Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Breakin’ The Law At The FBI

• First, a recap: During it’s warrantless surveillance rampages, the FBI was often able to unlawfully datamine using “exigent” national security letters, which are basically emergency requests. Last year, the New York Times reported that FBI agents obtained telephone records through such “exigent letters,” which asserted that grand jury subpoenas had been requested for the data when in fact such subpoenas never had been sought. Needless to say, the FBI’s stopped using the letters. [Mic Check]
• As we suspected, the use of those letters has resulted in some very bad things. According to a statement from the Justice Department this week, the FBI may have committed as many as 6,400 intelligence violations in the course of its use of national security letters. [ABC]
• But this scandal goes even deeper than that. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine disclosed last year that the FBI had issued more than 140,000 national security letters from 2003 to 2005.
• Last month, Fine released a follow-up report, which found that the FBI had issued 49,425 national security letters in 2006 alone.
• There’s more: It wasn’t until 2006 that the FBI actually thought to keep track of its use of national security letters. Prior to that, FBI field offices and agents manually kept NSL requests on 3 x 5 index cards.
• When the FBI got wind of their potential legal transgressions, they — as expected — pointed the finger elsewhere. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said that many of the violations “involved third-party errors or inattention to detail.”
• What sort of third-party errors? Try this: The FBI overcollected data from entire e-mail servers instead of only the intended suspects’ communications.

Index cards: The same way our grandmother keeps track of her recipes.

Hey Look, Even More Bush Hot Air On Global Warming

The Story

• Remember how earlier in the week we told you Bush was planning to pretend to take action on global warming? [Washington Post]
• Well, yesterday, he sure did, and what a show it was.[Mic Check]
• Yesterday, Bush endorsed “a goal of flattening emissions of carbon dioxide from United States power plants sometime around 2020 or so, on the way toward stopping all growth in United States greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025.” [NY Times]
• Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
• Specific proposals? None. Policy recommendations? None.
• And did you catch that? He doesn’t want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, just stop the growth of our emissions by 2025.
• Take it away, Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress: “This basically sounds like the same quarterback calling the same play...It’s just another way of Bush saying no.” [Washington Post]
• Read Bush’s real record of global warming denying and delaying here: [American Progress Action]
• And, in case you forgot, our favorite list ever: [Top 100 Effects Of Global Warming]

The Audio

• President Bush says “we’re doin’ a lot.”
  Please log in to download this clip.

Time to get serious.

Mistrial In The Miami Terror Case

• Thirteen days after deliberations started, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard declared a second mistrial in the case of the so-called Miami terrorists accused of joining forces with al-Qaeda to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. [AP]
• The jury was out for 13 days. The first trial also ended in mistrial after the jury remained deadlocked after nine days of deliberations.
• The men are called the “Liberty City Seven,” because they were from the Liberty City neighborhood in Miami. There were originally seven defendants; one was acquitted in December.
• “U.S. authorities had billed the case as a breakthrough in their efforts to detect and smash home-grown terrorism plots in their earliest stages.” When they were captured in June 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hailed the discovery of a “deadly plot” to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago proved “our commitment to preventing terrorism through energetic law enforcement efforts aimed at detecting and thwarting terrorist acts.”
• The defendants say they were faking the conspiracy because they wanted to get cash out of their al-Qaeda contact (who was actually an FBI informant.)
• What’s the problem? Well…as federal agents put it, the terrorist plans were “aspirational rather than operational.” The men involved had no actual al-Qaeda contacts. They also had no way to actually carry out the attack.
• See, the “terrorists” met in some guy’s basement. They called themselves kings and wanted to train their recruits to use bows and arrows. They did a lot of fake karate. They smoked a lot of pot.
• Then undercover FBI informants entered the scene. The FBI agents provided: Money. A place for meeting headquarters. Video cameras for surveillance. Cell phones. Suggestions for their first target (the Miami FBI offices). An official “swearing-in ceremony” for al-Qaeda. [Washington Post]
• Bottom line: Not much of a plot without the FBI’s help.
• Judge Lenard will hold another hearing on April 23 to decide whether the government can have a third trial to try to convict the men.

Sounds like the real crime these guys committed was that they were huge, HUGE nerds. Bow and arrows? Are you kidding?

Good News, Bad News

Pirates!

Yo ho yo ho, a pirates life for us. What’s that you say? Pirate attacks “on the high seas” are up 20%? Fantastic news! More booty, rum, hooks, parrots, and buried treasure for all! What’s that? They’re actually scary? “Seafarers suffered 49 attacks between January and March around the world, up 20 percent from the 41 recorded in the same period last year, the International Maritime Bureau said in a report by its piracy reporting center in Malaysia.” Hmmm...

GOOD NEWS

Pirates are neat, right?

BAD NEWS

Modern day speedboat-riding pirates who rob, kidnap and kill with machine guns and bombs are...not neat.

Quote Of The Day

“A fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.”

—Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, suggesting that we wouldn’t mind anyone just collecting our fingerprints [Think Progress]

Speed Round

SCOTUS

The Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for the stalled U.S. execution machine to crank up again, upholding the use of lethal injection. [NY Times]

LOSING OUR JOE-MENTUM

The Hill newspaper reports Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, is now angling to be the keynote speaker at September’s Republican National Convention. Says Lieberzell: “If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will.” [The Hill]

PSSSSSSST…WANNA BUY A POPE TICKET?

The Catholic Church is fighting to stop ticket scalping for the Pope’s masses this week. Just so you know, if you got that ticket on eBay, all tickets “ are numbered, and, officials say, each bearer’s ID and Social Security number will be checked at the stadiums against lists from the dioceses.” [WSJ]

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

All war, health care and economic problems obviously fixed, Reps. Ron Klein and John Mica (both Florida Republicans) can now focus on legislation that really matters – a resolution to declare April 16 “National Golf Day.” [Heard On The Hill]

TOBIAS? IS THAT YOU?

Why so blue, Sen. Chris Dodd? It turns out the senator’s ear was “covered in blue paint” at the recent Comedy Central autism benefit because he used a telephone that had just been used by a member of the Blue Man Group. [Heard On The Hill]

TOXIC PLASTICS

Turns out the Plastics in “Mean Girls” aren’t the only toxic plastics in town. The National Toxicology Program thinks there might be possible links between a chemical in everyday plastics to cancer. [WASHINGTON POST]

WHOOPSIES

Dear China, we are so sorry to have offended you by calling you guys a bunch of “goons” and saying your products are “junk”. Love, CNN. [REUTERS]

GREEN WITH ENVIRO-FEVER

Environmentally-friendly green roofs are sprouting rapidly across North America, putting their boring, concrete counterparts to shame. [MSNBC]

HMM…

Iran sinks further on the popularity list as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggests the U.S. used the “suspicious” event of 9/11 as a false pretext for invading Iraq. [MSNBC]

DEADLY PSA

What gets your attention better than listening to a real execution on your radio? Japan has all the answers these days. [REUTERS]

1 IN 33

The number of American homeowners who will face foreclosure in the next year. [Pew]

EEK.

The economy continues to do worse than Gigli did at the box office. [USA Today]

1,200

In Colorado, fierce wildfires have killed three people and have forced 1,200 from their homes. [USA Today]

JUST PLAIN WRONG

“Forced to leave the combat zone after his two brothers died in the Iraq war, Army Spc. Jason Hubbard faced another battle once he returned home: The military cut off his family’s health care, stopped his G.I. educational subsidies and wanted him to repay his sign-up bonus.” [USA Today]