The real problem continues to be that secret programs leave the American public out of the conversation, and many of us would gladly trade a little less security for a little less intrusion. But how would we know? In a speech today, Obama defended the latest surveillance news:

SAN JOSE, Calif. – President Obama strongly defended the government’s secret surveillance of people’s phone records and Internet activities, saying there are “a whole bunch of safeguards involved” and that Congress has repeatedly authorized the programs.

“You could complain about big brother and how this is a potential program run amok,” Obama said, “but when you actually look at the details, I think we strike the right balance.”

He thinks we trust contribution-addicted members of Congress? Really?

Commenting on the surveillance for the first time since news organizations revealed the sweeping National Security Agency programs this week, Obama highlighted limits to the programs to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens and said the surveillance has helped the government anticipate and prevent terrorist attacks.

“They make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity,” Obama said. He added that the programs are “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government and they do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents.”

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The New Yorker's Amy Davidson, in a post called "America Through The N.S.A.'s Prism", looks at the peculiar kind of thinking that goes into justifying such broad surveillance of ordinary citizens:

“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” an unnamed intelligence officer toldBarton Gellman and Laura Poitras of the Washington Post. “They” are the National Security Agency, and the Post report reveals that an N.S.A. program called PRISM has, for the past six years, been “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

”These were not occasional, extraordinary incursions: the Post, in addition to talking to the intelligence officer—who decided to speak out of a concern for civil liberties that seems to have been distinctly lacking at higher levels—obtained PowerPoint slides from an internal N.S.A. briefing and other documents. The Guardian also got the briefing materials. One of the slides explains that “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” for close to one in seven of its intelligence reports, and the program, which began in 2007, is said to be growing rapidly. The history of PRISM, Gellman and Poitras write, “shows how fundamentally surveillance law and practice have shifted away from individual suspicion in favor of systematic, mass collection techniques.”

“They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” an unnamed intelligence officer told Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras of the Washington Post.

This is the second story in the past twenty-four hours with deeply troubling constitutional and privacy implications—the first was the news, reported in the Guardian, of a secret court ordercompelling a Verizon subsidiary to turn over call records to the N.S.A. (It is increasingly clear that such orders went to companies well beyond Verizon.) We have gone through the day with Administration spokesmen and friendly senators telling us that we shouldn’t worry so much about the Verizon case because of the supposedly abstract quality of metadata. That was always a hollow defense—metadata reveals a great deal that is properly private, as Jane Mayer explains—but it is especially meaningless now, in the face of what appears to be a sprawling effort to look over the shoulders of Internet users.

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Like most wingnuts, Lucianne's son is as happy as a pig in filth because the New York Times sharply criticized the Obama administration over its phone data collection.

But unlike the propaganda outfits on the right like Fox News and The National Review during the Bush years, the Times editorial board is frequently critical of the president (see here, here, here and here).

For people who pay attention to these things, this is absolutely nothing new. What is very new, on the other hand, is Bush followers like Jonah Goldberg suddenly giving a flip about civil liberties.

Do you remember that scathing piece Jonah wrote about Bush and the Patriot Act, FISA or torture?

I don't either.

So the government is listening to your phone calls and monitoring your Internet use – and pretty much has the authority to track your every move. Just remember that everything the state did in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was legal too. It's just Ingsoc by a different name now, the shining city upon a hill become dystopian national security state. Call it Amfasc.

Prairie Weather: The IRS loves conservative groups.

Infidel753: Balancing principle and compromise.

The Smithian: Motherhood, single women, and poverty.

Simply Left Behind: Take me out to the PED-juiced ballgame.

Pruning Shears: Anti-fracking activism in Ohio.

Round-up by Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction (Twitter: @mjwstickings). I'll be here through Sunday.

Send tips to mbru@crooksandliars.com.

Open Thread below...

This somewhat long but informative report from Rachel Maddow last week went nearly unnoticed at the time, but it got my attention because I somehow doubt those who utilized Liberty Reserve's unique money laundering capabilities were limited to drug dealers and international criminals. Though all the details have not yet been released, the scandal already reaches up to Barclays' Bank, one of the UK's most respected institutions.

Liberty Reserve also had 17 bank accounts in Cyprus, papers filed by the US Department of Justice show.

The BBC understands that the bank is not accused of any wrongdoing by the authorities.US authorities have accused Liberty Reserve of laundering more than $6bn (£4bn) in criminal cash."Barclays can confirm it is co-operating with the investigation, following the notification it received from the authorities," a spokesman for the bank said on Sunday.

The Barclays account was in the name of Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Budovsky, the court documents said. Mr Budovsky opened the Spanish personal account in 2009, the BBC has learned.The DOJ has called Liberty Reserve the "largest international money-laundering prosecution in history", alleging that seven people involved in running the operation set up the digital cash service as a "criminal business venture" designed specifically to "help criminals conduct illegal transactions and launder the proceeds of their crimes".

Here is a bit of background on Arthur Budovsky, founder of Liberty Reserve:

Seven people, including founder Arthur Budovsky, were charged by the U.S. regulatory body. Budovsky is no stranger to illegal money laundering activities. In 2006, he was convicted of breaching money transmission guidelines associated with E-Gold. In 2011, he surrendered his U.S. citizenship and built a new financial network in Costa Rica.

But Budovsky ran out of luck in that country, as well -- when his company was charged for violating money laundering rules in 2011. However, Costa Rican regulators were duped by a false computer portal which provided fake data. Meanwhile, Liberty continued to run its operations through subsidiary companies in Malaysia, Russia, Nigeria, Cyprus, Hong Kong and Australia.

Liberty Reserves clients included:

“They included, for example: traffickers of stolen credit card data and personal identity information; peddlers of various types of online Ponzi and get-rich-quick schemes; computer hackers for hire; unregulated gambling enterprises; and underground drug-dealing Web sites,” according to the indictment.

In many ways, the basic infrastructure wasn't all that different from PayPal or other online payment providers, with one important exception: To open a Liberty Reserve account, all one needed was an email address and little more. Here's how it worked:

Liberty Reserve functioned like a bank that only took deposits in its own currency (also called the Liberty Reserve). If you wanted to launder money, you would open an account with Liberty Reserve, providing them with a name, which could be fake, and an e-mail address. The key to the scheme was that you couldn’t then deposit money directly into the account. Instead, you had to work through middlemen, who were called “exchangers.” These were typically unlicensed moneymen in countries like Malaysia, Nigeria, and Vietnam, who bought Liberty Reserves in bulk from Liberty Reserve. You would pay them dollars (or whatever currency) for a certain sum of Liberty Reserves, which they would then deposit into your account. And when you wanted to withdraw money, the process worked in reverse, perhaps with an exchanger in a different country. (Liberty Reserve itself took a one-per-cent fee on transactions, while the exchangers typically charged five per cent or more.) The point of doing it this way was that the Liberty Reserve bank would have no identifying data for you (no record of how or from where you sent the money), since the deposits and withdrawals were all done through the exchangers.

As that article notes, Liberty Reserve did have people using it for legitimate reasons, but a look at their criminal activity shines a bright light on concerns connected with virtual currency like Bitcoin and others, and it certainly piques my imagination with respect to what havoc could be wreaked by billionaires committed to absolute...liberty.

Tuesday, June 4, was a bit bizarre up on Capitol Hill. We had Tea Party victims who hadn't actually been hurt—who actually got the unjustified tax exempt status they sought—testifying against the IRS in one hearing, where the IRS, by law, was not allowed to respond. In another hearing we had ZERO victims of actual criminal sexual assault and rape testifying, where only the leaders of the command structure that failed them were heard from. Together, the two hearings exemplify a fundamental fact of American politics: Conservative claims of being victimized are wildly out of all proportion— both compared to any actual suffering they've experienced, and compared to the actual suffering of others, whose voices really are suppressed.

This fact was further underscored by the same-day story of the ACLU report on marijuana laws, calling attention to the long-standing massive racial discrimination in the application of such laws. The [dis-]connection is an obvious one. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell even used the contrast with Tea Party pseudo-victims to set up his segment on marijuana laws.

The are obviously many more examples we could cite, but a couple of years ago I stumbled onto a much more vivid and precise way to demonstrate what's going on with the conservative victimhood racket--a "conservative victimology ratio" comparing the sense of conservatives' own victimhood to simple basic facts. It began with the role of the US religious right in promoting “kill the gays” legislation in Uganda. When pressed by Rachel Maddow and others in the media, Rick Warren put out a defensive press release, which included the claim that hundreds of thousands of Christians were martyred every year. Specifically, he said:

There are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world that kill people (For instance, last year, 146,000 Christians around the world were killed because of their faith.). In this case, I knew the Archbishop in Uganda, so I did what I could, but my influence in that nation has been greatly exaggerated by the media.

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Senator John Cornyn would have you believe he would repeal Obamacare in an instant to keep the size of government 'small'. There he is, right there in that video from 2012, telling all who would hear about it.

But Cornyn, like other colleagues, is a secret admirer of Obamacare. Lee Fang has unearthed their appeals for grants to bolster health care services in their states, and there are many, from all those loyal GOP Obamacare haters.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the Republican whip, wrote to the Centers for Disease Control to recommend a grant for Houston and Harris County. Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican and the chair of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a letter praising the same grant request, calling the effort a “crucial initiative to achieve a healthier Houston/Harris County.” Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Thad Cochran of Mississippi also recommended grant request approval for public health or health clinic funding.

House Republicans and the Senate Republican Policy Committee have trashed the ACA’s Community Transformation grants as an Obamacare “slush fund.” In the letters seeking these grants, however, GOP lawmakers have heaped praise on their potential. Cornyn writes in his letter that the grant would help “improve the health and quality of life of area residents.” Congressman Aaron Schock, a Republican from Illinois, congratulated a local nonprofit for winning a Community Transformation grant, noting that the program will give “people the tools to live healthier and longer lives.”

Wait, what? It will give people tools to live healthier and longer lives? This is a Republican talking?

Yes, yes it is. Go read the whole article and be sure to look at all those letters written by Republicans who pound their chests over Obamacare.

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In his Rewrite segment Wednesday night, Lawrence O'Donnell tackled a Republican lawmaker's nonsense with regard to the farm bill and SNAP funding. But he danced around the question of why Democrats like Al Franken and Tom Harkin join with Republicans to defeat an amendment restoring funds to the food stamp program. Surely they don't believe that stupid quote about those unwilling to work should not eat, especially when they know the ones hit the hardest are children. So why not vote to restore those funds?

Answer: Farm subsidies. (Third rail, sacred cow, etc.) Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had introduced an amendment to the farm bill restoring $4.5 billion in funding to the SNAP program and reducing crop insurance reimbursements to providers.

It's not that Democrats oppose restoration of funds to the SNAP program, you see. It's that they don't want any subsidy to farmers -- direct or indirect -- to be reduced. As O'Donnell explains in this segment, farm subsidies and their ugly stepsisters like crop insurance reimbursements take precedence over everything, even though they are the absolute worst form of socialism there is.

Campaign for America's Future:

The Senate on May 21 rejected an amendment by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N,Y., that would block a 10-year, $4.1 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as SNAP or the food stamp program) that was included in the farm bill that is now up for reauthorization. Twenty-eight Democrats sided with all 42 Senate Republicans in opposing this amendment, which if passed would have prevented thousands of low-income households from losing as much as $75 a month in benefits.

The Republican agenda concerning SNAP is clear: They want to shrink the program, not by improving the economy so there’s less need for it, but by providing fewer benefits to fewer people, and by making those benefits harder to obtain. What’s not clear is why 28 Senate Democrats would side with Republicans in denying economically struggling people access to food.

That’s why Campaign for America’s Future today has partnered with Daily Kos to get signatures on this petition asking those 28 Democrats to “put low-income families ahead of corporate welfare—and to oppose draconian cuts to food stamps.”

The thing is, this is the second time it's been cut this way, with the same exact offset. Last year they let $5 billion get chopped out of the program which means this year there will be even more hungry people. And this came from our progressive Senators like Harkin and Franken.

When exactly do hungry people take precedence over greedy farmers, and why aren't Democrats standing up for what's right? The answer to the first question should yield an answer the second one.

You know the stupid that resides in the Conservative party and takes place on a daily basis is the kind of stupid you don't often see or hear about in everyday life. It would appear that Marco Rubio has realized that, by trying to do the right thing on immigration, he has put his own future political aspirations in jeopardy because House Republicans are crazed, fire-breathing Neanderthals. Here he is talking to another platinum member of the knuckle draggers party Hugh Hewitt and telling him that he won't even vote for his own bill.

HH: If those amendments don’t pass, will you yourself support the bill that emerged from Judiciary, Senator Rubio?

MR: Well, I think if those amendments don’t pass, then I think we’ve got a bill that isn’t going to become law, and I think we’re wasting our time. So the answer is no. If they don’t pass, then we’ve got to keep working to ensure that we get to a bill that can become a law. We’re not interested in passing a Senate bill. We’re interested in passing a law that reforms a broken legal immigration system, that begins to enforce the law, and that deals with the 11 million people who are here illegally. And that’s the goal of this endeavor.

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