Matt Lauer asked Barack Obama this morning how he would respond to Hillary Clinton’s apparent playing of the gender card. Obama had what strikes me as a very effective response. Take a look:
So what’s the story with those silencers Blackwater was smuggling into Iraq? I put the question out to readers who might know more about firearms and/or the private contracting biz. And the verdict seems to be that there’s not necessarily any reason to think there’s something amiss. Why Blackwater was bringing them into the country without declaring them is a separate issue. But in terms of why they might want them, a number of readers suggest that with modern weapons the use of a ‘silencer’ can simply be a matter of getting the decibel level of the discharge down to a level that doesn’t damage the shooter’s ears and/or allows him or her to still here orders at the same time.
I don’t say this is necessarily dispositive. But initial information suggests it’s not as suspicious as it might seem to a layman.
Why was the NSA trying to enlist the telecoms in a surveillance program before 9/11?
The National Journal‘s Shane Harris digs deeper into what has emerged in recent days about Qwest’s role in that earlier NSA effort:
A former White House official, who at the time was involved in network defense and other intelligence programs, said that the early 2001 NSA proposal to Qwest was, “Can you build a private version of Echelon and tell us what you see?” Echelon refers to a signals intelligence network operated by the NSA and its official counterparts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
The NSA realized that it was blind to many of the new online threats and to who was using the privately owned telecom networks, and it thought that Qwest was in a position to help. The agency needed better intelligence in the face of a burgeoning Internet, and Qwest was then building a high-speed network for phone and Internet traffic that had caught the attention of senior intelligence officials. The NSA, in effect, wanted Qwest to be the agency’s online eyes and ears.
Another source said that the NSA wanted to analyze the calls, e-mails, and other transmissions crossing Qwest’s lines, to detect patterns of suspicious activity. Telecom carriers routinely monitor their networks for fraudulent activity, the former White House official noted, and so the companies “have an enormous amount of intelligence-gathering” capability. They don’t have to target individual customers to “look for wacky behavior,” or “groups communicating with each other in strange patterns.” That information could augment intelligence that the NSA and other agencies were gathering from other sources, the former official said. . . .
Qwest’s then-chief executive officer, Joseph Nacchio, rejected the NSA’s request. “He didn’t want to go along with that,” and his refusal was not greeted warmly in the intelligence community, the former White House official said.
Yesterday, John McCain was singing the praises of Michael Mukasey, whose refusal to say that waterboarding is torture has put his confirmation as attorney general in jeopardy.
Today, McCain is criticizing his GOP opponents for not taking a harder line on waterboarding being torture:
The Arizona senator’s position on an interrogation technique that simulates drowning â he says it constitutes torture and is illegal â puts him at odds with Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson, who haven’t taken such a hard line.
“There’s a clear division between those who have a military background and experience in these issues and people like Giuliani, Romney and Thompson who don’t â who chose to do other things when this nation was fighting its wars,” McCain told reporters after touring a shipyard in this military bastion.
Wrapping things up for the week, Tom Perriello offers a defense of the religious left.
Breaking: Leahy will vote no on Mukasey.
What say thee Feingold, Feinstein, Kohl, Cardin and Schumer?
The Wisconsin Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee has issued a statement in which he concedes he has not yet made a decision on Mukasey:
He may be the best nominee we can get from this administration in this respect. But I am concerned about his views on executive power, and I am weighing whether his answers to questions in that area adequately demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law.
Late Update: What is it about the indecisive Wisconsin delegation? Sen. Herb Kohl’s office tells us that he, too, remains undecided on Mukasey.