Not All Leakers Are Equal Under the Law

Not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers. Gen. David Petraeus, for instance, provided his illicit lover and favorable biographer information so secret it defied classification, including the names of covert operatives and the president’s private thoughts on matters of strategic concern. Petraeus was not charged with a felony, as the Justice Department had initially recommended, but was instead permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Had an enlisted soldier of modest rank pulled out a stack of highly classified notebooks and handed them to his girlfriend to secure so much as a smile, he’d be looking at many decades in prison, not a pile of character references from a Who’s Who of the Deep State.

There are authorized leaks and also permitted disclosures. It is rare for senior administration officials to explicitly ask a subordinate to leak a CIA officer’s name to retaliate against her husband, as appears to have been the case with Valerie Plame. It is equally rare for a month to go by in which some senior official does not disclose some protected information that is beneficial to the political efforts of the parties but clearly “damaging to national security” under the definitions of our law.

This dynamic can be seen quite clearly in the al Qaeda “conference call of doom” story, in which intelligence officials, likely seeking to inflate the threat of terrorism and deflect criticism of mass surveillance, revealed to a neoconservative website extraordinarily detailed accounts of specific communications they had intercepted, including locations of the participating parties and the precise contents of the discussions. If the officials’ claims were to be believed, they irrevocably burned an extraordinary means of learning the precise plans and intentions of terrorist leadership for the sake of a short-lived political advantage in a news cycle. Not a single person seems to have been so much as disciplined as a result of the story that cost us the ability to listen to the alleged al Qaeda hotline.

  Edward Snowden @ The Intercept

Perhaps it never existed.

So where are we headed, Ed?

By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.

I think that's a little optimistic.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Uh...Okaaaay

Of course they took the DNA samples later. Of course. And then they threw the body in the sea where no one would ever find it. And Osama was never funded by the CIA. Why do you ask?

Wouldn't that be just another fine faux production of the US Army if it wasn't bin Laden they disposed of?  He could have been dead for years and just used as a bogeman.  Or, he could still be alive.  Or, they could have killed him in that raid.

Declassified, Maybe - Heavily Redacted, Absolutely

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Now We Know Why They Ran W

Even an exclamation mark couldn't help.

Sorry, Workers, MayDay Has Just Been Appropriated

Just. Wow.

And I thought Joe McCarthy was dead.

I trust you know the significance of May 1 around the world.  Chicago Haymarket Riot ring any bells?

But, here's Hillary Clinton on May Day:

Boy, that sounds good, doesn't it?

How's her actual record?

UPDATE:

Coincidence? Or Psychic Phenomenon?

Average age of donor:  27
Average donation:  $27

It's Hard to Estimate the Size of a Crowd

As Classy As Ever

I see the White House Correspondents Dinner is still a place where the president can joke about the horrors the American government wreaks on the world.

Almost as funny as his last time when he joked about sending drone strikes down on the Jonas Brothers. But still a bit low of Shrub's high water mark where he looks under his desk for the (nonexistent) WMD.

That, too.

Indeed.

And both shoes fit.

Ah, the Good Old Money Maker, Cancer

A report published in the Science Daily said, "New cancer drugs, taken in pill form, have become dramatically more expensive in their first year on the market compared with drugs launched 15 years ago, calling into question the sustainability of a system that sets high prices at market entry in addition to rapidly increasing those prices over time."

[...]

Since 2000, cost of certain oral medications for cancer treatment has increased multiple-fold.

[...]

These drugs are preferred as they are less stressful on the patients than traditional chemotherapy treatments.

[...]

Researchers have compared products launched from 2000 to 2010 to those launched after 2010. It was found that a 63% rise has come in the mean monthly spending during the first year when the product was on the market.

Study author Stacie Dusetzina, of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that the main message is that these medicines are getting more expensive with time. Though there has been a push to create anti-cancer drugs for patients, the increase in prices is making it difficult for a patient to access the therapies.

[...]

Shawn Osborne, vice president of Pharmacy and Supply Chain Services at University Hospitals of Cleveland, said that these types of cancer therapies are attracting more limelight because they are providing great results to patients.

Just because these drugs have been showing better outcomes for patients, manufacturers have been charging more. Also, just because the drugs are new, getting access to the drugs can be more expensive. The researchers predict that the drug prices will stop increasing at some point of time.

  NH Voice

When something more profitable is created, would be my guess.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

[South African Pastor Mostsoeneng Mboro]  said he ascended to heaven on Easter Sunday two weeks ago.

Soon after returning from the promised land, Mboro said he was willing to share his photos with people, but they had to “pledge” R5 000 to his church first.

This caused an outcry, with people calling it a scam. This prompted Mboro on Sunday to say he [would] release the pictures for free on his Facebook page.

However, on Tuesday, he said he couldn’t post his selfies because his phone got stolen at a car wash in Katlehong.

  Nehanda Radio

Maybe he should have stored them in the cloud.

"We suspect one of the boys washing the Prophet’s car took the phone. But they all denied taking it, even after we beat them,” [Mboro's] bodyguards told journalists.