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Charges Against the N.S.A. : The New Yorker
On June 13th, a fifty-four-year-old former government employee named Thomas Drake is scheduled to appear in a courtroom in Baltimore, where he will face some of the gravest charges that can be brought against an American citizen. A former senior executive at the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic-espionage service, he is accused, in essence, of being an enemy of the state. According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act—the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.”
USAID AED suspension: Why did USAID suspend one of its biggest contractors without any explanation? - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine
The fall of AED made waves in part because of its size and history. AED managed about $500 million in grants and contracts every year. Until the suspension, it employed more than 700 people in Washington and about 2,000 people worldwide. Since then, 180 employees have left or been laid off, according to Michelle Galley, a spokesperson for AED.
Karl Rove. Zuma/Tom Reel Karl Rove's dark-money political operation has uncovered a major piece of what it's calling "breaking news": Elizabeth Warren, the White House aide in charge of assembling the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, once "made time for dinner" with me. Alert the blogosphere! Send out the tweets! Launch an investigation!
Karl Rove's Audacious Transparency Hypocrisy | Mother Jones
(CNN) -- Three adopted children who allegedly suffered burns and were forced to eat pet food lived in "inhumane conditions" and might never fully recover, an Oklahoma sheriff said Thursday.
Sheriff: Three adopted children suffered horrific abuse - CNN.com
Magazine says Army ordered 'psychological operations' on lawmakers - The Oval: Tracking the Obama presidency
An Afghan youth looks on as U.S. Marines patrol Garmser, Helmand province, Afghanistan, on Thursday. There are around 140,000 international troops, two-thirds of them from the United States, in Afghanistan fighting the militant Islamist Taliban. It is reporting that "the U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding " for the Afghanistan war.
What Were They Thinking? Why People Make Sex Tapes - MedPage Today Blogs - 21861
Hardly a week goes by without yet another home video of some public figure's sexual behavior coming to light.Findings — The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women - NYTimes.com
Each of the young men thought she was simply a fellow student at participating in the experiment, which ostensibly consisted of her and the man assembling a puzzle of Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each man rated her attractiveness. Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else.
Stars and Sewers - NYTimes.com
Rarely have we seen such epic clashes between the forces of light and darkness. We watch in awe as revolutions somersault through the Middle East. We see instantaneous digital communication as a weapon against oppression and, in the hands of tyrants who tap into its power, as a weapon for oppression. While the cloud spurs some people to reach for the stars, delighting in freedom of expression, it seduces others to sprawl in the gutter, abusing freedom of expression. When CBS’s Lara Logan was dragged off, beaten and sexually assaulted by a mob of Egyptian men in Tahrir Square the giddy night that Hosni Mubarak stepped down, most of us were aghast.
Editor's note: Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights , a nonprofit legal and educational organization based in New York. New York (CNN) -- There was widespread support among scores of human rights groups and many others for recent efforts to have Switzerland open a preliminary investigation for torture against former President George W.
Why there should be a case against George W. Bush under torture law - CNN.com
Today's Solution column is written by Charles Smith, a little known, retired, Army civilian employee hero, who went up against the Iraq contractor KBR on behalf of the troops and the taxpayers and was demoted. Smith was chief of the Field Support Contracting Division of the Army Field Support Command in Rock Island Arsenal, and one of his main jobs was to oversee the enormous Army contract with KBR during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2004, he became concerned when the auditors of the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) told him that KBR could not justify more than a billion dollars in spending because of their chaotic documentation. He backed the auditors and would not sign off on payments and bonuses to KBR until they provided documented proof of their costs. He also backed DCAA and told KBR that he would legally be withholding 15 percent of all payments to KBR until their auditing systems caught up to their spending.
Fix the Pentagon Part I: Create an Independent Audit Agency
30 Steps To Better Government - NYTimes.com
CALLS for greater government efficiency are nothing new in Washington. But with President Obama and Congress now debating budgets for both the rest of this year and the next, with the economy yet to fully recover from the recent recession and with our government’s finances still on an unsustainable long-term path, the need to wring every dollar out of the federal budget and ensure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth has never been greater. How, though, do you find these savings? Today, the Government Accountability Office is issuing its updated roadmap to confronting waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. Since we started this list of programs at high risk of such problems two decades ago, our office has come to update it with each new Congress, and history shows that sustained, focused oversight from lawmakers and administration officials can save billions of dollars and improve services.Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include " Late Edition: A Love Story " and "And You Know You Should Be Glad: A True Story of Lifelong Friendship."
4-star general, 5-star grace - CNN.com
Lisa Huff says the state-funded Disability Lifeline program in Washington state has lived up to its name, helping her get counseling for depression, treatment for diabetes and support for her ultimate goal: getting a job.