Voters help GOP engage in stunning sweep of Oklahoma

DOJ's Top National Security Prosecutor Headed To Private Sector
The government's top Terrorism prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris, announced Thursday that he'll resign on March 4. Kris, TPM has learned, will become General Counsel for a company called Intellectual Ventures. The company did not immediately return a request for comment. Intellectual Ventures, based in Washington State, is led by Microsoft's former chief technology officer. Its goal is to "assemble a world-class team to invent and invest in inventions" and...

Privacy hawks reopen debate on data
It took 140 characters to reignite the debate over Law Enforcement and online Privacy in Washington. Last week, Twitter persuaded a judge to make public a federal order that required it to turn over stored data for users with potential connections to Wikileaks. Privacy hawks from the Beltway to Silicon Valley say the incident illustrates how current law does not meet the realities of the Digital Age. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Politico 44 Their chief target is the Electronic Communi...

Facebook changes its lobbying status in Washington
SAN FRANCISCO — As lawmakers and Regulators ponder sweeping changes to online Privacy law, Facebook is working to shape its image on Capitol Hill and avert measures potentially damaging to its information-sharing business. The world's largest social-networking site is increasing its Washington office, spending more on lobbying and meeting with lawmakers, congressional staff and Privacy experts who question whether the company is adequately protecting the Personal Information of its 500 mill...

NSAs Home Base May Have Crappiest Website Ever
Through the gates of Fort George Meade pass the Most Powerful technical minds that the government employs. But Fort Meade’s website contains pixelized, faux-shaded green fonts and a two-column descending-text template not seen since the days of GeoCities. Yes, Fort Meade, a 5,400-acre complex less than an hour’s drive outside of Washington. Home of the National Security Agency, the U.S. Cyber Command, the Navy’s new cyberfleet. The nerve center of a sprawling Surveillance app...

Kama Sutra Virus Leaving PC Users in Bad Position
By Matt Liebowitz This story originally appeared on TechNewsDaily.com Looking for sex online? Don't download a PowerPoint presentation promising lessons on Kama Sutra positions - you might just end up with he digital equivalent of a sexually transmitted disease. A new Malware campaign is camouflaging its dangerous payload in the guise of a PowerPoint presentation showing 13 explicit Kama Sutra sexual positions, according to the security firm Sophos. With names like "The Frog," "Wheelbarrow" a...

Patriot Act up for renewal and no one notices
On January 5th, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) introduced a bill to add yet another year to the soon to be expiring Patriot Act.  This would extend it until February of 2012, and passage is likely to happen with little debate or contention.  If passed, this would be the second time the Obama Administration has punted on campaign promises to roll back excessive Surveillance measures allowed under the act passed in the wake of 9/11. When the Patriot Act was first signed in 2001, it was billed a...

Vacancy in Justice Department's National Security Branch
A new vacancy is opening up in a key slot at the Department of Justice, already hamstrung by the difficulty of getting the Senate to confirm administration nominees. David S. Kris, the assistant Attorney General for the department’s National Security division, announced on Thursday that he is resigning, effective March 4, 2011. “I am grateful for my two years of service as Assistant Attorney General for National Security,” Mr. Kris said in a statement.  “I started my legal car

The Incredible Hulks Timeless Wisdom On The Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Incredible Hulk’s Timeless Wisdom On The Arab-Israeli Conflict Our Guest Blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Two years into office, perhaps the biggest disappointment on its National Security agenda for the Obama Administration has been the lack of progress on Middle East peace. This Incredible Hulk comic book from the early 1980s that I found in some old papers in my office serves as a reminder of a basic point that is often lost in the complic...

From Ikes Dilemma to Obamas Disaster
President Eisenhower delivered his farewell address 50 years ago. Few expected the Speech to include a warning of American liberty in peril. But, it did. “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” he proclaimed somberly. Eisenhower warned that “in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military-industrial Complex.” He feared that excessive defe...

Is Justin Bieber Getting The Cover Of The New Yorker?
As much as we wish Justin Bieber was gracing the cover of the upcoming issue of The New Yorker, we have to imagine this is just an almost-believable spoof by those jokesters over at Vanity Fair. All the talk of Wikileaks and Anonymous Hackers has inspired the Vanity Fair digital team to stress-test our systems and scrub our servers. Along the way, completely by accident, we discovered a back door into the network used by The New Yorker. Normally, we would have snooped around silently and then fi...

Commerce Secretary Locke says progress on trade with China a slow, five-step process
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke acknowledged on Thursday what many industry groups have argued for years — that a commitment by China to resolve a trade dispute is just the beginning of the process, and that China does not always finish the process. In his candid remarks before the U.S.-China Business Council, Locke identified five specific steps that "usually" need to happen in China before a market access commitment becomes a market access reality. Locke said the first step is a statement fr...

Cannon orders review of oil spill claims process
Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon has ordered the House Economic Affairs Committee to review the private compensation process set in motion after the BP Oil Spill, citing "numerous breakdowns and inconsistencies" with the facility tasked with processing claims, according to a Thursday letter he sent to the committee chairwoman. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility has paid about $1.2 billion to 68,221 claimants as of Monday, Cannon wrote. That's out of 157,297 claimants in ithe facilit...

Obama pulls coal mine permit
The Obama Administration Thursday reversed a Bush-era decision and blocked a bid to build one of the largest mountaintop removal Coal Mines in Appalachian history. For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency is revoking a permit already issued, taking back its approval for Arch Coal’s Spruce No.1 mine in southern West Virginia. EPA said the mine would cause unacceptable damage to local waterways and Public Health. Continue Reading Text Size - + reset EPA’s decision is ...

".. Unless we want to intervene militarily, what else are we going to do?.."
Abu, the best of the bad guys writes: Okay, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy: In contrast to 2005, Hezbollah’s adversaries — gathered around Mr. Hariri — have fewer options and less support than they once did, emblematic of the vast changes in Lebanon’s political landscape the past few years. While the Bush Administration wholeheartedly backed Mr. Hariri and his allies then, President Obama has not pledged the same kind of support. Syria, whose influence wa...

Gingrich touts South Carolina ahead of visit
(CNN) - If Newt Gingrich decides to run for president, as it is expected he will, it appears the former House Speaker will put a lot of stock into the South Carolina primary. Ahead of yet another visit to the Palmetto State - this time to court Small Business owners in Myrtle Beach - Gingrich highlighted in an interview with McClatchy News that the state has a strong record of picking the GOP presidential nominee. "South Carolina has picked the last five Republican presidential...

Are employers getting ready to hire?
Michael Mandel posts a bunch of data suggesting that (online) "help wanted" ads have skyrocketed over the past year, even as Unemployment has also increased. "The labor market is getting ready for a massive rise in employment over the next year, as companies finally start hiring for positions they’ve been advertising for," he says. I hope so. That data could also mean that Unemployment is somewhat more structural than we thought -- i.e., the unemployed are in Florida, but the jobs are in C...

Whats Next For The Internet: Everything
People love to focus on horse races:  NYC vs Silcon Valley, Facebook vs Twitter, IPO markets vs private exchanges, the valuation of some startup vs some other startup.  Like a lot of people in the tech industry, I’ve gotten inquiries recently on the meaning of Facebook’s “private” IPO with Goldman Sachs, whether VC valuations are indicative of a bubble, whether such-and-such startup is overvalued, and so on. These questions are all footnotes that will be forgotten in a

Amazon To Expand Enterprise in Scotland with 950 Jobs
BOSTON and GLASGOW, Scotland, Jan. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading online retailer Amazon is to create 950 jobs across two Scottish sites, First Minister Alex Salmond said today. The Company will create a Fulfilment Centre at Dunfermline, creating over 750 new jobs and an additional 200 posts will also be created at its existing fulfilment facility in Gourock, which packs and ships items for Amazon customers. The Company is also expected to create a further 1,500 temporary jobs during peak peri...

Get your head out of your ... computer
Seriously, with almost as many individual websites as there are American Citizens (255 million websites as of December 2010), and about a quarter of humanity now useing email, with 107 Trillion emails sent on the Internet in 2010, real life is suffering.   Is the first thing you do when you wake up stick your head in your computer, and the last thing you do before you got to bed is surf the internet?  Videos, Social Media sites, images, news, entertainment, education, resou...

Should the Palestinians unilaterally declare a state?
In August 2009, the Palestinian National Authority announced a plan, “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State,” by Salam Fayyad, for Palestinian statehood by summer 2011. Intimately aware that Israel is using negotiations to delay while it expands, the idea is to lay the groundwork for statehood, regardless, and to rationalize Palestinian political and economic life. Fayyad, who proclaimed his plan without the requisite support of the PNA legislature or PLO bodies, is bett...

The Tucson Shooting and the End of the Frontier Myth
The National Security State keeps Americans in the dark about exactly what it is doing around the world. Citizens are told US Troops will be removed from Iraq next year -- maybe -- if everything is stable and leaving is in our interest. Meanwhile, our leaders are escalating the War in Afghanistan and expanding it into Pakistan. The fact is US Military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is not really a "war," as much as it is an expensive, and virtually permanent, imperial occupation that beg...

Our Open Door Refugee Policy
It would come as unwelcome news to the vast majority of Americans that even now, in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and a decade after 9/11, that this country admits upwards of 80,000 Refugees each year on little more than the recommendation of a foreign organization and that once here, they compete for low-paying jobs with our high-school graduates.   But that is the essence of our refugee system. Currently, the U.S. must cooperate

How to Protect Members of Congress
On Wednesday, the FBI and the U.S. Capitol Police will brief members of Congress on basic security precautions they can take when they're interacting with constituents. Also on the agenda: an explanation of how Capitol Police Officers conduct threat assessments. What the members are likely to hear may be as simple as surrounding themselves with aides wearing suits or setting up a thin rope line to create a slight barrier between them and possible danger. They will also hear about threats beyond...

In the wake of Tucson massacre, GAP & POGO seek to destroy a Republican Senator
In the wake of the Tucson massacre, some groups continue to utilize destructive methods in an attempt to achieve their convoluted agenda. The Government Accountability Project (GAP), Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and their affiliates have flooded the Internet with a series of inflammatory calls for action that aim to identify and destroy an anonymous Senator who blocked the passage of the Controversial Whistleblower Enhancement Act. The bill S. 372 excluded intelligence workers and nati...

David Kris Resigns from DOJ
The U.S. Department of Justice just announced that Assistant Attorney General David Kris just resigned, effective March 4. “David Kris led the National Security Division (NSD) with great distinction through a period when the department confronted a number of threats to the nation’s security, and there is no doubt that his tireless work helped keep the American People safe,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “I will miss his leadership.” “I am grateful for my two years