong Kong lawyers and that Snowden seemed to have arrived in Hong Kong with only a very limited understanding of what his legal position would be once he arrived and disclosed his identity. Read More

Edward Snowden now says he took the contractor position with Booz Allen Hamilton for the express purpose of collecting evidence on secret surveillance programs for later exposure.

For history buffs, you’ll want to take a look at this. It’s a film (almost 80 minutes long) the White House put together of President Kennedy’s summer trip to Europe about 5 months before his assassination. It wasn’t released to the public at the time and only became available on request in person at the Kennedy Library decades later. It finally went online in 2011. Watch.

Asked if there’s any irony to Snowden’s seeking refuge with autocratic state’s known for weak civil liberties and poor human rights records, Julian Assange replied, “I simply do not see the irony. Mr. Snowden has revealed info about mass, unlawful spying which has affected every single one of us. The U.S. administration has issued a series of bellicose, unilateral threats against him and against others who are attempting to support his rights. That is a very serious situtation and any country that has assisted in upholding his rights must be applauded for doing so.”

SCOTUS sends Texas affirmative action case back to lower court for a do-over.

We’re still waiting to find out the significance of the fact that Edward Snowden was not on the Russia to Cuba flight that he was booked on today and that many journalists (now on a pretty long flight to Cuba) thought he was going to be on. But one thing this should do is bring down to earth, to some degree, how much of the “national security/surveillance state” is a good deal more mundane, rule based and bureaucratic than you might think if your point of reference is one of the Matrix movies or an episode of 24.

For those of you who imagined that key foreign relations and national security decisions like the Snowden case don’t get made in Beijing, good luck with that.

And in fairness to the players involved here. It has always been understood, de facto and de jure, that Hong Kong is part of China on matters of national security and foreign relations.

5 year old girl fatally shoots herself in the head with gun she found in home while parent was out running errands.

For Prime Members, Sen. Angus King is going to join us at 3:15 PM eastern today to answer your questions on anything and everything. NSA, student loans, filibusters and quite possibly whatever the Supreme Court sends our way this morning. Get your questions in now and join us at 3:15.