If Your Ex Works at the NSA… You're Probably in Trouble.
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Morning Jolt August 26, 2013 If Your Ex Works at the NSA… You're Probably in Trouble. The NSA scandal just doesn't seem to have any good guys within a 50-mile radius, does it? You tell yourself the officials at the highest levels might be lying to the American public with supremely disturbing ease and frequency, but the men and women who drive to Fort Meade each morning must be, for the most part, good Americans, right? Eh, maybe. Maybe not.
The employees even had a code name for the practice – " Love-int" – meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners. Dianne Feinstein, a senator who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of " isolated cases" that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years. The spying was not within the US, and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad. One employee was disciplined for using the NSA' s resources to track a former spouse, the Associated Press said. The NSA issued a statement on Friday saying: " NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency' s authorities" and responds " as appropriate." Mrs Feinstein said: " Clearly, any case of noncompliance is unacceptable, but these small numbers of cases do not change my view that NSA takes significant care to prevent any abuses and that there is a substantial oversight system in place. When errors are identified, they are reported and corrected." Boy, she's an easy grader. Why did these employees ever get the idea that this was okay? And while they may claim it was merely a few isolated incidents, how rare could it be if the practice developed its own code name? TechCrunch: "Note to self: do not cheat on employees of the National Security Agency." Then again, that probably went without saying. I'd like to think that all of the NSA's collected video surveillance begins with this cute animation inspired from the Pixar movies: Maybe it's all just a giant publicity stunt for my panel at the Heritage Foundation Thursday:
Hom- Assad- al Maniac Big day in the Middle East: "U.N. weapons experts are due on Monday to inspect a site where poison gas killed many hundreds of people in Damascus suburbs, amid calls from Western capitals for military action to punish the world's worst apparent chemical weapons attack in 25 years." We're informed subsequent shelling and warfare may have eroded the evidence. I see everyone on the Right and their brothers giving Samantha Power grief about a spectacularly ill-timed Irish vacation:
A day earlier, State Department officials were mum when asked for information on Power's whereabouts. She had come under fire for missing Wednesday's urgent U.N. Security Council meeting, where delegations weighed how to respond to charges that the Assad regime had just committed the deadliest chemical weapons attack in the country's two-year civil war. The meeting, and her absence, came just 19 days after Power assumed the U.N. leadership post. 'Here I come to save the day!' That means that John Kerry's on the way! Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right, John Kerry will join the fight! On the sea or on the land, he has the situation well in hand! Question: What's really the bigger problem -- that Power is texting in statements from her vacation, or that she actually thinks the United Nations is going to do anything serious in response to a Syrian chemical weapons attack? Or, more specifically, anything that might actually influence the actions of Bashir Assad? Oh, and if you're one of those folks arguing the United States should steer clear of any role in the ever-widening, ever-worsening mess that was once known as Syria . . . well, too late:
The CIA has put unspecified limits on its arming efforts. But the agency has been helping train rebels to better fight. Earlier this year it also began making salary payments to members of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, U.S. and Arab officials said. There are now more CIA personnel at the Jordan base than Saudi personnel, according to Arab diplomats. Obamacare: Somehow, Public Now Knows Even Less Than Before Remember Nancy Pelosi's stirring rallying cry, "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," right? Well, it turns out they passed the bill, and somehow the public is even less-informed about what is in it than before. No, really. CNBC:
And according to a troubling conclusion in at least one study earlier this year, awareness about the new health-care law had declined among some groups more than three years after Obamacare was signed. Just 22 percent of adults ages 18 to 64 had heard "a lot" or "some" about the insurance exchanges, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study in June. But 45 percent said they knew "nothing at all about them," according to the study. Perhaps most alarming is the number of young adults who appear particularly clueless about the Affordable Care Act exchanges that are due to open Oct. 1 and begin coverage on Jan. 1. A whopping 73 percent of adults between the ages of 19 and 29 are unaware of the marketplaces, a separate Commonwealth Fund study this week found. Liz Hamel, an associate director for surveys at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said, "We certainly haven't seen an increase in public knowledge since the law passed" in 2010. In fact, a Kaiser survey in March found that "awareness had decreased" among some groups about Obamacare, Hamel said. Well, at least the states are ready. Wait, no, nevermind. West Virginia will have a "huge problem" in meeting an Oct. 1 deadline to begin open enrollment under the new federal health care reform law, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said. Morrisey told the State Medical Association's annual conference on Saturday at The Greenbrier resort that federal delays will make it difficult to implement the Affordable Care Act in the state. "We are not ready to roll out the ACA on Oct. 1, let me be clear about that," Morrisey said. The Charleston Gazette reports Morrisey cited a recent congressional report that found half of 82 federal deadlines related to the Affordable Care Act have been missed. The federal government has delayed for a year a mandate requiring large employers to offer health benefits or face financial penalties and a policy that puts a cap on patients' out-of-pocket insurance expenses. Morrisey said that while Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and the DHHR are working feverishly to have a successful implementation, "they've been dealt an impossible hand." "How on earth can you expect them to do really positive things when you've got half of the ACA deadlines (that) are not being met? This is what we're dealing with; this is a huge problem." Morrisey and 12 other attorneys general recently wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about their concerns with the federal program. ADDENDA: I'm not usually big on astronomy photos, but this seemed like an appropriately epic way to begin the week: NRO Digest — August 26, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . .
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