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McCain Asks For Committee On Wikileaks, Anonymous
Trailrunner7 writes "In the face of continued attacks on federal agencies and contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and IRC Federal that do highly sensitive security work for the U.S. government, Sen. John McCain has asked Senate leaders to appoint a select committee to look into the attacks and data leaks that have plagued Washington throughout 2011. In a letter to Democrat leader Harry Reid and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, McCain (R-Ariz.) said that a temporary Senate committee is necessary in order to get a handle on all of the disparate cybersecurity legislation proposals and to address the threat posed by groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and Wikileaks."
Uh.. let's see...
The republican party is fighting to cut funding for important government programs while cutting taxes on the rich.
The other party is seeking to raise taxes on the rich to fund important government programs. Programs like pell grants, infrastructure, education, and health care.
Only a total fool wouldn't be able to tell the difference as they parties play a dangerous game of brinkmanship with our national credit rating.
People who don't know the difference between our conservative and progressive parties are part of the reason that our political system is so broken. Politicians are playing us for fools, because we are too ignorant to tell the difference.
If they really want to do something productive, they should investigate how it's possible that government contractors are so incompetent when it comes to computer security.
Ahh, but they have to pick and choose between which corporations they get bought by. I think this scene from The Distinguished Gentleman explains it all:
TOMMY (Eddie Murphy) Sugar price supports. Where do you think I should be, Tommy?
O'CONNOR Shit -- makes no difference to me. If you're for 'em, I got money for you from my sugar producers in Louisiana and Hawaii. If you're against 'em, I got money for you from the candy manufacturers.
TOMMY You pick.
O'CONNOR Let's put you down as for. Now what about putting limits on malpractice awards?
TOMMY You tell me.
O'CONNOR Well, if you're for 'em, I got money from the doctors and insurance companies. If you're against 'em, I got money from the trial lawyers. Tell you what, let's say against. Now how about pizza?
TOMMY I'll stick with the salad.
O'CONNOR Not for lunch, shmuck, for PAC money. A lot of the frozen pizzas use phony cheese. There's a law pending requiring them to disclose it on their labels. Where do you stand?
TOMMY If I vote for the labels...then I get money from the dairy industry...
O'CONNOR Good...
TOMMY And if I vote against the labels, I get money from the frozen food guys.
O'CONNOR Excellent! And don't forget the ranchers, because they get hurt if pepperoni sales go down!
TOMMY A pepperoni lobby. I love this town.
O'CONNOR So which is it?
TOMMY Fuck the cheese people. Thanks to them my office smelled like smelt for a week.
O'CONNOR All right. For.
TOMMY So Tommy, tell me -- with all this money on every side, how does anything get done?
O'CONNOR It doesn't! That's the genius of the system!
I am officially gone from
I think the honorable senator from Arizona should let the F.B.I. do their job of hunting down bad guys. Maybe the honorable senator should focus on America's political obsession with maintaining inequitable Trade Balances? And while the honorable senator is on the subject of what to do today in Washington D.C.; how about the honorable senator look into closing tax loopholes for Oil Companies, and Hedge Fund Managers? Just a thought, senator.
Republican since '71, and damn proud of it
We cannot have private groups picking up the slack for our stenographer media. After burning Dan Rather and firing numerous other investigative journalists, and imprisoning more reporters in the Iraq invasion than were imprisoned in all other wars combined -- I thought we made it clear that we do not want investigative journalism.
Whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, are a threat to our incompetence and graft -- and we'd really appreciate being able to continue this "war on whatever" scam so that we can burden the middle class with lots of debt that will require austerity -- we cannot train your kids to be indentured servants if we continue this concept of "RIGHTS" and such, now can we?
The only way to win the war on Terror, is to allow your military, government and secret services, total access to everything, no responsibility or questions on failure or missing Billions, and to be able to say; "nothing to see hear, move along." With the lack of transparency, we reserve the right to humiliate and/or jail the people who speculate on Conspiracies. Not that they are a threat, we just don't like those geeky twerps and we enjoy crushing the nuts of someone -- so it might as well be them.
After that brain fart, McCain would go back to his soft spoken tones as if he were a reasonable adult, and use words like "concern", "responsibility" and "prudence." As if he gave a rats ass and wasn't thinking about the Poker and Prostitutes party at Boehner's house this Friday night.
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the venona decrypts were fascinating but there are several reasons i disagree with your interpretation (which has been repeated by many others)
1. the actual decryption took decades, and was not finished until the 70s or 80s, so during the actual mccarthy period of the late 40s early 50s, many of the contents of the crypts were not known.
2. alot of the decryption was of poor quality
3. alot of it used various code names
4. the biggest problem of all, is that you are decryption messages from KGB(NKVD)field agents back and forth to headquarters. the Soviet Union was built on a system of faking your reports and your production numbers, no matter what your field, in order to meet quotas and keep from getting executed. they couldnt even get a reliable census going in the 1930s because politics worked its way into every bureaucracy of the country. to believe the venona decryptions at face value, you have to believe KGB(NKVD) agents statements to moscow at face value, which to me seems like a horrible way to research history.
5. alot of them are 'proven' by cross referencing them with the statements of elizabeth bentley or others. what was her source? the same agents who were writing the cables back to moscow.
the venona has a lot of fascinating information in it and shows a lot of soviet inlfuence in ameirca, but alot of those 'leads' were fucking bullshit.
you can just look at the 'Silvermaster Files' for information, take Bela Gold for example. they put his wife under surveillance. what intelligence do they get? she went shopping. she met with other suspects for an hour here, an hour there. she went shopping. she got pregnant. case closed. Thats the 'damning evidence' somebody wanted to use in a courtroom.
since in America the courts are somewhat independent (unlike, say, the soviet union) the government dropped these cases. Venona couldnt be used in courtrooms not simply because it was 'classified', but because it was unreliable garbage.
then take alger his and whittaker chambers. they decided the laws were not good enough to prosecute him, so they broadened them. what did that leave us with? the Espionage Act subparagraph (e) , which is now being used against whistleblowers like Thomas Drake...
and of course the Emergency Detention Act, completely unconstitutional and cancelled by Nixon when he became president. Think about that. it was too draconian for Nixon.