Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 993

Does the NSA Tap That? What We Still Don't Know About Internet Surveillance

Among the snooping revelations of recent weeks, there have been tantalizing bits of evidence that the NSA is tapping fiber-optic cables that carry nearly all international phone and Internet data.

The idea that the NSA is sweeping up vast data streams via cables and other infrastructure — often described as the "backbone of the Internet" — is not new. In late 2005, the New York Times first described the tapping, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. More details emerged in early 2006 when an AT&T whistleblower came forward.

But like other aspects of NSA surveillance, virtually everything about this kind of NSA surveillance is highly secret and we're left with far from a full picture.

Is the NSA really sucking up everything?

It's not clear.

The most detailed, though now dated, information on the topic comes from Mark Klein. He's the former AT&T technician who went public in 2006 describing the installation in 2002-03 of a secret room in an AT&T building in San Francisco. The equipment, detailed in technical documents, allowed the NSA to conduct what Klein described as "vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data."

Klein said he was told there was similar equipment installed at AT&T facilities in San Diego, Seattle, and San Jose.

There is also evidence that the vacuuming has continued in some form right up to the present.

A draft NSA inspector's general report from 2009, recently published by the Washington Post, refers to access via two companies "to large volumes of foreign-to-foreign communications transiting the United States through fiberoptic cables, gateway switches, and data networks."

Recent stories by the Associated Press and the Washington Post also described the NSA's cable-tapping, but neither included details on the scope of this surveillance.

A recently published NSA slide, dated April 2013, refers to so-called "Upstream" "collection" of "communications on fiber cables and infrastructure as data flows past." 

These cables carry vast quantities of information, including 99 percent of international phone and Internet data, according to research firm TeleGeography.

This upstream surveillance is in contrast to another method of NSA snooping, Prism, in which the NSA isn't tapping anything. Instead, the agency gets users' data with the cooperation of tech companies like Facebook and Google.  

Other documents leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian provide much more detail about the upstream surveillance by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the NSA's U.K. counterpart.

GCHQ taps cables where they land in the United Kingdom carrying Internet and, phone data. According to the Guardian, unnamed companies serve as "intercept partners" in the effort.

The NSA is listening in on those taps too. By May 2012, 250 NSA analysts along with 300 GCHQ analysts were sifting through the data from the British taps.

Is purely domestic communication being swept up in the NSA's upstream surveillance?

It's not at all clear.

Going back to the revelations of former AT&T technician Mark Klein — which, again, date back a decade — a detailed expert analysis concluded that the secret NSA equipment installed at an AT&T building was capable of collecting information "not only for communications to overseas locations, but for purely domestic communications as well."

On the other hand, the 2009 NSA inspector general report refers specifically to collecting "foreign-to-foreign communications" that are "transiting the United States through fiber-optic cables, gateway switches, and data networks"

But even if the NSA is tapping only international fiber optic cables, it could still pick up communications between Americans in the U.S.

That's because data flowing over the Internet does not always take the most efficient geographic route to its destination.

Instead, says Tim Stronge of the telecom consulting firm TeleGeography, data takes "the least congested route that is available to their providers."

"If you're sending an email from New York to Washington, it could go over international links," Stronge says, "but it's pretty unlikely."

That's because the United States has a robust domestic network. (That's not true for some other areas of the world, which can have their in-country Internet traffic routed through another country's more robust network.)                            

But there are other scenarios under which Americans' purely domestic communication might pass over the international cables. Google, for example, maintains a network of data centers around the world.

Google spokeswoman Nadja Blagojevic told ProPublica that, "Rather than storing each user's data on a single machine or set of machines, we distribute all data — including our own — across many computers in different locations."

We asked Blagojevic whether Google stores copies of Americans' data abroad, for example users' Gmail accounts.  She declined to answer.  

Are companies still cooperating with the NSA's Internet tapping?

We don't know.

The Washington Post had a story earlier this month about agreements the government has struck with telecoms, but lots of details are still unclear, including what the government is getting, and how many companies are cooperating.

The Post pointed to a 2003 "Network Security Agreement" between the U.S. government and the fiber optic network operator Global Crossing, which at the time was being sold to a foreign firm.

That agreement, which the Post says became a model for similar deals with other companies, did not authorize surveillance. Rather, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources, it ensured "that when U.S. government agencies seek access to the massive amounts of data flowing through their networks, the companies have systems in place to provide it securely."

Global Crossing was later sold to Colorado-based Level 3 Communications, which owns many international fiber optic cables, and the 2003 agreement was replaced in 2011.

Level 3 released a statement in response to the Post story saying that neither agreement requires Level 3 "to cooperate in unauthorized surveillance on U.S. or foreign soil."

The agreement does, however, explicitly require the company to cooperate with "lawful" surveillance.

More evidence, though somewhat dated, of corporate cooperation with NSA upstream surveillance comes from the 2009 inspector general report.

"Two of the most productive [signals intelligence] collection partnerships that NSA has with the private sector are with COMPANY A and COMPANY B," the report says. "These two relationships enable NSA to access large volumes of foreign-to-foreign communications transiting the United States through fiber-optic cables, gateway switches, and data networks."

There's circumstantial evidence that those companies may be AT&T and Verizon.

It's also worth noting that the NSA might not need corporate cooperation in all cases. In 2005, the AP reported on the outfitting of the submarine Jimmy Carter to place taps on undersea fiber-optic cables in case "stations that receive and transmit the communications along the lines are on foreign soil or otherwise inaccessible."

What legal authority is the NSA using for upstream surveillance?

It's unclear, though it may be a 2008 law that expanded the government's surveillance powers.

The only evidence that speaks directly to this issue is the leaked slide on upstream surveillance, and in particular the document's heading: "FAA702 Operations." That's a reference to Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act. That legislation amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1970s law that governs government surveillance in the United States.

Under Section 702, the attorney general and director of national intelligence issue one-year blanket authorizations to for surveillance of non-citizens who are "reasonably believed" to be outside the U.S. These authorizations don't have to name individuals, but rather allow for targeting of broad categories of people.

The government has so-called minimization procedures that are supposed to limit the surveillance of American citizens or people in the U.S. Those procedures are subject to review by the FISA court.

Despite the procedures, there is evidence that in practice American communications are swept up by surveillance under this section.

In the case of Prism, for example, which is authorized under the same part of the law, the Washington Post reported that the NSA uses a standard of "51 percent confidence" in a target's foreignness.

And according to minimization procedures dating from 2009 published by the Guardian, there are also exceptions when it comes to holding on to American communications. For example, encrypted communications — which, given the routine use of digital encryption, might include vast amounts of material — can be kept indefinitely.

The government also has the authority to order communications companies to assist in the surveillance, and to do so in secret.

How much Internet traffic is the NSA storing?

We don't know, but experts speculate it's a lot.

"I think that there's evidence that they're starting to move toward a model where they just store everything," says Dan Auerbach, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The Utah data center is a big indicator of this because the sheer storage capacity has just rocketed up."

We know more details about how the GCHQ operates in Britain, again thanks to the Guardian's reporting. A breakthrough in 2011 allowed GCHQ to store metadata from its cable taps for 30 days and content for three days. The paper reported on how the spy agency — with some input from the NSA — then filters what it's getting:

The processing centres apply a series of sophisticated computer programmes in order to filter the material through what is known as MVR – massive volume reduction. The first filter immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads, which reduces the volume by about 30%. Others pull out packets of information relating to "selectors" – search terms including subjects, phone numbers and email addresses of interest. Some 40,000 of these were chosen by GCHQ and 31,000 by the NSA.

How does the NSA do filtering of the data it gets off cables in the United States?

"I think that's the trillion dollar question that I'm sure the NSA is working really hard at all the time," Auerbach, the EFF expert. "I think it's an incredibly difficult problem."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

In Praise of Unfollowing, Defriending and Otherwise Uncluttering Your Digital Life

In our digital social lives we tend to make friends for life. That kid you met the first day of freshman year still shows up on your Facebook news feed years after never seeing him again. The "social media professional" you followed on Twitter in 2009 still clutters your stream with useless retweets. At one point all of our Internet connections made sense, now so many of them don't. Most of the times these non-friendship Friendships are so harmless the cost-benefit analysis of doing anything about them weighs heavily toward the do-nothing option. Why risk hurting someone's feelings or a potentially socially awkward moment just to unclutter some social media streams? The nice thing to do is to do nothing. Well, sometimes it's worth not being nice. Here's the case for weeding out all the unnecessary humans in your social media circles.

Stop Torturing Yourself with Exes. If seeing an ex-boyfriend pop up on Gchat, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter hurts your feelings, as it does for New York magazine's Maureen O'Connor, get rid of them. "They may be everywhere online, but seeing an ex pop up in a social-media feed can be as jarring as running into him on the street," she writes. But, unlike running into someone on the street, you have nearly complete control over who you interact with on social media. If you don't want to see what Ex Boyfriend's life without you looks like, you don't have to: Cut the digital cord. Yes, that means no more stalking. But that's just a mild form of self-harm anyway — a part of your larger problem. 

Twitter Is What You Make It, So Make it Tolerable. Every time anyone complains about Twitter, the Twitterati make the very valid point that Twitter is what you make it. Just because you followed some important professional person and they followed you back, does not mean you have to tolerate their onslaught of tweets. In this scenario you risk a professional faux pas. But, not having to deal with Mister Overtweeter every single day will make the process worth it. Most likely, these people won't even notice an unfollow. And, worst case, if you have to refollow them, just blame this twitter bug that automatically unfollows people. 

It's Okay to Unfollow Real Friends Who Are Bad at Instagram. The best of friends and blood relatives aren't necessarily gifted photographers. Those people who fill up your feed with selfies, a dozen photos from the same event, and blurry road trip photos need to go. If these people happen to be your close friends or relatives, that's okay. If your friends get offended by this, maybe you should reconsider these relationships. 

Listen, all of this has the potential to lead to some awkward situations. But, the other option is forgoing all these platforms for the simple life. You have to think to yourself: Why are you using these technologies? If it's to people please, then by all means continue to torture yourself with harmful connections. If it's to enhance your life in some way, then cut the fat. 

       

Off to ESPN, Nate Silver Is Said to Have Been a Bad 'Fit' at The New York Times

ESPN made it official today: Nate Silver will be joining the team in Bristol, Conn., to build his FiveThirtyEight into a juggernaut of data and analysis for the most stat-obsessed sports and politics watchers out there. But as that news went out Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times public editor, revealed some juicy gossip about how the statistician was viewed by the "traditional and well-respected" reporters on the politics desk of the Grey Lady.

After more than a year of negotiations, Silver will build a new team of journalists, editors, analysts and contributors at ESPN, and FiveThirtyEight will return to its original URL as part of the ESPN family. Like many guessed, they're going to use Grantland as the model for building a separate operation within the larger Walt Disney-owned organization:

Grantland's a model for what new 538 will look like. Independent editorial point-of-view. We'll be doing some hiring, building a great team.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) July 22, 2013

Remember, Grantland publisher David Cho was a big part of the drive to land Silver and Grantland editor-in-chief Bill Simmons helped lure him to the Worldwide Leader, too. 

But that's news for the future. We want to know what facilitated his exit from The Times, where he was seemingly happy up until the moment we knew he was bailing for ESPN. "I don’t think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture," Sullivan wrote today. The Times' Brian Stelter alluded to "tension" within the newsroom during Silver's tenure with the Grey Lady. Some downplayed the initial theories about what that could have meant. But Sullivan says Silver's level-headed, rational statistical analysis regularly clashed with the traditional reporting from the Times' political desk. Three "well-respected" Times employees were apparently vocal detractors:

A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work. The first time I wrote about him I suggested that print readers should have the same access to his writing that online readers were getting. I was surprised to quickly hear by e-mail from three high-profile Times political journalists, criticizing him and his work. They were also tough on me for seeming to endorse what he wrote, since I was suggesting that it get more visibility.

The hunt for the identities of the Anti-Silver Three has already begun. Jim Roberts, a former Times editor said to be a big Silver supporter before he decamped for Reuters, called Sullivan's piece "insightful," adding an extra layer of heft to the report. Meanwhile, Silver spoke out on Twitter for the first time since the news of his move broke and only had nice things to say about executive editor Jill Abramson and his time at The Times: 

There are lots of amazing people in the NYT newsroom. I will miss them. I greatly admire the job that Jill Abramson is doing.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) July 22, 2013

ESPN is holding a conference call at 3:30 p.m. and we'll be a part of it. We will have more updates around that time. 

Updates from the conference call: "This is a dream job for me," Silver says of joining ESPN. 

       

What Your Favorite Superhero Says About You

In the San Diego Convention Center, the janitorial staff is still busy plucking remnants of nerd brains off the carpet in the wake of DC Comics's announcement, in the midst of Comic-Con, that the next Man of Steel movie would have Superman challenging Batman. Man of Steel director Zack Snyder intimated that one of them would be the villain, thus pitting two beloved franchises against each other on the silver screen.

There were reports of thunderous cheers when this was announced, which, well, is sort of the norm at Comic-Con. People like to cheer for everything there. But one of the biggest reasons nerds are elated about this news is because Hollywood is finally acknowledging that not all superheroes are born equal. People have favorites — and want those favorites acknowledged. 

Some like the squeaky clean Superman, while others love the dramatic flair of Storm, or the dark edginess Batman. Given the great diversity of superheroes, we all have different affinities. And whom we root for unsurprisingly says something about our own non-superhero selves.

[image error]Superman: You don't believe in underdogs. Cheering for Kal-El is sort of like rooting for Duke or the Miami Heat—you like the very best and don't like to be on the losing team. You are probably the firstborn and are a bit of an overachiever, so you're used to setting the example and handling the pressure that comes with it. You have probably enabled "god mode" in a video game or cheated on your golf score at some point. You're loyal to a fault, or at least like loyal people. You're also an optimist and see the good in all, despite what Batman fans says about you. 

Batman: Do you secretly enjoy watching Superman (and his fan base) getting his (or their) butt(s) kicked? Yes. You like your heroes damaged, because perfection is silly. If everything were perfect, then why even bother making comic books? You're a realist with a pessimistic bent. You've seen the worst and know that you need to see the ugly side of things to appreciate life fully. You may also be a Mets fan.

Wonder Woman: Practicality means nothing to you, which is why you root for an Amazonian with indestructible bracelets and a lasso of truth. You were kind of hurt when writers gave Diana Prince the power of flight because you knew that it would mean she'd be giving up her invisible plane. Like Superman fans, you're also an optimist, but you also know that people will and can be jerks. For example, the guys who just think Wonder Woman is hot.  

Green Arrow: You liked archery before The Hunger Games and Hawkeye made it cool. 

Green Lantern: You aren't a fan of Ryan Reynolds. You have a pair of green pants. 

The Flash: Swingers is your favorite movie, and you've long argued over beers that Vince Vaughn would make a great Flash if he weren't so big and lumbering. You like slick talkers and fast walkers. You're probably a big Ryan Reynolds fan. 

Damian Wayne: You're not-all-that-secretly hoping the royal baby is the anti-Christ. 

[image error]Aquaman: You were a swimmer in high school who always felt out of place. Your natural habitat was in the water, away from people, and especially your teammates. 

Martian Manhunter: Weird, stoic dudes who occasionally go off the deep end do it for you. You probably still listen to a lot of Fall Out Boy, too. 

Robin: You have a small man's complex. You think the littler guys deserve more credit, and you're always more interested in the the supporting acting Oscars than the big wigs fancy pants main players. You like Scottie Pippen and Pau Gasol. 

Captain America: See Superman fans. 

Spider-Man: You love a good underdog story and might have been bullied as a kid. Now you're probably 30, drive a Porsche, have an awesome boyfriend/girlfriend, and live in Manhattan. The kids who beat you up aren't faring as well, and you probably spend a lot of time un-friending them on Facebook. 

Ironman: You are the life of the party, and like your heroes to have a little bit of fun. You may also be an early adopter an Apple fanboy.  

[image error]Hawkeye: You liked archery before Green Arrow and The Hunger Games made it cool.

Cyclops: You like penis jokes, but won't laugh at them in public.

Wolverine: You are probably the shortest person in your family, which your taller family members reminded you of every day. You don't deal well with authority and are completely fine with starting fights, just as long as you can end them. You also like things that aren't yours. 

Emma Frost: Love you or hate you, you just don't want to be ignored. You prefer blondes over redheads. You also watched a lot of Mean Girls and probably thought Regina George was the hero and that Cady Heron should've been the one struck by the bus. You are probably enjoying Lindsay Lohan's fall from grace a little too much. You like someone to tell it like it is, preferably with a bit of snark and wit. The Avengers' boys-club-fraternity kinda make you want to barf, but you have too much class to do that. 

Gambit: You've tried to throw cards before or at least YouTubed it. You've probably also shoplifted. 

Colossus: You are noble. You have terrible siblings who you'd risk your life for. You might also like Thor, though Colossus is way cooler. 

Rogue: You like potlucks. You and your mother have a difficult relationship.

[image error]Psylocke: You relish a good backstory. You adore psychics, ninjas and psychic ninjas. You, my friend, are a Psylocke fan. Simple things and simple people bore you. Once you've got them figured out, there's no reason to go back, right? And let's be honest, you're not even sure how much or how little telekinesis Psylocke still possesses, which is the beauty of being a Psylocke fan. 

The Hulk: There's beauty in simplicity, and that's how you like your heroes. You read Wikipedia entries of movies you don't see. People can't get to the point fast enough. 

Storm: You might be a little gay. Or, at the very least, you like your superhero tales dripping in drama. Storm has a flair for the dramatic. So do her fans. In your world, winds don't blow—they swirl with the cold fury of Arctic gales. And when Storm kicks butt, she kicks it with the full force of the hurricane. You probably also like Greek mythology and RuPaul, or liked that one commercial RuPaul had envisioning herself and her drag queens as greek goddesses.

Dazzler: Your best "friend" is a Storm fan. 

Jean Grey: No one actually likes Jean Grey. People who say they are big Jean Grey fans can't be trusted. 

Inset photos via: Marvel; DC Comics; AP.

       

North Dakota Is the Latest State to Have Its Abortion Law Blocked by a Federal Judge

North Dakota is the latest state to have a new abortion law blocked in court. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland issued a temporary injunction Monday to stop a North Dakota law banning abortions after six weeks from taking effect on August 1. Hovland wrote that the ban is "clearly invalid and unconstitutional." That follows similar decisions made by federal judges in Wisconsin and Arizona recently.

The law, which would have required doctors to check for a fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion, is one of the strictest to be passed in the nation. Doctors who violated it by performing an abortion after a heartbeat was detected would have faced up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Hovland wrote in his decision:

"There is no question that [the North Dakota law] is in direct contradiction to a litany of United States Supreme Court cases addressing restraints on abortion. [It] is clearly an invalid and unconstitutional law based on the United States Supreme Court precedent in Roe v. Wade from 1973 ... and the progeny of cases that have followed."

Wisconsin and Arizona have also passed restrictive abortion laws only to have them blocked or struck down by federal judges. Last week, a federal judge in Wisconsin extended a block on a law requiring abortion clinics to have hospital admitting privileges. The law was set to take effect July 5. In May, a federal court in Arizona struck down the state's ban on abortions after 20 weeks. Judge Marsha Berzon wrote that "a woman has a constitutional right to choose to terminate her pregnancy before the fetus is viable." Viability typically occurs at 24 weeks.

Texas remains undeterred by precedent. Last Thursday, Governor Rick Perry signed the controversial HB2 into law, which bans abortions after 20 weeks. Buoyed by that success, Republican representatives introduced a new fetal heartbeat bill that same day, which would ban abortions after six weeks. The reps who sponsored the new bill, HB59, know that it doesn't stand a chance of being passed this session, and they don't care. A spokeswoman for Rep. Dan Flynn, one of the sponsors, told the Huffington Post:

"We fully understand and recognize that the bill won't be heard, and they're okay with that. They wanted to at least put this on the radar for 2015."

Abortion rights activists plan to challenge HB2 in court. 

       

Win Any Political Debate With Only Sixty-One Feet of Paper

Rep. Steve Stockman has gathered signatures from special forces veterans who want a special committee to investigate the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya last September. He will reveal those signatures by rolling a huge petition down the steps of the Capitol — the "largest petition ever presented to Congress." But don't worry, other advocates. That's an incredibly easy record to break.

Stockman likes to cause commotion. Most recently, the Texas congressman was in the news for tweeting his Earth Day appreciation that the best thing about our planet is that poking holes in it causes oil to come out. And now, hoping to get a majority of the House to back his push for an investigation into the attack, the petition stunt. The Hill reports:

Stockman on Tuesday will unveil a 60-foot-long scroll signed by 1,000 special forces veterans who support the committee. Supporters tout it as the largest petition ever presented to Congress, and Stockman plans to unroll it down the Capitol's steps.

Boom. Who can argue with that?

People who know geometry, for one. Or print designers. A thousand signatures on a 60-foot petition is a weird standard. In three columns, you can fit 1,000 typewritten names on few sheets of paper. Replicate signatures, a few sheets more.

So how'd this one get to 60-feet long? Use the "scale" tool. For a petition that long, 720 inches, we're talking about one signature every 3/4 of an inch. But that gives you a scroll that's about three inches wide — hardly something the cameras will find impressive. If you put the signatures two across, you can make them an inch-and-a-half tall, and the petition is twice as wide. Three inches tall, and you've got yourself a petition! Granted, it's still only 1,000 signatories — .03 percent of the Department of Defense — but it looks way cooler.

What we'd like to offer, however, is a counterpoint. You don't need 1,000 signatures scaled up to make a huge petition. You only need one! We took Treasury Secretary Lew's signature (the cool, old one) and made it into a PDF. Here it is:

(Incidentally, the signature above is about an inch-and-a-half big, depending on your screen. So two columns of 500 signatures at that size would yield a scroll 62-and-a-half feet long.)

You can literally download the signature above and print it out at whatever scale you want. You want a 200-foot-long scroll to unfurl on the steps of the Capitol? No problem. You just need 50-foot-wide paper and a big printer. But then you will have the Longest Petition in Congressional History™, plus the endorsement of Secretary Jack Lew. (You should ask his permission first.) And then the world is your oyster.

To think that Senate leaders wasted time asking lobbyists to try and sway members of the House. All they needed was a lot of ink, a lot of pulp, and a few strong interns to climb the steps. 

       

All Talk: What Do Obama's Speeches Do?

This week, Obama will give three speeches in three small Midwestern cities about the economy as a way to frame the inevitable confrontation with Republicans this fall over the debt ceiling. But if the past is any guide, while Obama's speeches have been good for getting voters to vote for him, they've been pretty bad at convincing Republicans in Congress to change their minds.

"In a couple of months, we will face some more critical budget deadlines that require Congressional action, not showdowns that serve only to harm families and businesses — and the president wants to talk about the issues that should be at the core of that debate," Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in a mass email, The New York Times' Mark Landler reports. White House officials are comparing this week's speech to one Obama gave in Osawatomie, Kansas, in 2011 about economic inequality, which became a theme of his 2012 campaign. But the difference is Obama was trying to convince millions of American voters to vote for him. Today he is looking for the votes of a couple hundred House Republicans who were sent to Washington by the voters who did not find Obama's speeches all that convincing.

Obama's "staff is meticulously orchestrating this economic tour," which starts on Wednesday at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, The Times reports. The speech is supposed to set the terms of the coming fiscal debate. But it comes as a bloc of House Republicans look increasingly unpersuadeable even for people in their own party. Senators who back immigration reform are urging lobbyists to convince House Republicans to allow a vote on some kind of immigration bill, National Journal reports. House Republicans think the senators are up to no good:

“Wow, these people are really trying to [screw] us,” one House GOP aide said of the meeting.

House Republicans who oppose a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented workers in the U.S. think that even if the House passes something without the pathway, the conference committee — where the House and Senate reconcile differences between their versions of bills — will put a pathway back in. As Breitbart News' Matthew Boyle reports:

“We are scared to death of what we figure is already Boehner’s end game,” a senior congressional GOP aide told Breitbart News. “There are so many forces within the GOP establishment pushing for their interests that it’s hard to conceive that Boehner will not cave to them.”

That's even though on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday, Boehner wouldn't even say whether he supports a path to citizenship. "It's not about me. It's not about what I want," Boehner said. "[M]e taking a hard position for or against some of these issues will make it harder for us to get a bill... If I come out and say I'm for this and I'm for that, all I'm doing is making my job harder."

It's not just immigration where Boehner's private speeches have not been as effective as Obama hopes his public ones will be. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman is circulating a discharge petition to force the House to vote on creating a special committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks of 2012, The Hill's Julian Pecquet reports. Boehner and other Republican leaders have opposed creating a special committee, but so far, 160 members of the House have signed Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf's resolution demanding one. Sixty-two Republicans rebelled and voted against the farm bill last month, even though it included big cuts to food stamps. (The House passed a food stamp-less bill earlier this month, though 12 Republicans rebelled this time.)

Plus, New York's Jonathan Chait writes that although House Republicans didn't get what they demanded during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, they're asking for even more this time. 

If Obama wants to lift the debt ceiling for the rest of his term, they announced, all he has to do is … agree to sign on to [Paul] Ryan’s plan to cut and privatize Medicare. If that’s too much for him, Republicans have generously offered the choice of letting Obama accept a package of deep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps in return for a shorter debt-ceiling extension. 

Boehner and other GOP leaders have not convinced certain House Republicans to lower their expectations. Obama will try to do so with three of his soaring speeches.

       

Why Nearly Everyone in Congress Has a Leadership PAC These Days

Ted Cruz waited less than a week after his election to form his. Heidi Heitkamp followed only days later. Then came Tim Kaine and Mazie Hirono and Deb Fischer and Elizabeth Warren.

[image error]
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By the time these freshman senators took the oath of office in January, each already had created a fundraising apparatus that lets them collect money from supporters and Washington special interests beyond the strict limits imposed on their campaign accounts. They were all owners of a leadership PAC.

Once the province of actual and aspiring congressional leaders, who used them to dish out money to win friends and forge alliances, leadership PACs are now commonplace all the way to the back benches of Capitol Hill. It’s symptomatic of the constant money chase that consumes so much of modern lawmakers’ time and energy.

Of the new senators elected last November, only one, Maine’s Angus King, doesn’t have one yet. Overall, 94 of the 100 current senators have created such PACs, according to a National Journal analysis of federal records. Roughly two-thirds of House members have them, as well.

“They’re becoming so prevalent now, they’re really a misnomer,” said Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission. “You don’t need to be a leader in any sense of the word.”

In the 1998 election cycle, there were 120 leadership PACs, according to records from the Center for Responsive Politics. Today, there are more than 450. Combined, leadership PACs spent more than $141 million in the last election cycle, including more than $46 million in direct campaign contributions, according to CRP data.

The rules on how lawmakers can use such auxiliary accounts are loose. The only real limitation is that they cannot spend the money to directly benefit their own reelection. But they can hire political strategists and finance a political operation. Or they can bundle up contributions and hand them out to curry favor with congressional colleagues. Those who raise enough money do both.

Last cycle, 219 leadership PACs reported spending at least $100,000.

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While leadership PACs have been steadily growing in popularity for years, Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., said the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which opened the door further for big-spending outside groups, has made the pressure to fundraise even more acute.

“Now, in any race, people can come in with money of any amount from an undisclosed source. That has clearly increased the pressure on finding ways to counter that,” said Levin, who spent $442,000 from his leadership PAC last cycle.

What makes leadership PACs especially appealing to lawmakers is that they allow them to tap a donor who has already given the maximum $5,200 to their reelection campaign. Such a donor can legally give another $5,000 to the same lawmaker’s leadership PAC.

“The one thing I think we can all agree on: If there were shared-contribution limits, there wouldn’t be nearly as many leadership PACs,” said Toner, who served on the FEC from 2002 to 2007 and was appointed by President George W. Bush. “That’s just the reality.”

While lawmakers can’t spend the money they raise to boost their own reelection, they can ship it off to colleagues in need. Nick Nyhart, president and CEO of Public Campaign, which advocates for a rewrite of the nation’s campaign finance laws, likened it to taking out political insurance in a “mutual aid society.”

“It’s an incumbent’s self-protection committee,” Nyhart said.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, described the ongoing fundraising arms race in Congress this way: “When people are trying to destroy you, you better fight fire with fire—or get burned up.”

The rub for an average voter, Nyhart said, is that the whole structure of leadership PACs caters to the wealthy. “That money is not coming from Jane and Joe Smith back in the home state; it’s coming from the special interests,” he said.

For example, Clyburn reported raising $403,000 for his PAC in the first five months of 2013, and about 90 percent of the money came from groups that gave the maximum $5,000. His smallest reported donation this year was $1,000.

Some politicians now open leadership PACs before they even arrive in Congress. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is running for the Senate this year, opened CoryPAC to fundraise at the federal level in June 2011.

Then there is the name itself. Who in Congress doesn’t consider himself or herself a “leader” deserving of a special PAC?  “Much of it is how you view yourself, and we all are elected and all are leaders in some respect,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley, D-N.Y., who is vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus. He raised $880,000 for his PAC in the 2012 cycle.

The junior-most lawmakers haven’t waited long to jump into the fray. Some ambitious freshmen—including Reps. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Mark Pocan, D-Wis.—opened such accounts before they even won their seats

And less than a month after taking office, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., held a fundraiser for his leadership PAC at a Bov Jovi concert at the Verizon Center in Washington.

The suggested contribution: $3,000 per ticket. The name of the concert tour: “Because We Can.”

       

Actor Dennis Farina Has Died at Age 69

Actor Dennis Farina, an actual Chicago police officer who also played cops (and robbers) on TV, has died after suffering a blood clot in his lung. Farina is one of the all-time great "That Guys," a classic character actor who even if don't know his name, you are definitely familiar with his work. He     

The Day I Wore a Kilt to Work

I wore a skirt to work on Friday, okay? Laugh all you want. It was a kilt, to be precise, but I know that many of my fellow New Yorkers won’t bother with the distinction. Whatever. The kilt was breezy, even in the stale July heat. It was better than shorts. Way better than pants. So, as I said, mock me with abandon, but know that it won’t make a difference. Because I was the one who benefited from excellent air circulation, not to mention a stylish tartan.

The kilt-wearing experiment was my own quite public response to the anxiety about men wearing shorts in the workplace, which flares up in direct proportion to Manhattan temperatures. The Awl editor Choire Sicha, who had previously lectured that “Tom Ford says [shorts] are only for the beach or the tennis court,” admitted to wearing a pair last Monday, before the temperatures reached the upper bounds of the 90s.

I'm wearing shorts. #misandry

— Choire Sicha (@Choire) July 15, 2013

Hamilton Nolan of Gawker took a more emphatic tone, urging, “Wear shorts all you want. Especially when it is hot.” The Atlantic Wire’s own Rebecca Greenfield, meanwhile, went for a sensible middle-of-the road approach: “The next few days will be so hot that you should really get over the whole too-cool for shorts thing and embrace bare calves over suffocating in full length pants.”

[image error]As a matter of fact, I do want my calves exposed. Ankles, too. Knees, even. But, being a rather inveterate snob, I can’t help but think of shorts as juvenile beachwear, the very name connoting a neutered garment – trousers circumcised, if you will. That’s why I chose the kilt, which was first worn in the Scottish Highlands in 16th century. While shorts are ahistorical and acultural, the kilt signifies an appreciation of the past. The dark blue and green pattern of the kilt I purchased belonged to the Black Watch, an elite Scottish regiment (which was the subject of an acclaimed 2006 play about British soldiers in Iraq by Gregory Burke). So, from a cultural perspective, a kilt was far easier to justify than, say, a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch cargo shorts, even if the former might look, upon first glance, like a women’s garment.

Which brings me to an important point: people will look. Some might outright stare. Snicker, comment, mock. But these are the wages of keeping cool. Besides, as I discovered on my day of the kilt, most New Yorkers have encountered enough varieties of strangeness to not pay too much mind to a man wearing what may or may not be a skirt. Once, on the corner of Spring and Lafayette, right outside The Wire’s offices, a gentleman asked me if I was Irish. I did not bother to correct his cultural misplacement. A little later that same day, two Midwestern-seeming youths said loudly, as I passed, that the people-watching in New York was “awesome.” If they were talking about me, then I was happy to oblige. But this was SoHo, where there were far more interesting characters than a guy in a black t-shirt tucked into a kilt, and I don’t want to be so vain as to presume I was the sole subject of their curiosity.

[image error]A skirt, in the end, is just a skirt. Besides, as far as kilts go, my own traditional Scottish number was far less controversial than Kanye West’s leather one. Nor am I the very first person to wear a loose-hanging conical garment around his waist in New York. The literary man-about-town Jon-Jon Goulian chronicled his childhood and emergence on New York's cultural scene in 2011's The Man in the Grey Flannel Skirt. He did not, however, want to discuss kilts, telling me last week, "there's only so much brain space I can spare for any one thing in my life, and dudes in skirts has taken up far more than its share." To which I say, fair enough. The man has paid his dues.

As far as my office mates – who did not know I would be arriving in a kilt – most of them did not care beyond expressing some mild curiosity.

“Did people say stuff on the subway to you?”

They did not. It was hot and early. Nobody cared.

“Does it have pockets?”

An internal pouch in the front, which was not all that useful, though it could fit both my wallet and iPhone. It is possible, however, to outfit your kilt with additional pockets.

“Aren’t you supposed to wear one of those fur bags?”

No. (And the bag is called a sporran, for what it's worth.) I was not playing dress-up-as-a-Highlander. Instead, I wanted to be comfortable at work without succumbing to the lowbrow short. Moreover, I had read that kilts are beneficial to men’s health, though the full benefits of kilts can only be obtained by not wearing underwear, which practice I abstained from for reasons of good taste.

I should caution, however, that before donning a kilt to work, men should check with their workplace about general sartorial guidelines. I, for one, first confirmed that Atlantic Media — The Wire's parent group — had no injunction against men wearing shorts or kilts. Some workplaces, however, could be more conservative in their dress codes. Yet, as lawyer Jonathan M. Fox, an old friend who used to work at the New York City Commission on Human Rights, told me, a man who was subject to disciplinary measures for wearing a kilt could potentially have grounds to file a complaint if he were “a person of Scottish descent and [he] routinely wore kilts as an expression of [his] Scottish heritage.” In addition, he suggested that any workplace that allowed women to wear skirts would have to allow men to wear kilts or potentially face a sex discrimination suit.

[image error]I am happy to report that I encountered no discrimination whatsoever on my day of wearing a kilt at The Wire's offices. Made by the Southern California company Sport Kilt, the kilt is woven from poly-acrylic fiber that feels like wool, but is much lighter. I certainly did not get hot walking around in viscous heat that approached triple digits; if anything, the office’s air conditioning actually chilled my legs – a strange sensation for your average trouser-wearing male.

Nevertheless, I encountered some skepticism from my male colleagues to the kilt as an everyday choice. While they were perfectly fine with my having donned one, they did not appear ready to follow my lead. The political reporter Philip Bump told me "Nope" when I asked him if he would ever consider wearing a kilt. Alexander Abad-Santos, a culture reporter, was curious but ultimately unconvinced: "I guess the only situation that might goad me into wearing a kilt is if it were very hot outside, and the kilt could give my sweaty thighs some kind of relief. But, aren't they made of wool? Isn't that warm? Yeah, no thanks."  Others expressed similar reservations – though nothing more serious than that.

Nolan, the Gawker writer who urged people to swear shorts, also proved to be a skeptic when it came to kilts, telling me in an email, "I would say I am opposed unless the man is physically located in Scotland." That would, on the face of it, rule out both Manhattan and my beloved Brooklyn.

But others are starting to see the kilt as a potential summer option:

Suddenly it is cool like fall downtown and I'm loving it. Should have worn a suit and not that kilt I got during last week's heat wave.

— Richard Hillier (@richardpaulhill) July 22, 2013

I realize that my kilt experiment won’t solve the shorts debate, which moved from the office cubicle to the church pew over the weekend. The kilt, rather, is a way to avoid that debate entirely – all while keeping cool and comfortable.

Photos: AP; Wikimedia Commons; Eric Levenson