Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1057

Syrian Electronic Army Adds Financial Times to Its Social Media Hacks

The Financial Times became the latest news agency to fall prey to the Syrian Electronic Army, the hacking group which has claimed the social media scalps of the AP, The Onion, the BBC, and NPR, perhaps signaling that news outlets should be more like The Onion and come clean about how they're getting hacked.

[image error]Thankfully, Friday's hack was minor compared to SEA's most game-changing hack to date—declaring that the White House had been attack, which then caused the markets to dive for a few seconds. "Twelve posts entitled “Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army” appeared on the FT’s tech blog between 12.38pm and 12.42pm London Time on Friday, with official Twitter feeds also disrupted," The Financial Times self-reported. The news outlet has secured its accounts and the posts have been deleted. 

But what's sort of worrisome is that the FT now joins some of the biggest media players in the world as victims of the Syrian Electronic Army. "The attack against the FT follows dozens of other Syrian Electronic Army attacks on the social media accounts of news outlets including The Guardian, the BBC, NPR, Reuters and The Associated Press," reports The New York Times's Nicole Perlroth. 

FT spokespeople haven't said how the hackers got in, but the method researchers say the hackers are using is a simple phishing scheme—an email which asks journalists to click on a shady link.   "Once clicked, the link redirects employees to a fake Google or Microsoft mail site that asks the employee for their user name and password," Perlroth reported. The Onion reported as much last week, when it explained exactly how it was hacked and showed off the e-mail one of their own possibly clicked: 

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Again, we're not sure how exactly the FT was hacked, but we could see how someone could get fooled by the @unhcr (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee) address. And it's perhaps time The Onion's advice should be taken seriously. 

       

The IRS Scandal Was First Revealed by an IRS Official Asking to Be Asked About It

The IRS official who revealed the IRS had inappropriately targeted conservative groups on Friday did so on purpose -- by asking a tax lawyer to ask her about it at American Bar Association tax section’s annual meeting. Tax lawyer Celia Roady issued a statement, posted by Talking Points Memo, saying that the IRS's Lois Lerner asked called her before the meeting and "asked if I would pose a question to her after her remarks." Roady agreed, and said Lerner "did not tell me, and I did not know, how she would answer the question." In congressional testimony on Friday, the now-fired-then-acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller said he'd discussed it with Lerner and thought it "may be a good idea to talk to the public."

President Obama, and, in a new interview with Bloomberg TV, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, have said they only learned of the IRS scandal, or the full extent of it, from the news. That means they only know about the IRS's actions because of Lois Lerner. Several members of Congress have called for Lerner to be fired. Lerner cancelled her commencement speech at Western New England University's law school, and Politico reports, is currently in Canada.

       

The Shoddy Management That Lead to the IRS Tea Party Scandal

The IRS division responsible for flagging Tea Party groups has long been an agency afterthought, beset by mismanagement, financial constraints and an unwillingness to spell out just what it expects from social welfare nonprofits, former officials and experts say.

The controversy that erupted in the past week, leading to the ousting of the acting Internal Revenue Service commissioner, an investigation by the FBI, and congressional hearings that kicked off Friday, comes against a backdrop of dysfunction brewing for years.

Moves launched in the 1990s were designed to streamline the tax agency and make it more efficient. But they had unintended consequences for the IRS's Exempt Organizations division. 

Checks and balances once in place were taken away. Guidance frequently published by the IRS and closely read by tax lawyers and nonprofits disappeared. Even as political activity by social welfare nonprofits exploded in recent election cycles, repeated requests for the IRS to clarify exactly what was permitted for the secretly funded groups were met, at least publicly, with silence.

All this combined to create an isolated office in Cincinnati, plagued by what an inspector general this week described as "insufficient oversight," of fewer than 200 low-level employees responsible for reviewing more than 60,000 nonprofit applications a year.

In the end, this contributed to what everyone from Republican lawmakers to the president says was a major mistake: The decision by the Ohio unit to flag for further review applications from groups with "Tea Party" and similar labels. This started around March 2010, with little pushback from Washington until the end of June 2011.

"It's really no surprise that a number of these cases blew up on the IRS," said Marcus Owens, who ran the Exempt Organizations division from 1990 to 2000. "They had eliminated the trip wires of 25 years."

Of course, any number of structural fixes wouldn't stop rogue employees with a partisan ax to grind. No one, including the IRS and the inspector general, has presented evidence that political bias was a factor, although congressional and FBI investigators are taking another look.

But what is already clear is that the IRS once had a system in place to review how applications were being handled and to flag potentially problematic ones. The IRS also used to show its hand publicly, by publishing educational articles for agents, issuing many more rulings, and openly flagging which kind of nonprofit applications would get a more thorough review.

All of those checks and balances disappeared in recent years, largely the unforeseen result of an IRS restructuring in 1998, former officials and tax lawyers say.

"Until 2008, we had a dialogue, through various rulings and cases and the participation of various IRS officials at various ABA meetings, as to what is and what is not permissible campaign intervention," said Gregory Colvin, the co-chair of the American Bar Association subcommittee that dealt with nonprofits, lobbying, and political intervention from 1991 to 2009.

"And there has been absolutely no willingness in the last five years by the IRS to engage in that discussion, at the same time the caseload has exploded at the IRS."

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Social welfare nonprofits, which operate under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax code, have always been a strange hybrid, a catchall category for nonprofits that don't fall anywhere else. They can lobby. For decades, they have been allowed to advocate for the election or defeat of candidates, as long as that is not their primary purpose. They  also do not have to disclose their donors.

Social welfare nonprofits were only a small part of the exempt division's work, considered minor when compared with charities. When the groups sought IRS recognition, the agency usually rubber-stamped them. Out of 24,196 applications for social welfare status between 1998 and 2009, the exempt organizations division rejected only 77, according to numbers compiled from annual IRS data books.

Into this loophole came the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January 2010, which changed the campaign-finance game by allowing corporate and union spending on elections.

Sensing an opportunity, some political consultants started creating social welfare nonprofits geared to political purposes. By 2012, more than $320 million in anonymous money poured into federal elections.

A couple of years earlier, beginning in 2010, the Cincinnati workers had flagged applications of tiny Tea Party groups, according to the inspector general, though the groups spent almost no money in federal elections.

The main question raised by the audit is how the Cincinnati office and superiors in Washington could have gotten it so wrong. The audit shows no evidence that these workers even looked at records from the Federal Election Commission to vet much larger groups that spent hundreds of thousands and even millions in anonymous money to run election ads.

The IRS Exempt Organizations division, the watchdog for about 1.5 million nonprofits, has always had to deal with controversial groups. For decades, the division periodically listed red flags that would merit an application being sent to the IRS's Washington, D.C., headquarters for review, said Owens, the former division head.

In the 1970s, that meant flagging all applications for primary and secondary schools in the south facing desegregation. In the 1980s, during the wave of consolidation in the health-care industry, all applications from health-care nonprofits needed to be sent to headquarters. The division's different field offices had to send these applications up the chain.

"Back then, many more applications came to Washington to be worked — the idea was to have the most sensitive ones come to Washington," said Paul Streckfus, a former IRS lawyer who screened applications at headquarters in the 1970s and founded the industry publication EO Tax Journal in 1996.

Because this list was public, lawyers and nonprofits knew which cases would automatically be reviewed.

"We had a core of experts in tax law," recalled Milton Cerny, who worked for the IRS, mainly in Exempt Organizations, from 1960 to 1987. "We had developed a broad group of tax experts to deal with these issues."

In the 1980s, the division issued many more "revenue rulings" than issued in recent years, said Cerny, then head of the rulings process. These revenue rulings set precedents for the division. Revenue rulings along with regulations are basically the binding IRS rules for nonprofits.

"We would do a revenue ruling, so the public and agents would know," Cerny said. "Over the years, it apparently was felt that a revenue ruling should only be published at an extraordinary time. So today you're lucky if you get one a year. Sometimes it's less than that. It's amazing to me."

Other checks and balances had existed too. Not only were certain kinds of applications publicly flagged, there was another mechanism called "post-review," Owens said. Headquarters in Washington would pull a random sample every month from the different field offices, to see how applications were being reviewed. There was also a surprise "saturation review," once a year, for each of the offices, where everything from a certain time period needed to be sent to Washington for another look.

So internally, the division had ways, if imperfect, to flag potential problems. It also had ways of letting the public know what exactly agents were looking at and how the division was approaching controversial topics.

For instance, there was the division's "Continuing Professional Education," or CPE, technical instruction program. These articles were supposed to be used for training of line agents, collecting and putting out the agency's best information on a particular topic — on, say, political activity by social welfare nonprofits in 1995.

"People in a group would write up their thoughts: 'Here's the law,'" said Beth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer with Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg who's worked with nonprofits for almost 20 years. "It wasn't pushing the envelope. It was, 'This is how we see this issue.' It told us what the IRS was thinking."

The system began to change in the mid-1990s. The IRS was having trouble hiring people for low-level positions in field offices like New York or Atlanta — the kinds of workers that typically reviewed applications by nonprofits, Owens said.

The answer to this was simple: Cincinnati.

The city had a history of being able to hire people at low federal grades, which in 1995 paid between $19,704 and $38,814 a year — almost the same as those federal grades paid in New York City or Chicago. (Adjusted for inflation, that's between $30,064 and $59,222 now.)

"That was well below what the prevailing rate was in the New York City area for accountants with training," Owens said. "We had one accountant who just had gotten out of jail — that's the sort of people who would show up for jobs. That was really the low point."

So in 1995, the Exempt Organizations division started to centralize. Instead of field offices evaluating applications for nonprofits in each region, those applications would all be sent to one mailing address, a post-office box in Covington, Ky. Then a central office in Cincinnati would review all the applications.

Almost inadvertently, because people there were willing to work for less than elsewhere, Cincinnati became ground zero for nonprofit applications.

For the time being, the checks remained in place. The criteria for flagged nonprofits were still made public. The Continuing Professional Education text was still made public. Saturation reviews and post reviews were still in place.

But by 1998, after hearings in which Republican Senator Trent Lott accused the IRS of "Gestapo-like" tactics, a new law mandated the agency's restructuring. In the years that followed, the agency aimed to streamline. For most of the '90s, the IRS had more than 100,000 employees. That number would drop every year, to slightly less than 90,000 by 2012.

Change also came to the Exempt Organizations division.

The IRS tried to remove discretion from lower-level employees around the country by creating rules they had to follow. While the reorganization was designed to centralize power in the agency's Washington headquarters, it didn't work out that way.

"The distance between Cincinnati and Washington was such that soon Cincinnati became a power center," said Streckfus, the former IRS lawyer.

Following reorganization, many highly trained lawyers in Washington who previously handled the most sensitive nonprofit applications were reassigned to focus on special projects, he said.

Owens, who left the IRS in 2000 but stayed in touch with his old division, said the focus on efficiency meant "eliminating those steps deemed unimportant and anachronistic."

In 2003, the saturation reviews and post reviews ended, and the public list of criteria that would get an application referred to headquarters disappeared, Owens said. Instead, agents in Cincinnati could ask to have cases reviewed, if they wanted. But they didn't very often.

"No one really knows what kinds of cases are being sent to Washington, if any," Owens said. "It's all opaque now. It's gone dark."

By the end of 2004, the Continuing Professional Education articles stopped.

Recommendations from an ABA task force for IRS guidelines on social welfare nonprofits and politics that same year were met with silence. 

Even the IRS's Political Activities Compliance Initiative, which investigated complaints of charities engaged in politics — primarily churches — closed up shop in early 2009 after less than five years, without any explanation. 

Both before and after the changes, the Exempt Organizations division has been a small part of the IRS, which is focused on collecting money and chasing delinquent taxpayers.  

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Of the 90,000 employees at the agency last year, only 876 worked in the Exempt Organizations' division, or less than 1 in 1,000 employees.

Of those, 335 worked in the office that actually handles applications of nonprofits.  

Most of those — about 300 — worked in Cincinnati, Streckfus estimates. The rest were at headquarters, in Washington D.C.

In Cincinnati, the employees' primary job was sifting through the applications of nonprofits, making determinations as to whether a nonprofit should be recognized as tax-exempt. In a press release Wednesday, the IRS said fewer than 200 employees were responsible for that work.

In 2012, these employees received 60,780 applications. The bulk of those — 51,748 — were from groups that wanted to be recognized as charities.

But the number of social welfare nonprofit applications spiked from 1,777 in 2011 to 2,774 in 2012. It's impossible to say how many of those groups indicated whether they would engage in politics, or why the number of applications increased. The IRS said Wednesday that it "has seen an increase in the number of tax-exempt organization applications in which the organization is potentially engaged in political activity," including both charities and social welfare nonprofits, but didn't specify any numbers.

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On average, one employee in Cincinnati would be responsible for going through roughly one application per day.

Some would be easy — say, a local soup kitchen. But to evaluate whether a social welfare nonprofit has social welfare as its primary purpose, the agent is supposed to use a "facts and circumstances" test. There is no checklist. Reviewing just one social welfare nonprofit could take days or weeks, to look through a group's website, track down TV ads and so forth.  

"You've got 60,000 applications coming through, and it's hard to do that with the number of agents looking at them," said Philip Hackney, who was in the IRS's chief counsel office in Washington between 2006 and 2011 but said he wasn't involved in the Tea Party controversy. "The reality is that they cannot do that, and that's why you're seeing them pick stuff out for review. They tried to do that here, and it burned them." 

As we have previously reported, last year the same Cincinnati office sent ProPublica confidential applications from conservative groups. An IRS spokeswoman said the disclosures were inadvertent. 

Mark Everson, IRS commissioner for four years during the George W. Bush administration, said he believed the fact that the division is understaffed is relevant, but not an excuse for what happened. "The whole service is under-funded," he pointed out.

And Dan Backer, a lawyer in Washington who represented six of the groups held up because of the Tea Party criteria, said he doesn't buy the notion that low-level employees in Cincinnati were alone responsible.

"It doesn't just strain credulity," Backer said. "It broke credulity and left it laying on the road about a mile back. Clearly these guys were all on the same marching orders."

The inspector general's audit was prompted last year after members of Congress, responding to complaints by Tea Party groups, asked for it.

Like former officials interviewed by ProPublica, the audit suggests that officials at IRS headquarters in Washington were unable to manage their subordinates in Cincinnati. When Lois Lerner, the Exempt Organizations division director in Washington, learned in June 2011 about the improper criteria for screening applications, she instructed that they be "immediately revised."

But just six months later, Cincinnati employees changed the revised criteria to focus on "organizations involved in limiting/expanding government" or "educating on the Constitution." They did so "without executive approval."

"The story people are overlooking is: Congress is complaining about underpaid, overworked employees who are not adequately trained," said Bryan Camp, a former attorney in the IRS chief counsel's office.

In the end, after all the millions of anonymous money spent by some groups to elect candidates in 2012, after all the groups that said in their applications that they would not spend money to elect candidates before doing exactly that, after the Cincinnati office flagged conservative groups, the IRS approved almost all the new applications. Only eight applications were denied. 

 

 

 

       

The Smoking Gun Can Tell the AP What a Federal Leak Investigation Is Like

When, in 2006, the website The Smoking Gun released a secret CIA memo documenting prisoner organizing strategies at Guantanamo Bay, the FBI took notice. Now the site has posted details of the ensuing 44-month-long investigation, offering a timely glimpse into the black box of a Department of Justice leak prosecution.

And The Smoking Gun got lucky. Over the course of the FBI's hunt, code-named "Stubborn Ways," 43 different people were interviewed, in locations stretching from New Mexico to Boston to Saudi Arabia. After the investigation narrowed to one person who was then exonerated — a woman from Virginia who requested and passed a polygraph test — the FBI began the process of seeking a subpoena to force the editor of the site to testify before a grand jury that had been empaneled in the case in Alexandria.

But that process stumbled, in part because the FBI didn't appear to be clear on how such a subpoena applied to a website. In one report, an agent describes the lack of clarity about the extent to which The Smoking Gun was covered under media protection laws.

…postings to a website have not yet been deemed to carry the same protections afforded to the media. Postings to a website/blog are considered an open question at DOJ and that he will asking [sic] DOJ's OEO for a determination on this matter so a subpoena can be requested.

"OEO" is the Department of Justice's Office of Enforcement Operations, which "reviews all federal electronic surveillance requests," in the words of its website. Depending on the status of The Smoking Gun as a media entity, the process of getting a subpoena would either be limited by certain restrictions — as it was (relatively) in the Associated Press case — or not.

The question posed by the agent — is a website a media organization? — is still largely an open one, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out. In the absence of a federal shield law, individual states offer differing levels of protection to sources used to produce articles for online publication.

There was another option once the case went to the OEO for review: it could decline to authorize a subpoena at all. That's what it did. Without the ability to ask The Smoking Gun under oath about its sources, the FBI closed the case in early 2010. It was opened in late 2006.

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In a number of ways, The Smoking Gun's case differs significantly from the Associated Press'. One is the significance of the leak; at the time, it generated some press attention, but not a great deal. Another, as noted, is the type of institution being investigated. A third is that the bulk of the "Stubborn Ways" inquiry occurred during the administration of George Bush, not that of the much-more-investigation-happy Obama Department of Justice.

One thing that we can learn: at some point, perhaps as soon as six years from now, we may know the full details of the investigation into the Associated Press. Or most of it, anyway. Of the more than 1,000 pages of documents in the FBI's case file, over 600 contained retracted information. Over 350 weren't provided after The Smoking Gun's FOIA request at all.

Photo: Guantanamo prisoners hold up a sign asking for freedom. (AP)

       

Why We Should Get Excited for J.J. Abrams's 'Star Wars'

While attention is, understandably, mostly on J.J. Abrams's newest film Star Trek Into Darkness, which opened this week, I'm suddenly more interested in his next film, 2015's Star Wars: Episode VII. Obviously we don't know anything about the movie yet, but there are some aspects of Into Darkness that might give us some hints. Not about the plot, obviously, but about the style. Judging by what he's done with Into Darkness, a J.J. Abrams Star Wars could actually be quite good.

I know we Star Wars fans will forever be scarred by the unholy nightmare that was the prequel trilogy, so the idea of any other movie potentially further sullying the precious original three is horrifying, but bear with me. Though he makes some narrative mistakes here and there, seemingly caving to baser instincts, Abrams's Star Trek films are sleek and fun, he creates engaging worlds and deftly manipulates their physics. They are, though, a little too sleek at times, there's an almost robotic quality to them that makes me think that Abrams, who admits to not being much of a Star Trek fan, will do better when his heart is really in it. He likes Star Wars and Star Wars offers more room to breathe. With Star Trek, Abrams had to reinvent an origin story, while working within some rather strict framework. But with Star Wars he's simply continuing a story, there is no rebooting there, he has far fewer things to simply recreate. That's a good thing.

There's a playfulness to Abrams's movies that I suspect will work much better in the Star Wars universe. Into Darkness opens with a riotous chase sequence that feels straight out of the Star Wars playbook, a Han and Chewie caper if ever there was one. It's looser, more madcap than the typical Star Trek tale. The movie is clever, too, having fun with silly-looking aliens and the insanities of space adventure. It's never full-on Mos Eisley or asteroid monster, but that's because that's not what Star Trek does. But Star Wars does! Of course Star Wars is serious too, but in an operatic way. It's melodrama, not the interior moral conflicts of Kirk and Spock. Abrams, for all his cool technical mastery, is a pop opera kind of a guy; he's a Spielbergite, someone more concerned with awe than reason.

I like too that Star Wars exists in an entirely different galaxy. Abrams is good at grounding his Star Trek films in some sort of recognizable reality, but I'm more curious to see what he does with something that has nothing to do with Earth. Of course he won't be creating an aesthetic from whole cloth, that was already done for him 35 years ago, but there are more opportunities for wild flights of fancy and imagination with Star Wars and, if nothing else, I'm excited to see what that looks like. It could be a mess! That is a distinct possibility. But I suspect that, as he showed with Super 8, he has a good eye for the fantastical.

I'm also heartened that Abrams's frequent writing partners Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof are not currently attached to Episode VII at the moment. Abrams needs to shake it up a bit, film other people's words, keep himself on his creative toes. Sure the current credited screenwriter Michael Arndt was on the committee that wrote the muddled Oblivion, but if he's not simply a link in the rewrite chain, maybe something clearer and more fully realized will come out. Though, of course, this thing is going to have studio hands all over it no matter what. It's Disney for crying out loud.

Which really should be our biggest concern about Star Wars, corporate business that is largely out of Abrams's hands. Filmmaking-wise, I'm finding myself more bullish about Abrams's prospects than anticipated. Into Darkness plays like he's gearing up, getting himself into space mode before leaving orbit and rocketing off. If he can tone down the sleekness, the coolness, just a little bit — Star Wars is a little too earnest to be cool — then I think he might be the ideal man for the job. He's smart and has good taste (for the most part) and this is source material he likes. I know this could all end in Phantom Menace-esque carnage, but for now I'm feeling a new hope.

       

Five Best Friday Columns

Héctor Carrillo at The New York Times on machismo in Brazil "Brazil is potentially poised to become the third and largest country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage," says Héctor Carrillo, referring to prior legislation in Argentina, Uruguay, and parts of Mexico. His question: "How can we reconcile these developments with the stereotype of Latin culture as a bastion of religiosity and machismo? How is it that the continent the Catholic Church looks to as its future (along with Africa) is home to what is said to be the largest gay-pride celebration in the world, in São Paulo, Brazil?" The answer comes down to culture, he argues: "These achievements were not inevitable; for decades the left, with ideological roots in class struggle, could be as patriarchal and homophobic as the capitalists and soldiers it condemned. So to understand why the politics changed, we must also look to society." He draws upon his work as an anthropologist in Mexico: "Women wanted to be recognized as sexual beings, with legitimate desires and the ability to pursue them. Men felt the old models of machismo were constraining, not empowering. ... This desire for individual autonomy — which in some ways lagged behind the sexual revolution in the United States — extended to gay and lesbian people." But vestiges of that same culture remain. As Grace Wyler at Business Insider points out, "Women who seek medical abortions in Brazil are also often subjected to sexual assault and humiliation. In Brazil's machismo culture, pregnant women are particularly vulnerable, and Barroso described scenarios in which women who purchased misoprostol were then harassed at the pharmacy, or forced to allow the pharmacist to vaginally insert the drug."

Stephen L. Carter at Bloomberg View on the scope of the First Amendment Stephen L. Carters weighs the nature of a proposed press shield law designed to protect journalists from revealing confidential sources. He's skeptical: "Consider a whistle-blower, A, who tells B of something nefarious going on at a hypothetical federal agency, which we’ll call the Internal Revenue Service. B in turn tells the world. Scandal ensues. ... The statute, as written, would permit the subpoena if B is, say, a blogger who obtains no income from her writing, or a wealthy philanthropist who distributes a newsletter but derives no income from it, or a law student using the information as the basis of a project to be published in her school’s law review. One cannot make a serious case that any one of these forms of publication contributes less to public debate and the public good than the coverage of the same news on television or in a newspaper." He continues: "The obvious argument therefore has to do with the chilling effect — that is, intimidating professional journalists is more dangerous to public debate than frightening bloggers or philanthropists or law students. This is a scary reading of the First Amendment, which does not on its face divide free speakers into different classes." The shield law received new support due to the Department of Justice's subpoena of Associated Press phone records. Jack Shafer at Reuters explains why the Obama administrations has been so keen to plug leaks: "It wasn’t the substance of the AP story that has exasperated the government but that the AP found a source or sources that spilled information about an ongoing intelligence operation and that even grander leaks might surge into the press corps’ rain barrels. ... A leak once sprung can turn into a gusher as the original leakers keep talking and new ones join them, or as the government attempts to explain itself, or as others in the government begin to speak out of turn." 

Melanie Springer Mock at The Nation on the pitfalls of Christian adoption Melanie Springer Mock considers the Christian adoption movement, of which a foundational principle is the superiority of placing adopted children from foreign countries in Western, Christian homes. "Christians committed to justice and equity need to remember we are not entitled to other people’s children, no matter how poor or powerless those people might be; and many times the best possible place for a child to grow up is with his birth family, in his birth culture, even if that family—and culture—is poorer and less developed than ours," she writes. "Implicit in many [adoption] narratives is the belief that adoption into Christian homes saves children two ways: first, by giving them a better life, supportive parents, an education, and all the goods American prosperity can provide; and second, more significantly, by saving them from their presumed spiritual darkness and giving them a life in Christ." Which horrifies Spock, herself a mother of adopted children: "If I follow this line of thinking to its conclusion, my own two sons would have burned in hell, save that they were adopted by Christians, who are de facto often white and wealthy, who could take them to church, have them baptized, raise them up as believers. I reject this idea whole-heartedly, and I hope other Christians do to." The culture of adoption remains unforgiving in other ways too, says Nina Easton at The Washington Post: "Women routinely face family, friends and even health-care providers who think that adoption equals abandonment, according to researchers and conversations with birth mothers. ... This cultural bias infuses the guidance women receive. Just 1 percent of pregnant women who seek counseling, whether at a church-backed pregnancy crisis center or a clinic where abortions are performed, walk out with an adoption referral, according to the National Council for Adoption."

Sarah Posner at The Guardian on Obama's 'Watergate' "As a trio of scandals converged on the Obama administration this week, and congressional committees announced a series of hearings on the Internal Revenue Service, there have been attempts to compare the IRS and Benghazi controversies to Watergate," observes Sarah Posner. "But here's the critical fact: there's been no finding of criminal activity in the Obama administration, and the FBI's opening of a criminal investigation of the IRS should lay to rest accusations that the administration has failed to take the matter seriously. ... As Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate story, pointed out, there is no evidence the president ordered, much less knew about, the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups' tax-exempt applications. ... If this scandal prompts Congress to pass some meaningful reform of the tax and campaign finance laws, then it would, in that sense, be comparable to Watergate. But it appears far more likely to turn into a spectacle of political grandstanding – and, absurdly enough, opportunistic political fundraising." Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal argues exactly the opposite: "We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. ... A president sets a mood, a tone. He establishes an atmosphere. If he is arrogant, arrogance spreads. If he is to too partisan, too disrespecting of political adversaries, that spreads too. Presidents always undo themselves and then blame it on the third guy in the last row in the sleepy agency across town."

Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post on the manners of live theatre How should one deal with distracting theatre patrons? Alexandra Petri takes stock of a recent column by National Review columnist Kevin D. Williamson, who admitted to grabbing and then throwing a distractor's cell phone across the room at a recent show in New York. "Who hasn’t wanted to do something along these lines?" Petri asks. "To take the offending cell phone and toss it away, not caring where it lands! What rapture! What bliss! Why not? The person clicking or buzzing or ringing in the far corner of your vision is not respecting certain basic principles of civility. Why should you?" She admits reluctance, though: "For most of us, this sort of dream stays in the realm of fantasy. Williamson might call it cowardice. I would call it politeness. The way to fight rudeness is not with vigilante rudeness of your own. But how much one wants to." Gothamist's John Del Signore, on the other hand, heaped praise on Williamson under the headline "Heroic Theatergoer Smashes Cell Phone, Gets Thrown Out," and offered to help raise money should Williamson face any criminal charges. "Kevin Williamson, you are indeed our Thoreau," Del Signore wrote. "And if you need help raising bail money, we'll totally start a Kickstarter for you, just like Emerson did."

       

New York Busts Up a Massive Ring of Terror-Linked Cigarette Smugglers

Since shortly after 9/11, the government has linked smuggling use with terror. Usually, that link spurs images of Afghan poppy fields under the wary eye of men in fatigues. Sometimes, though, it's garbage bags filled with money from selling illegal cigarettes in Brooklyn.

Yesterday, CNN reports, authorities arrested 16 Palestinian men in a scheme that may have generated $55 million in revenue from selling cigarettes without paying state tax. The group bought cigarettes in Virginia, moving them to a warehouse in Delaware. Several times a week, cartons of cigarettes would be brought to the city in vans and sold.

When authorities moved in, there was no shortage of evidence discovered.

Investigators said they seized three handguns from Basel Ramadan, as well as $1.4 million from his residence, some of which was stuffed into black plastic garbage bags.

More than 20,000 cartons of cigarettes were also taken from defendants' homes, cars and storage facilities in four states, authorities said. At least $200,000 in cash was seized from defendants in New York City alone, officials said.

The links to terror organizations are somewhat sketchy. Members of the smuggling group have been linked to Hamas, a Lebanese terrorist, and the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel-Rahman. Such a link, however, wouldn't be unprecedented. In 2004, a ring similarly focused on selling untaxed cigarettes at a profit was tied directly to al Qaeda and Hezbollah. In 2002, a man in Charlotte was convicted of providing support to terrorists by similarly selling cigarettes.

Trying to get around New York's excise taxes on cigarettes — which is the highest in the country, as seen below — is not new behavior. New Yorkers pay more for each pack of cigarettes than anywhere else: $5.85 in taxes alone. This has led to a variety of efforts to reduce costs — guys in Manhattan sell single cigarettes; stores in Native American territory trying to avoid paying taxes. Where there is a demand, there will be a supply.

Excise tax by state

The state estimates that the scheme uncovered yesterday cost the state about $80 million in lost tax revenue — implying that the ring perhaps sold more than ten million packs of cigarettes during its run.

Photo: Two of the arrested suspects, Basel and Samir Ramadan. (AP)

       

Rihanna Sues Topshop

Today in celebrity news: Rihanna doesn't want Topshop selling T-shirts of her, Gywneth does some doublespeak, and Kimye is taking their baby on tour. 

Uh oh! One thing you don't want to do is get Rihanna mad, and the British retail chain Topshop has done just that. Y'see they've been selling T-shirts with Rihanna's picture on them, and they did not have permission to do that, so she is suing the company for $5 million, according to Page Six. But it's not an open and shut case. Though there are Topshop stores in the United States, it seems the Rihanna T-shirts are maybe not sold here? And in the UK, the law doesn't protect a person's image the same way. So it's tricky, but Rihanna has decided to sue them anyway. We wish her luck! Because they shouldn't be profiting off of her face without her consent, yes, but also because Topshop is sort of an evil store. Have you ever tried anything on there? I will just say that I am not a big person, not a tiny stick figure either but still, and a large winter coat there was too tight on me. That is ridiculous, Topshop! Or I guess Topman, but whatever, same dif. Stop making people feel terrible about themselves. Or if you're going to do it, be more graceful about it, like Uniqlo is. That's colorful shaming. Topshop is mean, snobby, cloudy British shaming. And I don't like it. I hope Rihanna sues the pants off them. And the T-shirts. And the too-tight jackets. All of it. [Page Six]

Hmmm. Gwyneth Paltrow, the champagne flute made human by a lonely gay man's wish, did not have a good time at the Met gala a couple weeks ago. She said as much on an Australian radio show. Specifically: "It sucked." No uncertain terms there. And yet! The new issue of her lifestyle newsletter GOOP, largely targeted at the children of Blythe Danner, is entirely Met gala-themed. Mysterious! She talks about how glamorous and exciting the whole thing is, gushing about the fashion and whatnot. Though Gwyneth made fun of the gala's "punk" theme, in GOOP her stylist says that Gwyneth's "look is all about anarchy -- truly going against the grain and not wearing what everyone expects. That’s about as punk as you can get." So Gwyneth made fun of her stylist, essentially. Or she changed her mind? Or, mayyyybe, GOOP is not actually representative of her true life and feelings and is instead a lifestyle publication all about aspirationalism that serves some strange need for Paltrow to feel she's connecting with people while carefully demonstrating her remove from them? Who knows. Whatever the case, thank god no one takes GOOP all that seriously, otherwise we'd have some real hurt feelings on our hands. Though, hm, someone go check on that gay man. [Us Weekly]

Kim Kardashian will be bringing her baby on tour with Kanye West. He's going out on tour this fall with his new album, while Kim is due this summer. So rather than be apart from each other while Kanye rides his bus around the country, Kim is getting on the damn bus. (I mean, Kanye West probably doesn't actually ride a bus while on tour, right?) And she's arranging "cribs and soundproof hotel rooms at every stop." That could work! I mean it's a baby, so it's not going to remember this either way, it's not like living on the road is going to scar it. Better then that the family is together so Kim won't be solely burdened with the responsibilities. Now they can both tell the nannies what to do! Can you imagine being a staff member while Kim Kardashian and Kanye West tour around the country with an infant? Would that job work like an air traffic controller, where they work like two weeks and then get three off or whatever? If not, it should. Because that sounds like one crazy stressful nightmare of a job. They should just hire some monk who's taken a vow of poverty and silence and eternal holy misery who will take spiritual comfort in the cruelties visited upon him by the proud new parents. Because a regular person will not be able to endure that, I don't think. It's too much. All the coddling and soothing, having to deal with all the cranky fits and dirty diapers. And then there's the baby to take care of! Hi-yo! [TMZ]

Now that Reese Witherspoon and her husband Jim Witherspoon have been arrested, he for a DUI she for making a scene during his arrest, we are taking note of how much they drink. They've been "caught" drinking twice now, once at Soho House in New York (although in those pictures Reese appeared, to me, to be drinking seltzer) and now at the Bryant Park Hotel bar. Tsk tsk. How dare they. And by "they" I mean people who are spying on Reese Witherspoon and counting her drinks. But if the Witherspoons were going to tie one on again, they chose the right city for it. Just hop in a cab, friends. No driving necessary. I have heard more than a few people who have come to visit here from LA and said "I can get so drunk here!" Maybe I need new friends, but the point remains. Reese and Jim will not have to do any driving here, so they are allowed to have a cocktail at their hotel if they want, for pete's sake. [Page Six]

       

Amtrak's WiFi Upgrade Allows More People to Complain About Amtrak WiFi

Amtrak, America's much-maligned railroad service, have given rail passengers a gift: upgraded WiFi on its very expensive Acela trains and will upgrade the rest of its trains by summer. But even the revamped Internet access won't be good enough to stream Netflix — and because we're brats, we'll still find this unacceptable. 

The reason you still won't be able to stream Netflix, Hulu or Pandora this summer (or any time soon) is that streaming audio and video puts and a massive burden on the network and, with too many people watching movies at the same time, can bring down the entire wireless service.  "Amtrak said, it would still restrict data-heavy activities that could slow the service down, like streaming video sites like Netflix and music sites like Pandora. The railroad also restricts file downloads larger than 10MB," reported The New York Times's Ron Nixon.

This may be sensible policy for trying to preserve connectivity on a moving object, but Amtrak passengers are still regularly annoyed that they can't do the Internet stuff they normally do while sitting on a train. At this very minute there are people riding on Amtrak trains complaining on Twitter (probably through Amtrak's WiFi) about being deprived of Netflix: 

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As the upgrade would suggest, Amtrak's WiFi has never been blazingly fast and people have long complained about its spotty, easily overloaded service. So, these travelers are essentially complaining a reality that has never been. But mostly, they're just baselessly complaining. 

Amtrak's free WiFi is actually a gift we take for granted. It's not quite the 16th birthday gift from the parents, and more like Secret Santa from that person who really likes you at work, but it's still a gift. "On the one hand, we’re lucky to have such pervasive Internet access ... On the other, it’s frustrating anytime something that should work doesn’t," an Amtrak passenger told Nixon, though it's unclear if she was using the upgraded WiFi.

But it's also a free gift, and Amtrak is unlike the airlines and cruises who charge you to use the Internet. And while there are magic whispers of people who can hack Netflix at 30,000 feet—most of the travelers I've seen on planes almost download the movie before the trip (though how plane travelers watch their movies, sometimes without headphones, has no uniformity). If no other method of modern travel allows you to stream Netflix seamlessly, why take it out on Amtrak? 

Oh, right. It's because of the perception of Amtrak being a method of travel that allows you to be productive. Unlike airplanes, people who aren't in the sweet piece of heaven known as the Quiet Car have access to their cellphones and can do "business" while in transit, which Nixon notes and has been noting in the past (he's The Times's Amtrak WiFi beat reporter). But what kind of serious business requires you to stream Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? If that is a real, well-paying job, please sign me up. And if you're in a job that's so important that it demands that you download extremely large files while in transit, you need to talk to your supervisors about plane travel.

Amtrak's WiFi upgrade, which promises reliability and faster speed should give most business people what they need—more e-mail access and Internet browsing. Though one Wire staffer believes that if you're going to do work on a train, it should be marginal. And fortunately there are some people cheering for the railroad service that could along with actual testimonials of speed being faster. Though, with this upgrade, people will be even more connected to Twitter and other forms of social media, to complain about the upgrades they believe they need.

       

Cannes Festival Hit by $1 Million Jewel Heist

Jewel thieves have stolen $1 million worth of Chopard jewelry from a hotel right off the Croisette, and while the theft being called by Deadline one of the "biggest heists to go down in recent Cannes history," it's not actually that unexpected. 

The Hollywood Reporter reported that the jewelry, set to be loaned to celebrities for their red carpet appearances, was stolen from a Chopard employee's hotel room in the Novotel, and that "whole safe was taken out of the wall in the hotel room." Police are also telling THR that the heist "may be an inside job" and are questioning hotel employees. According to Le Monde the crime occurred at 5 a.m. The festival itself was quick to note that their top prize the Palme d'Or, which is supplied by Chopard, is safe, according to the AFP. 

Burglaries at the festival and on the French Riviera itself do not lack historical context. Let us not forget, as Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter points out on Twitter, Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, which starred Cary Grant as a cat burglar took place in that locale. And there are real-life examples too. 

Earlier this year the AFP reported that thieves had stolen a million euros worth of luxury watches from the store on the Croisette's promenade in Cannes. In 2009 armed robbers stole millions of euros worth of jewelry from a Cartier shop in the city.

Last year at the festival two Senegalese soccer stars reported €400,000 worth of wristwatches and jewelry and  €30,000 in cash stolen. In their guide to the festival, Indiewire advises: "Also beware of pickpockets. We know of regulars who, after leaving a window open, have had all of their belongings stolen from their rented hotels and flats while they were away." Take this as you may wish, but back in 2010 Lindsay Lohan claimed her passport had been stolen at Cannes, rendering her unable to go to court. 

Perhaps one of the more ironic parts of this recent theft—and one that has not escaped the media and the jokesters on Twitter—is that it happened as Sofia Coppola's movie about teenager burglar's stealing from stars, The Bling Ring, screened at the festival. Somehow we don't see Emma Watson being that method.