Entries by emptywheel

Trojan First Amendment

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In his book, Unequal Protection, Thom Hartman shows how corporations (specifically, railroads) used the 14th Amendment–which ostensibly guaranteed African Americans the same rights other citizens enjoyed–to enshrine the concept of corporate personhood in our legal system.

With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the owners of the what werethen America’s largest and most powerful corporations – the railroads -figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longerhave to

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If You’re In Western Mass

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I’ll be giving a talk at my old stomping grounds on Thursday evening, 8PM, in Fayerweather. If you might show up, let me know in the comments–I’d love to touch base with readers.

And until then … I’m off to solve US auto woes.

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And Then There Were Three?

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Via DK at TPM, all three big telecoms have told Congress to fuck off they can’t confirm or deny whether they’ve been breaking the law by cooperating with the Administration.

Three telecommunications companies have declined to tell Congresswhether they gave U.S. intelligence agencies access to Americans’ phoneand computer records without court orders, citing White Houseobjections and national security.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell “formally invokedthe state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from

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Six Months

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Six months. That’s how long Comcast keeps its records that allow it to track the activity of a Comcast Internet subscriber. At least that’s what Comcast’s Cable Law Enforcement Manual, which somebody liberated and got into the hands of Secrecy News, says.Because Comcast’s system of allocating IP addresses uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), its subscribers are not assigned a single, constant or static IP address.

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The Murdoch Media Service Obliges GOP Lies

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Gosh, what a remarkable coinkydink. This morning, Roll Call comes out with this story:

Specifically,Republicans are planning to use the kidnapping and subsequent murder ofthree U.S. soldiers in Iraq earlier this year to put a “human face” onthe issue, the House staffer explained. According to this aide, whileDemocrats’ arguments about privacy may resonate with some voters,Republicans believe using real-world examples of how a weak FISA hasput U.S.

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Ensuring Quality

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Like Susie, I think this is a really cool idea.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journalfor 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a groupof investigative journalists who will give away their work to mediaoutlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitcheach project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to othermedia) where the group hopes the work will make

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A Brilliant Case Officer

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There’s an amusing line in Jonathan Landay’s article on the Bush Administration’s discovery that Vladimir Putin has no soul.

Bush and his aides “grossly misjudged Putin,” considering him “agood guy and one of us,” said Michael McFaul of Stanford University’sHoover Institution.

The former KGB officer created that illusionpartly by appearing to share Bush’s political and religiousconvictions, standard tradecraft employed by intelligence officers torecruit spies, he said.

“Putin .

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Lobbyist Logic

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I know you have all been worried at my seeming recovery from my obsession with Ed Gillespie. But worry not–the dearth of Gillespie posts was mostly explained by my travel schedule (which gets really bad again this week, then gets better), and not any disinterest in the guy who took over after they fired Bush’s brain.

And this, I guess, is the kind of logic you get from the Lobbyist-in-Chief with which

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Dick DeVos and KayBee Hutchison Go After Bloggers

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That’s a way to make you feel good about blogging, huh? To be attacked by both Dick DeVos and KayBee Hutchison?

DeVos is suing 30 anonymous bloggers and YouTube users because he believes they are among a group for former distributors who sued Amway and were put under a gag order by the judge in the suit.

In the lawsuit filed this past week in Ottawa County Circuit Court,Quixtar seeks an injunction and

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Did the NSA Ask for Data Mining Before or After 9/11?

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I did my big timeline yesterday to try to pin down how much of what we suspect to be the warrantless wiretap program started in early 2001, rather than post-9/11 as Bush has always claimed. As I pointed out in my timeline, it’s clear that Nacchio walked into the February 27 meeting expecting to talk about Groundbreaker.

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