Reporting on Snowden

Mainstream American media sucks. I've come to terms with that. But, it's frustrating when even the usually-non-sucky media sucks. For instance, Dana Milbank, who usually doesn't suck (even though he works for The Washington Post, which does), writes this about Edward Snowden.

Snowden undermines his own cause in the U.S. At the start, Snowden's revelations to the Guardian and The Post promised to put him in the distinguished company of Daniel Ellsberg and others who exposed government wrongdoing. But rather than come home and face trial -- giving the nation the debate he claimed to seek about assaults on Americans' privacy -- he has allowed the story to become all about his life as a fugitive.” [all bold mine :c]

Get that? Snowden has "undermined his own cause" and "allowed" the story to become all about him. Yes, clearly that's what's happening here because Snowden has the power to control the story now that he has replaced Dana Milbank as a columnist at The Washington Post. Oh, wait, that hasn't happened? Then, I have no idea what the hell Milbank is talking about.

If anyone is undermining Snowden's cause, it's people like Milbank, who write things like this:

I still believe that Snowden was justified in leaking information about the NSA’s snooping. The administration’s collusion with the congressional intelligence committees had denied Americans the public debate they deserved about the trade-offs between security and privacy.

Milbank says this, yet he chooses to write about Snowden undermining his cause instead of digging into "the administration’s collusion with the congressional intelligence committees." By doing so, Milbank himself continues to deny "Americans the public debate they deserved about the trade-offs between security and privacy."

It's a well worn path. McClatchy, which usually doesn't suck too much -- they did some great reporting on Iraq -- also chooses to write about Snowden the cartoon character, rather than the secrets he revealed, because keeping up with "many thousands of words" would be "difficult". Seriously.

With many thousands of words written about Snowden from all over the world, it’s difficult to keep up with his own ever-changing story, much less keep track of his piecemeal disclosures of a sweeping U.S. surveillance program.

Wow. This is a major American newspaper admitting that it's just too difficult to wade through all the documents, so they're just going to cover Snowden's travel plans. If McClatchy really wants to "keep track of his piecemeal disclosures of a sweeping U.S. surveillance program," they might want to hire, or at least read Marcy Wheeler. She is single handedly doing the difficult work that The Washington Post, McClatchy, and the rest of the mainstream media can't or won't.

Is Josh Jealous?

Damnit. I didn't plan on this being bash-Josh-Marshall week, but minutes after my last post, I see his introduction to another solid piece by Brian Buetler:

We’ve written at length about how the rules of the congressional intelligence committees make it difficult to do real oversight of the intelligence community, but at a more fundamental level, they stymie efforts to legislate on intelligence matters. 

Who exactly is the "we" he refers to? It was Marshall who first stated that he'd prefer surveillance info be revealed by elected officials instead of unauthorized leakers. It was not Marshall, but one of his reporters, Brian Buetler, that showed why that was a dumb thing to say. Now, rather than admit he was wrong, Marshall wants to pretend that he's been right all along.

Furthermore, Marshall seems to suggest that his company has been at the forefront of this issue, which is not the case. Buetler has written a couple of solid articles since the Snowden leaks, but others, specifically Glenn Greenwald, have been talking about excessive government secrecy and the potential for domestic spying for years.

Which gets me to thinking...

Josh Marshall is not the only blogger/reporter who has surprised me with his negative reaction to Edward Snowden and/or Glen Greenwald. It seems to run counter to his usual tendencies--enough that I wonder if what I'm seeing isn't just professional jealosy. It is disappointing, but I think Marshall's initial reaction would have been very different if Snowden had contacted him at TPM instead of Greenwald at The Guardian.

Is Josh Learning?

Maybe. Two days later, Josh Marshall echoes the exact point I was making when he said he'd prefer disclosures of domestic spying be revealed by elected representatives instead of leakers like Edward Snowden.

Our report on why congressional oversight of the intelligence community doesn’t work very well and maybe isn’t supposed to. Fascinating piece.

In that report, TPM reporter Brian Buetler says:

...reports and briefings are only as accurate and thorough as briefers are forthright and comprehensive [bold mine :c] — a variable that has hampered oversight efforts for years, according to members, aides and former aides who spoke with TPM. Likewise the sometimes arbitrary and legally dubious restrictions on what senior congressional aides with top-secret clearance are given access to, and what and to whom elected officials are allowed to tell even each other, can hobble the legislative branch’s efforts to understand what our spy agencies are really up to, let alone fulfill the government’s statutory obligation to fully and currently inform the Congress.

I found the piece to be more of a confirmation of the obvious rather than fascinating, and it disappoints me that someone in Marshall's position was apparently oblivious to this dynamic until his own reporter pointed it out, but hey, baby steps.

Missing the point

In response to Edward Snowden's revelations of our domestic spying programs, supporters are rushing to defend the programs by highlighting terrorist plots that were disrupted because of the program. One of these success stories was the Mumbai attack that resulted in 160 deaths, which is a weird way of defining success, but that's been covered by others. Others have also pointed out that despite the occasional success stories, we've had failures like the Boston Marathon bombing. It seems, at best, we have a domestic spying program that sometimes succeeds in stopping terrorist attacks.

But, whether or not these programs occasionally stop terrorist attacks is not the point. The Constitution contains The Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

There's no clause that says the president or congress can ignore the fourth amendment just because they've succeeded in scaring the people about low probability events and have expensive tools that might prevent some of those events. That is the point.

Say it ain't so, Josh

Josh Marshall was the first political blogger that I started reading, so it disappoints me to hear this from him regarding the Edward Snowden story:

Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who've been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I've never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law? I don’t have a lot of problem answering that question.

Given the stories that Josh has covered over the years, including breaking the states attorneys scandal under George W. Bush, I'm shocked that he's so willing to trust our elected officials to keep check on the intelligence community.

Snowden's leak proved that James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, flat out lied to congress when asked about the collection of data on American citizens. So, how can we trust congress to oversee the intelligence agencies when we can't trust those agencies to reveal the truth to congress? It's not like this is the first time that intelligence officials have lied to congress. Iran-Contra anyone? And even when not deliberately lying, our intelligence agencies get things spectacularly wrong. Anyone found those Iraqi WMD's yet?

Furthermore, there's very little evidence that congress has any interest in providing real oversight. Just like congress defers matters of war to the president, they don't want to know too much about our spying programs, otherwise they could be held accountable when inevitable leaks like this occur. This enables them to play all the angles--point fingers, feign outrage, or pound their chests depending on their constituency.

The administration, the intelligence agencies, and congress now disingenuously claim that they welcome a national debate about surveillance versus privacy, but it was Snowden, not them, that initiated the discussion. It simply wasn't going to happen without his leak forcing the issue. So, to me, criticizing his methodology is admitting that he'd prefer everyone be kept in the dark, which is a strange preference for a political reporter.

What's Upton, Sinclair?

Another day, another David Brooks column, another opportunity to point out what a twit he is.

In today's column, Brooks talks about a "dazzling" paper written by one of his students. In that paper, the author, Victoria Buhler:

wonders if the mathematization of public policy performs a gatekeeper function; only the elite can understand the formulas that govern most people’s lives.

The author, and presumably Brooks, think having people who understand mathematics as gatekeepers of public policy is a bad thing. Given that this situation is purely fictional, and the exact opposite of the current gatekeeper situation, I think it would be fantastic. Of course, I am biased. I understand mathematics. David Brooks does not. For example, in this same column, he says:

Moreover, today’s students harbor the anxiety that in the race for global accomplishment, they may no longer be the best competitors. Chinese students spend 12-hour days in school, while American scores are middle of the pack.

Brooks is comparing apples and oranges here--Chinese hours in class versus American test scores. What is the reader to make of this? Do the extra hours pay off for the Chinese? He doesn't say. What tests are we talking about? He doesn't say. It does seem like he thinks American kids should be spending 12 hours a day in the classroom.

I'm sure he would be appalled, but I'd like to apply some mathematics to this common sense, gut-feel, public policy proposal. Let's start by assuming teachers are currently paid for a 40-hour work week (8 hours of class, 5 days a week) at a rate of X. Next, let's see what happens when those same teachers get paid for a 60-hour work week (12 hours of class, 5 days a week) at the same rate of X, but typical time-and-a-half for overtime hours beyond 40.

Scenario A. 8 hours/day. Weekly teacher pay = 40X
Scenario B. 12hours/day. Weekly teacher pay = 40X + 1.5*20X = 70X

Spending increase = (70X-40X)/40X = 30X/40X = 75%!!!

So, given that teacher pay is by far the largest cost of our education system, is Brooks suggesting that we increase public education spending by 75%? Probably not. As an anti-union conservative, maybe he expects teachers to work those extra hours for free--for the children you know. Maybe to avoid the overtime pay, he wants to hire more teachers, which would limit the increase in education spending to a still whopping 50%. More likely, it probably just didn't occur to him to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations of the impact of his "solution". Like so many other Republicans--hi Paul Ryan!--Brooks simply cares more about messaging than mathematics. His livelihood depends on it.

Go F*ck Yourself Jorge

By now, everyone has seen the video where the girl is given 30 days in jail for flipping off the judge and telling him to go f*ck himself.  Here, we have two people acting like self-absorbed teenagers. Unfortunately, one of them actually is a teenager, while the other is a 60-some year old taxpayer-funded judge.

Of the two, I find the behavior of the judge to be far more offensive. Penelope Soto was in court for illegal possesion of Xanax. It was her first offense, she was not driving at the time, she did not hurt anyone, nor did she put anyone at risk other than herself. Despite all that, Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat initially set her bond at $5000. He seems to have arrived at this figure not by considering the risk of her not showing up for trial, the whole purpose of the bond, but by considering how deeply she bowed to his authority and the potential value of her jewelery.

When he condescendingly dismissed her with a "bye-bye", as if he was doing flight attendent skit on SNL instead of running a courtroom, she responded with "adios". For that, the judge called her back and doubled the bond. Who would've guessed that someone named Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat would take such offense at someone named Penelope Soto saying "adios"?

Understandably pissed, Soto flipped him the bird and said "go f*ck yourself" as she was leaving the courtroom. At that point, he called her back again, and sentenced her to 30-days in jail for contempt of court. This is the point where we're all supposed to cheer the actions of this hard-assed judge teaching this bratty girl a lesson. I, on the other hand, think he was being a petty, vindictive, tyrant who lacked the professionalism to rise above the situation. His job was to set the bond, not to issue a verdict, and certainly not to issue punishment.

Under the 1st amendment, we have the right to freedom of speech, including the freedom to tell Judge Rodriguez-Chomat to go f*ck himself. Ironically, the one place we can't do that is in the court room - you know, the place that's supposed to uphold our constitutional rights. However, we could stand outside the courthouse tomorrow and tell Judge Rodriguez-Chomat to go f*ck himself. It's perfectly legal. If I lived in Miami, I'd do just that, but I don't, so the internet will have to do. Voters in Miami-Dade can deliver their own message in 2016 when he's up for re-election.