Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 990

The DOJ Will Work Around the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act Decision

Following the Supreme Court's partial dismantling of the Voting Rights Act in June, the Justice Department is now going to go ahead and try to get its oversight power back in some states using what's left of the law, Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Thursday. First up: Texas. 

Speaking to the National Urban League in Philadelphia, Holder revealed that he is planning a series of measures that will challenge the state's autonomy when it comes to setting its own voting laws. As you'll remember, the Supreme Court invalidated the portion of the Voting Rights Act earlier this summer that determined the formula by which states and counties were flagged for extra federal scrutiny before their voting laws went into effect, based on historical discrimination. That left states like Texas (and North Carolina) with free reign to set their own rules — including controversial voter ID laws — without federal oversight, at least until Congress manages to draft a new formula "based on current conditions." Since that's not likely to happen any time soon, the Justice Department is trying to find a way to step in without them. Their first step will be to throw their support behind an already existing lawsuit from Democratic coalitions in Texas that challenges the state's redistricting plan. "We believe that the State of Texas should be required to go through a preclearance process whenever it changes its voting laws and practices." Holder explained. He added: 

“Even as Congress considers updates to the Voting Rights Act in light of the Court’s ruling, we plan, in the meantime, to fully utilize the law’s remaining sections to subject states to pre-clearance as necessary...my colleagues and I are determined to use every tool at our disposal to stand against such discrimination wherever it is found.”

Texas moved quickly after the Supreme Court's decision to push forward with both their "stringent" voter ID law and their redistricting maps, which had previously been held up in the pre-clearance process. Citing a provision still existing in the Voting Rights Act that allows government oversight of state election laws if there's evidence of current or recent discrimination there, Holder seems to be moving somewhat quickly, too, to stop the new law. And he's expected to go after the state's Voter ID law next. 

According to the Washington Post, the DOJ also has their eye on North Carolina's voter ID bill. If passed, that law would become by far the strictest voter ID law in the country. In addition to the new, strict ID requirements laid out in the measure, the bill would also, as explained by Slate: 

drastically reduces early voting, does away with same-day voter registration, weakens the disclosure of so-called independent expenditures, disenfranchises felons and the “mentally incompetent,” authorizes vigilante poll observers, and penalizes families of college students who vote out of state.

According to the Post, Holder's tactic will involve a combination of bringing lawsuits and "other" legal options available to the DOJ to try and re-create the sort of oversight that went out the window with the Supreme Court's earlier ruling. The department will reportedly roll out those plans in the next few weeks. 

       

The NSA Had Google News Before Even Google Had Google News

No matter what iPad you have, you are carrying more storage than the NSA relegated for a secret news database it launched 20 years ago. And with a browser that can access Google News, you have far, far more sources, too.

Before PRISM and all the other sophisticated Internet snooping programs, the NSA had "ANCHORY," the government version of Google News — almost a decade before Google News existed. Documents provided to MuckRock under a Freedom of Information Act request detail a system that, beginning in 1993, "provide[d] timely retrieval of textual data by keyword and other relevant information on a 24-hours per day, 7 day per week basis." That's pretty much the exact function of Google News: to catalogue "textual data" (news on the Internet) by keyword all day every day, categorized by time. 

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There were, however, some minor differences between Google News and ANCHORY. First, the entire database consisted of a now-laughable 16 gigabytes of data. In addition, instead of chatter on blogs and newspapers, the "relevant information" it included were "full text reports written by NSA, CIA, DIA, State and Foreign Broadcast Information System, as well as Reuters News Service, Cryptologic Intelligence Reports and precis of hard copy reports." Well, at least it had Reuters. In 1993, of course, there weren't too many other sources of news online.

[image error]The way MuckRock acquired the documents is interesting. In the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, which introduced most of the world to the NSA's internet-surveilling program PRISM, a user of MuckRock named Jason Gulledge apparently began searching LinkedIn for people with security backgrounds that listed PRISM and other acronyms under their experience. A quick search for "ANCHORY" on the system right now returns 124 results, some of which can be seen at right.

How, when, and if ANCHORY was removed from service isn't detailed in the brief documents shared by the NSA. It's very possible that Google ended up doing the NSA's job for it, creating a much better and much more expansive way of figuring out what was going on in the world. The NSA would later call on Google for help more directly.

       

Melissa McCarthy Might Be the Female James Bond

Today in showbiz news: Melissa McCarthy may be a silver screen secret agent, James McEvoy is Frankenstein, Pawnee meets Heidi Klum and more.

Melissa McCarthy has had a fairly diverse acting career. She's been a Boston cop, bridesmaid, Lorelai Gilmore's BFF, and identity thief, but now she is close to adding another role to her repertoire: spy. McCarthy is in discussions to reunite with her Bridemaids and The Heat director Paul Feig on Susan Cooper, described as "a realistic comedy about a female James Bond-type" tonally akin to The Heat. Isn't "realistic spy comedy" kind of an oxymoron? Real-world espionage doesn't really seem like a barrel of laughs, so maybe let's just say "spy comedy." [The Wrap]

Here is another Gravity clip with Melissa McCarthy's co-star from The Heat, Sandra Bullock, in case those clips from yesterday did not make you anxious enough. It seems this movie is going to do for commercial space travel what Jaws did for beaches or Contagion did for OCD people.

People confusing Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster might once again crack the top 25 biggest frustrations for English majors. In recent years, the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight and the absence of professional copy editing in online media have sidelined Frankenstein-Frankenstein's monster concerns, but it may be on its way for a comeback as Fox is making a new Frankenstein movie, and they chose James McAvoy—currently starring in the studio's X-Men films—to play the titular character. He is joining Daniel Radcliffe, who is already on board to play Igor. No word yet on whether the film will contain heavy-handed dialogue explicitly explaining the difference between Frankenstein and his monster, nor is there any indication on whether Frankenstein will be a real person or CGI. Maybe Justin Bieber should be Frankenstein—his career trajectory is kind of a Frankenstein story. Bieber was groomed to be an innocent pop star, and after he legally became an adult, everything went awry and he became an insufferable brat. Monster Frankenbieber sounds like a good way to rope in the teen demo. [Deadline]

The season premiere of Parks & Recreation should be pretty interesting. Leslie Knope and friends will meet Heidi Klum, who is playing a mayor of a small Danish town, in a one-hour episode set in London. In the episode, Knope and Klum's character are both recipients of an international award honoring women serving in government, and the two come into conflict when Knope realizes Klum's character is much more beloved in her hometown than Knope is in Pawnee. Just imagining Ron Swanson immersing himself in the United Kingdom is enough to make a person's day. [EW]

While Tobey Maguire has been unsuccessful in escaping the shadow of Spider-Man, current Spider-Man Andrew Garfield is trying break out from Spidey's web. Garfield has signed up to star in the 99 Homes, an indie drama about a man who gets involved with a shady real estate broker following the foreclosure of his own home. More notably, 99 Homes is directed and written by Ramin Bahrani, who has quietly made a career out of directing intimate humanistic dramas like Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo. Bahrani also directed that wonderful short film in which Werner Herzog voiced a plastic bag. No snark here, folks—Bahrani is great, and hopefully Garfield's fanbase will follow him for this movie. [Hollywood Reporter]

       

What Can We Learn from the Leaked 'Downton Abbey' Calendar?

The return of Downton Abbey is so far away for us Americans, but that doesn't mean we can't take the time to analyze these photos that have come out from the fourth season coming to us via Vulture and Hypable. The photos apparently come from a 2014 Downton calendar that was available on Amazon, hence the elegant formatting, but they essentially act as teaser photos. (Note: we have not been able to find the calendar on Amazon, though this Downton Abbey fan blog was posting the same images on Tuesday) The only person that really looks happy is Lady Edith! So that's a change. 

Here's Edith—the ugly duckling of the family, the one that got left at the altar—looking rather sexy and cavorting with her married editor beau Michael Gregson. You know, the one with the nutty wife, a lá Jane Eyre. But things seem to be going well for them here. So that's good news. Everyone just wants Edith to be happy and get laid at this point. 

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But now we come to Lady Mary. She's dressed in black and is clearly not taking this whole (spoiler alert) widowed-after-having-a-baby thing very well. She looks fairly grim and she stares out the window. Is she thinking of Cousin Matthew? Or of a new beau supposedly coming her way? 

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And finally here's Branson looking fairly happy with his young daughter. That's nice. His spouse died before Mary's so he probably had more time to recover. 

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And finally we've got Branson and Mary together with their children. Once, again, Branson looks more content, and Mary looks severe. Branson is grasping Mary's child's hand. Are the widow and widower helping raise each other's children? Margaret Lyons at Vulture thinks there's "weird chemistry" here. We'd have to agree. That'd be strange and we don't approve.

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There you go. Is your appetite significantly whetted? Well, tough luck. You have to wait until January 5, 2014 to get new episodes. That is, unless you want to fly to the U.K. once a week starting in September in the U.K. (or some other means involving illegal, gritty side of the Interwebs). That's your choice though. The show has a lot of work to do leading into their fourth outing, and we're curious what the show will do having lost some of their leading actors. Oh well, at least they gained Paul Giamatti.  

       

Don't Quit Now, Anthony Weiner

After the latest round of lewd revelations, it seems like just about everyone in New York City is urging Anthony Weiner to drop his quixotic quest for mayor. But though his chances of capturing City Hall seem to be getting slimmer with each withering news cycle, the man simply needs to stay in the race. Not for himself, but for us.

Forget, for a second, the several capable candidates he's running against. Nevermind, while we're at it, the disapproving editorial voices of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News and, not to be forgotten, Alec Baldwin. Of course, they all have a point: the man is an embarrassment, a walking joke — and a liar. His moronic behavior distracts from the issues New York City voters actually care about: jobs, crime, schools, bike lanes. Trusting him with City Hall would be like handing a pyromaniac a blowtorch.

Amen to all that. But if we truly want Weiner gone from the political scene, he needs to suffer the electoral drubbing that awaits him in the Sept. 10 primary.

We can understand the desire for Weiner to simply disappear, for the news cycle to be free of this serial sexter. But if he were to drop out now, it may only be a temorary relief, setting up the inevitable rehabilitation further down the road, once this summer of Weiner-dom concludes. He already has the playbook. People have short memories, after all. Just look at Eliot Spitzer, gunning for the city comptroller's office despite having committed acts that are illegal, not just plain dumb. 

No, Weiner must be made to feel the sting of total rejection.

Remember what happened the last time Weiner's penis was splashed all over the Web? He resigned from Congress — driven from office by neither voters nor his peers on Capitol Hill. Instead, he simply bolted red in the face. But his doing so actually gave people plenty of room to argue he was still a viable politician. A miserable showing in the September 10 primary — say, a finish behind no-name candidate Sal Albanese — would forever end talk of his rehabilitation. We would never have to hear of Anthony Weiner again. No more junk shots; no more apologies. 

Weiner has made it very clear that he pays close attention to what the voters think about him. He told The Times back in April that he got into sexting because the Internet was such a perfect tool for figuring out precisely what people want to hear:

"I was in a world and a profession that had me wanting people’s approval. By definition, when you are a politician, you want people to like you, you want people to respond to what you’re doing, you want to learn what they want to hear so you can say it to them."

Those who want Weiner to let go of his political ambitions should not urge him to quit. If he quits, he can still claim that he's undefeated — just like Sarah Palin did. Anthony Weiner cannot be silenced unless he's actually spurned at the ballot box. So let him stay for now, New York. And in September, tell him what he needs to hear.

       

Newt Gingrich Goes to the Zoo (With Google Glass)

[image error]Newt Gingrich tried out Google Glass today at the zoo in Peoria, Illinois. And while we've been promised a film of the noted historian's animal encounters, Gingrich delivered a few great picture tweets of himself as a preview.

On way to Peoria zoo with google glass at two pm. Should be fun and interesting. Then on to campaign with Darin Lahood.

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) July 25, 2013

Gingrich, as we've explained before, is the foremost tech prophet of our time. His embrace of Google Glass, therefore, means that the new product will, frankly, be a massive success. But until everyone else catches up, we'll have to make do with Gingrich's day at the zoo. 

The day got off to a worrying start: Newt's visit with a giraffe was charming, but notably lacking in visible Google Glass on his face: 

Feeding Taji the giraffe at the @peoriazoo pic.twitter.com/SJ0b98mu10

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) July 25, 2013

And then all was well. Here's Newt, wearing Google Glass, petting a turtle: 

Capturing my visit with George the turtle on @googleglass. @peoriazoo pic.twitter.com/Sf6DJv0x6j

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) July 25, 2013

And a bird: 

RT @f8andbthere2: White headed birds of a feather? @newtgingrich meets Bebe the cockatoo at the Peoria Zoo. pic.twitter.com/foxpHSEVdJ

— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) July 25, 2013

Gingrich has been planning his Google Glass trip since at least April, when he indicated in a weekly newsletter that he was thinking the zoo would be a great place for his first "experiment" with the wearable computer. 

       

Why Have Gun Sales Dropped So Much?

In June, the number of background checks conducted by the FBI — a strong indicator of new gun sales — hit its lowest level since September 2011. The figure was down 54 percent from December 2012, in which more background checks were performed than any previous month in history. But why?

There are probably four reasons : Obama, the seasons, gun control, and physics.

Using data from the FBI, we created a chart showing the number of background checks per month. This isn't tied directly to sales; Kentucky, for example, requires a new check at the renewal of a gun permit. But it's a good indicator.

What we're interested in is that drop at the far right, last month, in which 1.28 million checks were conducted.

Reason 1: Gun control

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, gun sales spiked. That reaction stemmed largely from concerns that the government would institute new restrictions on gun ownership. A look at Google Trends data, which tracks search frequency, bears that out.

As BuzzFeed noted on Thursday, retailers agree with this assessment. In an earnings call, sporting goods store Cabela's sees a link between fears of new laws and an increase in purchases. When legislation on gun control went dormant on Capitol Hill in the spring, that impetus diminished.

The increase of background checks since January 2006 is not tied closely to increased discussion of gun control. Extending the Google Trends chart back to that date shows that the December – April spike was perhaps the only one that happened in concert with such concerns.

(And if you were curious, as we were, if the constant increase was a function of population, it isn't. Using Federal Reserve population data, here's the number of checks as a percent of total population.)

Reason 2: Physics

Part of the drop was also regression toward the mean — a return back to the normal pattern. If we take the graph of checks by month and add a trendline, we get the following.

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That dashed red line shows how the monthly value moved over time. The June data is far closer to that long-term value than is December. In other words, the decline was partly just deflation, gravity, a return to normal.

BuzzFeed quotes Cabela's CEO, Tommy Millner, who put it well.

The gun business is settling to what I would probably assume to be a new normal, which is elevated above history but not at the fever level that we saw recently, and that’s a good thing.

Reason 3: The seasons

In the chart above, you may have noticed that the June figure is actually below the norm. That's to be expected as well. The number of background checks naturally drops during the early summer. The graph below shows how the trend has moved each year. A brief rise in spring, a drop over the summer, a big run-up to the holidays. We're in the second part of that transition.

Reason 4: Obama

[image error]If you look closely, you'll notice one other time over the past seven years that background checks spike a bit more than normal. We've isolated it on the image at right. That brief spike happened in December 2008 and January 2009 — immediately after Barack Obama won his bid for the presidency.

In short, then, the spike in gun background checks over the winter was a bubble, inflated by concerns about the reelection of Obama, about a push for gun control, and due to the normal increase we see for the holidays. The decline is all of that dissipating, and settling back to normal levels. Normal levels, we'll note, which keep climbing higher and higher.

       

Juror Who Didn't Convict Zimmerman of Murder Says He 'Got Away With Murder'

A second juror in the George Zimmerman murder trial has decided to speak out regarding the jury's decision to acquit Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Trayvon Martin. "Maddy," a.k.a. Juror B29, told Good Morning America that even though she didn't convict him, "Zimmerman got away with murder" but "the law couldn't prove it." Maddy and her five fellow jurors found Zimmerman not guilty, but her interview may be proof that what went on in during deliberations is what many outsiders were theorizing: that even though what George Zimmerman did that February night when he killed Trayvon Martin might sound like a crime, the state did not have enough evidence to prove the death fits into the legal definition of manslaughter or murder. 

Maddy, who is choosing to be identified only by first name, and her feelings on the case and  Zimmerman, might infuriate people who believe she and her fellow jurors erred in their decision. Essentially, the argument would be that Maddy could have, if she felt so strongly, voted to convict Zimmerman. Maddy herself says:

George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with... [But] the law couldn't prove it.

But even though Maddy was convinced that George Zimmerman did something wrong when he killed Trayvon Martin that night, she explains that her hands were tied by the law:

That's where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it ... But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can't say he's guilty.

[..]

As much as we were trying to find this man guilty…they give you a booklet that basically tells you the truth, and the truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it," she added. 

The jury, according to The Sanford Herald, was given these two parameters when they inquired about the manslaughter charge:

To prove the crime of Manslaughter, the State must prove the following two elements beyond a reasonable doubt:

1. Trayvon Martin is dead.

2. George Zimmerman intentionally committed an act or acts that caused the death of Trayvon Martin.

[...]

In order to convict of manslaughter by act, it is not necessary for the State to prove that George Zimmerman had an intent to cause death, only an intent to commit an act that was not merely negligent, justified, or excusable and which caused death.

Maddy claims she was trying to force a hung jury, but then came to the conclusion that there wasn't enough evidence to convict even though she was convinced Zimmerman committed a crime in killing Martin. And what Maddy is saying sounds like what some pundits and journalists have been saying about this case — that the prosecution didn't do enough to prove its case and were perhaps handicapped by the lack of eye witnesses.

"At no point did I think that the state proved second degree murder. I also never thought they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted recklessly. They had no ability to counter his [Zimmerman's] basic narrative, because there were no other eye-witnesses," The Atlantic's  Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote following the verdict, voicing his and other's concern with the law regarding manslaughter and murder. "I think the message of this episode is unfortunate. By Florida law, in any violent confrontation ending in a disputed act of lethal self-defense, without eye-witnesses, the advantage goes to the living. " Coates wrote. 

Maddy's account come after and in contrast to the outspoken, but still anonymous, Juror B37, who made the media rounds telling people that she believed Zimmerman's "heart was in the right place" when he spotted and was suspicious of an unarmed Trayvon Martin. B37 also talked about "stand your ground" even though that was not part of the trial—Zimmerman waived his right to a stand-your-ground pretrial—leading some to believe she may have been confused about what she was deciding and/or came into the trial with a preconceived notions about the case. B37 also tried to broker a book deal less than 48 hours after the verdict.

Maddy was a bit more ambivalent than B37 and perhaps paints a fuller picture of what went on during deliberations—B37's fellow jurors, including Maddy, have released a statement distancing themselves from her post-verdict comments.. Though it's not clear if any of this is any consolation to Martin's parents, Maddy does state that she feels sorry for them. "I'm hurting as much Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain," Maddy said. 

The interview with Maddy will be shown tonight during ​World News, Nightline and on Friday's broadcast.

       

How Michelle Bachmann Learned to Love Massive Government Surveillance

Last night’s vote on the Amash amendment made seemingly strange bedfellows: as more House Democrats than Republicans voted for the anti-NSA measure, Michele Bachman emerged as a defender of the Obama administration's bulk collection of phone metadata. Bachmann, who believes that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated, and influences, the federal government, would like the federal government to retain their secret powers of surveillance on millions of Americans. As quoted by the National Review, Bachmann said on Wednesday, just before the vote:

“If we take this program and remove from the United States the distinct advantage that we have versus any other country,” she argued, ”it will be those who are seeking to achieve the goals of Islamic jihad who will benefit by putting the United States at risk, and it will be the United States which will be at risk. I believe that we need to win the War on Terror,” she continued. “We need to defeat the goals and aims of Islamic jihad, and for that reason I will be voting no on the Amash amendment.”

Bachmann, who built her political reputation as an anti-establishment Tea Party champion and has been quick to accuse Obama of turning the U.S. into a dictatorship on a range of issues from Obamacare to contraception to the debt ceiling to cap-and-trade. But on mass surveillance of Americans she joins Peter King, who has called for the prosecution of journalist Glenn Greenwald, House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon, and a handful of conservative and anti-sharia national security writers in, at least partially, defending the NSA’s spying powers. Those include the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney, and the Heritage Foundation, all of whom, one would think, would stand against trusting the government to play nicely with sweeping, secret, surveillance powers. So what’s going on?

In part, as Greenwald outlined this morning, the NSA debate has forced the traditional divisions of left vs. right to the sideline as unlikely political alliances form over the states of the role, and scope, of a national security state. And those divisions, which seem so unnatural in the context of our normal political narrative, are doing some interesting things to how the Tea Party is seen. The Tea Party presents itself as a secular coalition of anti-government grassroots activism — "TEA," as many activists will point out, was meant to stand for "Taxed enough already." Bachmann was, once, a champion of that movement. But for her NSA remarks, one-time Bachmann booster and Tea Party television hero Glenn Beck said on Thursday, “Michele B- is not dead to me, but she is in very ill health.”  To further pick away at the monolithic image of the party as a secular, outsider movement centered around objecting to government overreach, the Tea Party movement itself as a political force shares a substantial part of its infrastructure and funding with that of the more authoritarian, and politically experienced, religious right. Those existing divisions, coupled with the Tea Party's embrace of proponents of an anti-Islamic, conservative ideology, has helped to divided the movement over which thing to fear more: the authoritarian national security state or the threat of Islamic terrorism? 

Rep. Justin Amash, who introduced the anti-NSA amendment, is a Tea Partier, too. He's politically aligned with Grover Norquist (who, by the way, is one of the biggest subjects of Frank Gaffney's ire) and the libertarian wing of the movement, who overall strongly oppose the NSA's data collection methods and scope. Bachmann, on the other hand, sources her particular thoughts on the threat of Islamic jihad to a small but passionate group of conservative activists who believe that Islam represents an acute threat to the U.S.. They believe that the country is endangered by a massive conspiracy involving Muslim-American advocacy groups, mosques and Islamic leaders in the U.S., and basically everyone who disagrees with them: the media, academia, and so on. And while, among those writers, the revelations of the NSA data collection program have been mixed (Pamela Geller, for instance, has been more critical of the program, as has Diana West, who is normally in line with Gaffney’s views), its goals align, in a way, with the sort of national security efforts promoted by the anti-sharia community for years.

Gaffney, McCarthy, (and, for the record, West) were all among the co-authors on a 2010 report nicknamed the Team B II report, which outlined what has become the main thrust of the anti-sharia national security policy movement ever since. As followers of the Peter King hearings on "homegrown terrorism," or readers of the Associated Press’s Pulitzer-winning series of reports on Muslim surveillance by the NYPD might already know, that policy advocates for increased, bulk surveillance — on Muslims. Specifically, the report takes quite a lot of time outlining a theological interpretation of Islam which, if believed, would make it impossible to rule out any Muslim from any broad search for terrorism in the U.S. Their argument, among other things, relies on an interpretation of the doctrine of Taqiyya in Islam (which, more or less, allows Muslims to avoid death from religious persecution by denying their faith) that suggests that any Muslim, for any reason, is religiously compelled to lie in the face of questioning. The report also provides the extensive justification for Gaffney et al.’s short-handing of Sharia (which refers to Islamic law and practice in the broadest sense) as a fundamentalist, extremist form of Islam. From there, the report suggests that the American intelligence community’s main challenge when confronting global terrorism isn’t the scope of its reach, it’s the fact that it doesn’t engage in racial profiling enough. “Today, analysts jeopardize their careers if they try to use accurate language to define the enemy threat doctrine,” the report argues, calling the failure of local and national security operatives to target the Muslim population of the U.S. a “dereliction of duty.”

This idea was repeated critically in the context of the current NSA scandal by Robert Spencer, another anti-sharia writer:

This surveillance scandal arises out of our national bipartisan unwillingness to face the reality of Islamic jihad. Because we all agree that Islam is a religion of peace, we can't possibly address where the threat is really coming from, and monitor mosques or subject Muslims with Islamic supremacist ties to greater surveillance. Instead, we have to pretend that anyone and everyone is a potential terrorist, and surveil everyone.

Indeed, some law enforcement and national security officials, like NYPD police chief (and possible Homeland Security Department Secretary candidate) Ray Kelly, have taken the profiling approach to bulk surveillance to heart — Kelly even helped out on the production of an anti-Muslim film, "The Third Jihad," that in turn influenced the NYPD's targeting of Muslims in and around New York. But it is doubtful that Bachmann is really defending the national security approach to NSA data collection as it stands today. The Amash amendment, which would protect everyone from warrantless phone metadata collection, would also shut the door for the NSA to continue a long-standing secret surveillance program targeting Muslims only, which seems to be what the anti-sharia national security sphere is really after, anyway. For Gaffney et al., defending an expansion of surveillance efforts against American Muslims, should the national security complex be won over by their arguments, is worth the temporary constitutional inconvenience of secret data collection affecting millions (including Muslims) with no ties to terrorist groups or plots. So far, the Obama administration has kept quiet on their support from unlikely corners on this issue. And as the NSA story continues to illuminate political affinities that don't speak to our conventional understanding of American politics, it's easier and easier to see why. 

       

Kate Middleton Dares to Appear in Public With a Post-Pregnancy Belly

According to The Associated Press, Kate Middleton made the bold, applause-worthy choice to appear in public before her post-pregnancy belly went back to normal. But she didn't really have a choice — the media demanded she pose for a photo opp just 24 hours after giving birth to the new Prince George, so she did. Looking the way she looked. After having given birth in the previous 24 hours.

The AP got multiple quotes from women who thought the Duchess sent "the right message" by appearing in public with a bit of a remaining belly, as if she had a choice regarding doing so. Lyss Stern of New York City said, "I love that she came out and there was a mommy tummy. It was there! We all saw it!" Melissa Baker of Maryland concurred: "I liked that she didn't look perfect."

It's nice that these women aren't judging Middleton for looking the way she does, but the future queen probably wasn't trying to make a statement about women's bodies in the media at the Royal Baby's introduction to the world. There's no physical way she could have hidden her shape. Nor did billions of curious Royal Baby-watchers afford her any privacy whatsoever. So there she was, smiling for the cameras. The AP did suggest that Middleton could have used her new baby as some kind of human shield to hide her belly from view, but she didn't — another bold choice.

Middleton's post-birth publicity is somewhat unusual for a celebrity. Most new celeb moms wait a few months after giving birth before doing a photo shoot or walking the red carpet. In that amount of time, their bodies are able to biologically return somewhat back to normal (and of course, they have trainers and nutritionists to help them achieve what the average mom can't). Middleton didn't have the luxury of time, so she looked different than, say, Beyoncé did when she did a GQ photoshoot a year after giving birth.

Middleton wasn't quite letting it all hang out, however. She had her hairstylist come to the hospital to doll her up before the big reveal. 

Still, the media wants to make Middleton the poster mom for presenting realistic images to the public, when, in fact, there is nothing natural about the way she is being scrutinized by hungry eyes. The Daily Beast ran a similar story applauding her for not hiding her impossible-to-hide bump. But at least The Beast got a reasonable quote from a British woman, Justine Roberts, on the topic:

Was it a brave decision? Where the heck do you hide it anyway — under a bush? It's completely natural to have a baby belly the day after giving birth and it's a great shame that the world is so obsessed with women’s body shape that Kate’s belly is deemed worth commenting on.

Her hair did look pretty great, though.