Our dying economy
Hendrik Hertzberg catches Louie Gohmert stealing Leon Trotsky’s dustbin.
HSBC is closing a bunch of branches in the US, apparently having decided the US is not longer the land of opportunity for profit.
Yves Smith argues that Liz Warren would be better of primarying Obama than running for Senate. I think her analysis is spot on.
Bruce Levine looks at the 8 ways our society has undermined the traditional rebelliousness of youth, from medications to No Child Left Behind to student loan debt.
Free birth control! At least we have some good news.
Surveillance Nation
The Senate Intelligence Authorization extends FISA past the 2012 election; if it passes, Obama will never be held responsibly for his past flip-flop on FISA and his promises to fix it.
The House Judiciary Committee passed their Internet-surveillance-posing-as-Porn-law on Tuesday, even managing to make it worse. I like John Cole’s approach to this: to make this into an issue about the DNC, since DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of the original co-sponsors. Next time the DNC hits you up for money, tell them no, and it’s DWS’ fault.
The Brits botched the redaction of a FOIA response, thereby revealing cooperation between Capita and ISPs.
The British torture inquiry is actually planning on going to Gitmo to interview detainees about events they may have witnessed. This is far more than I expected from this inquiry, though it’s still safe to assume it’ll be a whitewash.
Obama has finally found nominated someone (another Harvard JD) to replace Glenn Fine, who as DOJ Inspector General found a lot of the abuses the FBI committed under the PATRIOT Act. I’ll have to do more research, but I am skeptical about a former prosecutor taking this job.