Back in 2009 when Snowden was apparently hoping Obama would clean up shop, Snowden said leakers should be “shot in the balls” and crapped on Wikileaks, the organization now helping keep him out of US hands.
The overall gist of the new records shows the extent of Snowden’s libertarianism, which is not surprising and support for Ron Paul. But suggests a pretty big change on his attitudes toward his work and the role of government secrecy.
It was a landmark day for gay rights at the Supreme Court.
TPM’s Sahil Kapur just sat down for a Live Chat at TPMPrime on this week’s Supreme Court decisions. Join us now.
Chief Justice John Roberts’ gay cousin, Jean Podrasky, talks to TPM about today’s decision: “I am so excited. I am absolutely overwhelmed. I can now get married. I feel like my partner and I have been in limbo for several years. We’ve been engaged for a couple years, but now we can start planning.”
When the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to gut the Voting Rights Act, they said, in so many words, Congress, please rework the Act in a way that passes muster. To which, Sen. Schumer basically said, Yeah, good luck with that! As long as Democrats need 60 votes in the Senate and Republicans control the House, pre-clearance is done. And yet, I’m not so sure that’s how this plays out. Or at least not so simply. Read More
I want your take on this. House Democrats seem to be getting emboldened about challenging the apparently collapsing IRS scandal. Rep. Levin (D-MI) sent this sharply worded letter to the Treasury IG which I could summarize as basically, WTF? How did you manage to write out that IG report without noticing or mentioning that progressive groups were also targeted. Read More
Last we heard from WSJ columnist James Taranto he was letting us know that it takes two to have a sexual assault and that Sen. Claire McCaskill was trying to “criminalize male sexuality.” Now McCaskill responds.
I’m confused by the responses from Russell George, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, to Rep. Levin’s questions about recent developments in the IRS controversy – specifically news that progressive keywords were apparently also flagged as Tea Party ones were.
On the one hand, George has stated that this didn’t come up because he was instructed to look narrowly at the treatment of Tea Party groups. So these other questions were beyond the scope of his review. On the other hand, he’s saying these left-leaning groups and their keywords were not flagged for the sort of heightened scrutiny applied to Tea Party groups. These two answers seems to be in some level of contradiction, no?
Gov. Perry (R-TX) says it’s “unfortunate” Wendy Davis “hasn’t learned from her own example” of being a teenage mom.
Perry followed up by petitioning the federal government to allow Texas to rename itself the ‘state of Mansplainia’.