Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 94

Those weak losers who care about "law"

(updated bel0w – Update II)

Everyone Strong and Serious knows that only weak losers who are unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief would care about whether they are allowed under the obsolete, leftist doctrine known as "law" to attack another country or crush the Terrorists. We first learned this from George Bush, who, in a 2004 campaign speech, mocked John Kerry as a law-obsessed weakling this way:

Some are skeptical that the war on terror is really a war at all. My opponent said, and I quote...

Various matters

(1) The always-tenacious Jake Tapper (see this superb grilling of White House spokesman Jay Carney about the Awlaki assassination) sat in the White House briefing room today. He watched as Carney praised the heroism of two reporters killed this morning in Syria and then waxed poetic on the Vital Importance of Journalism. That led Tapper to want to know how the White House can reconcile its claimed reverence for journalism with its unprecedented war on whistleblowers, and began his inquiry...

NYPD spying program aimed at Muslims

The hallmark of a Surveillance State is that police agencies secretly monitor and keep dossiers on not only those individuals suspected of lawbreaking, but on the society generally, including those individuals about whom there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. For the past year, the Associated Press has systematically exposed how the New York Police Department, often working in conjunction with the CIA, engaged in a sprawling spying campaign aimed at Muslim individuals, students, institutions...

Justice Kagan sides with the Right on Miranda

Read this story at http://www.salon.com/2012/02/21/justice_kagan_sides_with_the_right_on_miranda/

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Maddow on Frank VanderSloot

Read this story at http://www.salon.com/2012/02/21/maddow_on_frank_vandersloot/

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Khader Adnan and now-normalized Western justice

(updated below)

Each year, the U.S. State Department, as required by law, issues a "Human Rights Report" which details abuses by other countries. To call it an exercise in hypocrisy is to understate the case: it is almost impossible to find any tyrannical power denounced by the State Department which the U.S. Government (and its closest allies) do not regularly exercise itself. Indeed, it's often impossible to imagine how the authors of these reports can refrain from cackling mischievously...

Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics

Read this story at http://www.salon.com/2012/02/19/billionaire_romney_donor_uses_threats_to_silence_critics/

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Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics

Frank VanderSloot is an Idaho billionaire and the CEO of Melaleuca, Inc., a controversial billion-dollar-a-year company which peddles dietary supplements and cleaning products; back in 2004, Forbes, echoing complaints to government agencies, described the company as "a pyramid selling organization, built along the lines of Herbalife and Amway." VanderSloot has long used his wealth to advance numerous right-wing political causes. Currently, he is the national finance co-chair of the Mitt...

Erin Burnett: Worst of the worst

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(updated below)

I'm finishing up a long investigative article that will be posted later this morning, but I just could not let go unnoted this commentary on The Iranian Threat by CNN's Erin Burnett ("frightening," she observed). I barely know what to say about it — the critiques of media fear-mongering I wrote the last two days apply in spades to this — but it really just mocks itself. It's the sort of thing you would produce if you set out to create a mean-spirited parody of mindless...

Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross belong in a fear-mongering museum

I realize I wrote extensively yesterday about the American media's typically mindless, nationalistic, war-craving hyping of The Iranian Threat — completely redolent of what they did in 2002 and 2003 toward Iraq — but I just saw this two-minute ABC News report from Diane Sawyer and Brian Ross that sinks to even lower depths than what I highlighted yesterday. It has to be seen to be believed. It's a perfect museum exhibit for how empty-headed American media stars uncritically recite whatever...