Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 30th, 2011 4:34 am by HL
Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker
A federal judge harshly criticized U.S. prosecutors’ treatment of a former spy agency official accused of leaking classified material, calling delays in the now-closed case “unconscionable” and comparing it to British tyranny in the colonial era.
In 2007, FBI agents raided the house of Thomas Drake, then an official at the National Security Agency, but it took another 2 1 / 2 years for officials to indict him, Judge Richard D. Bennett said at a sentencing hearing earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, according to a transcript released Friday by the Secrecy News blog.
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert roast Congress over debt limit
With recent polls showing Americans increasingly frustrated with the debt-ceiling fight in Washington, Comedy Central’s late-night comedians are finding a goldmine of material — and no party is safe from satire.
In a segment titled “Armadebtdon 2011” on Tuesday, Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” lambasted President Obama’s plea for Americans to make the case for compromise directly to their members of Congress.
“That’s your idea, call your congressman?” Stewart chortled. “Did the president just quit?”
Senate headed for critical debt vote Sunday
The Senate is driving toward a climactic and dramatic vote at 1 a.m. Sunday that could determine whether a bipartisan deal to raise the nation’s legal borrowing limit is possible or a government default is likely.
What that deal might look was still deeply uncertain Friday, but talks were underway between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate about methods to circumvent some of the chamber’s most cumbersome procedures to allow the Senate to act more quickly if a compromise is reached.
Speedier action would require unanimous agreement from all senators, including conservatives who have vowed not to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, and it wasn’t clear that would be forthcoming.
Perry stresses personal opposition to gay marriage but doesn’t refute earlier comment about NY
DENVER — Potential Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry of Texas repeated his personal opposition to gay marriage in a speech to conservatives in Denver Friday.
But Perry didn’t backtrack on his statement last week in Aspen that New York’s recent decision to allow gay marriage is “their business.” That’s despite a direct attack earlier in the evening from a rival GOP presidential hopeful, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who took Perry to task for the comment.
“There are some in our party who say, ‘Well, if someone in New York wants to have gay marriage, that’s fine with me.’ … States do not have the right to destroy the American family,” Santorum said to applause from many of the 1,000 conservatives gathered at the Western Conservative Summit.
