The NSA leaks were met with Republican indignation.
They said Edward Snowden was a disgrace to the nation.
They called him a spy,
But now they love the guy
For giving them cause to investigate the administration.
They first said Snowden’s leak was a defection,
But now they see his point, upon reflection.
He gave them insights
Into things that weren’t right,
And hey, just in time for the midterm elections!
Disapprove of the government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts, a new Pew Research poll finds, while 40% approve. Overall approval of the NSA’s data collection program has declined since last summer, when the story first broke based on Edward Snowden’s leaked information.”Today, 40% while 53% disapprove. In July, more Americans approved (50%) than disapproved (44%) of the program.”
In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks fuss,
Obama says he wants a government we can trust.
‘Cause they only stopped one plot,
Yeah really, that’s all they got
For all those years the NSA was spying on us.
Recently we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance watching everything we do. Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today.
— Edward Snowden, in an “alternative Christmas message” broadcast on U.K. television.
Getting spied on got the United Nations in a huff.
“Hey,” they said, “already, enough’s enough!”
“What can we say?”
Said the NSA.
“We had to do SOMETHING with all this cool spy stuff.”
The U.S. government has a new deal for Ed Snowden,
If the Russians don’t give him asylum.
If Snowden won’t fight
An order to extradite,
Our government promises not to torture or kill him.
Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker. He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it.
— Pfc. Bradley Manning’s military prosecutor, Capt. Ashden Fein, in his closing arguments in the Bradley Manning court martial, characterizing the recipients of the leaked NSA material — journalists — as “the enemy.”
Below is Wikileaks’ transcript of the statement Edward Snowden gave at 5 p.m. Moscow time Friday, July 12, 2013. The statement has been edited by Wikileaks.
Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.
It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.
Margin by which a new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters say that Edward Snowden is a whistle-blower, rather than a traitor. In a massive shift in attitudes, by 45% to 40% voters say the government’s anti-terrorism efforts go too far in restricting civil liberties, a reversal from January 2010 when voters said 63% to 25% that such activities didn’t adequately protect the country.
To hear Trump talk, he’s the only one
Who’s ever stood trial for crimes he’s done.
But instead of courtroom drama,
We get Trump in his pajamas,
That’s how he earned his new nickname: Don Snoreleone.
“This week has been a howling vortex of suck for the MAGA movement and Donald Trump. Imagine a black hole in the profound interstellar vacuum in the cold emptiness of space, drawing all matter and energy into its brutal singularity, an ineluctable and final journey into nothingness. … That’s the GOP this week. It’s been bad and will get worse.”
“I am not resigning. And it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause, it is not helpful to the country, it does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here — a secure border, sound governance – and it’s not helpful to the unity that we have in the body.”
— Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on the “resign or be fired” ultimatum from the GOP’s Freedom Caucus just 174 days into his tenure as sp[eaker, reported by Punchbowl News.
“Trump’s head slowly dropped, his eyes closed. It jerked back upward. He adjusts himself. Then, his head droops again. He straightens up, leaning back. His head droops for a third time, he shakes his shoulders. Eyes closed still. His head drops. Finally, he pops his eyes open.”
— Law360 reports from the second day of Donald Trump’s “hush money” criminal trial.
“Functionally, Chris Sununu is as active a part of Trump’s campaign as Matt Gaetz or MTG, or any of the other MAGA freaks. And it seems not to bother him that these people would poleaxe him if given a second’s chance. It seems not to bother him that his political career is over. He’s not just willing to exit public life on his knees—he’s eager to do it. … In the end, it doesn’t matter if Sununu is a mountebank, a coward, or a fool. Those three characters are equally pernicious. … What matters is that the rest of us understand that it is the Chris Sununus of the world who make this ongoing authoritarian attempt possible.”
“He’s f**king crazy! The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out!”
— New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), quoted by the Associated Press two years ago. Sununu is now backing Trump for president.
Punchbowl News: The DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] raised $45.4 million in the first quarter of 2024, outpacing the NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee] by $12 million. That’s the DCCC’s best quarter of the 2024 cycle and includes a $21.4 million March haul. This is a massive show of force for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.The DCCC has $71.1 million on hand. Compare that to the NRCC, which has $45.2 million on hand.
A new Harvard Institute of Politics poll of voters under age 30 finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump 56% to 37% among likely voters. Pollster John Della Volpe: “For a Democrat to comfortably win the Electoral College, he or she needs to win 60 percent of the youth vote. Biden and Obama, ’12 and ’20, won 60 percent. Obama got 66 percent in ’08. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton got 55 percent. Biden is in the mid-50s. Can you improve that to get to 60 percent? It’s within reach.“
Financial Times: “In another troubling sign for Republican fundraising efforts, Trump has 270,000 fewer unique donors than he did at the same stage of his 2020 White House run. His campaign and affiliated political action committees got money from 900,000 donors from July 2023 to the end of the first quarter of 2024, down from 1.17 million four years earlier.”
New York Times: “Of the 96 possible jurors brought into the room, more than 50 raised their hands to say they couldn’t be fair. They were immediately excused.”
“Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023. … Homicides in American cities are falling at the fastest pace in decades, bringing them close to levels they were at before a pandemic-era jump,” the Wall Street Journal reports.