Reining In The Guard Dogs

As today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, many Americans have the day off from their regular jobs, as part of a national day of service. For those people who took off from work early on Friday, to try and capitalize on the three day weekend, it's likely they missed President Obama's NSA reform speech on Friday. So as part of our service to you, our readers, today, we're recapping the President's address from Friday, where he proposed several reforms to the NSA.

To say both the speech and the major reforms the President proposed have had a mixed reception would be the understatement of the year - and we're saying that knowing there are still eleven-plus months of 2014 ahead of us.

Just as Dana Liebelson of Mother Jones and Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor predicted, neither the security hawks or the civil libertarians were happy with the President's proposed reforms. As Greg Sargent clearly outlined though, the reforms are a good first step - but the fundamental argument between privacy and security remains unresolved.

President Obama effectively said as much in his address, noting the conflict between security and privacy.

As all of our staff members are currently or have been pet owners at one time, we tend to think of the NSA and other U.S. security services a bit like guard dogs. As an owner of a guard dog, you want the animal occasionally to come off as the biggest, meanest animal in existence, in order to scare away potential trouble.

Of course, then the problem becomes the same one the U.S. has now - how do you effectively control a beast like that?

For anti-NSA activists like Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and writer Glenn Greenwald, it's no surprise they hated the President's speech and thought his reforms don't go nearly far enough. For pro-NSA politicians, including some members of Congress, the reforms the President suggested go too far. Not surprisingly, lawmakers from both major parties who were unhappy with Obama's reforms had plenty of complaints, but virtually no realistic suggestions on how to do things better.

In short, the major changes the President suggested include a public advocate role before the FISA Court, one of the major reforms initially suggested by President Obama's own reform commission. Obama also noted that spying on other world leaders is something every nation - even our allies - does, yet said he would rein in some of the surveillance our U.S. agencies do overseas. He also proposed having Congress create new policy safeguards for our U.S. surveillance activities overseas.

Finally, the President also noted that while phone call metadata collection - where someone records the phone numbers and length of the call - will continue, the number of calls catalogued will be significantly fewer. Further, the President called for a third-party agency, that is neither the NSA or the phone companies, to keep and hold the metadata - another action that will require Congress to get off their lazy asses and help solve the problem.

For what it's worth, some lawmakers from both parties did praise the President over the weekend for tackling this no-win situation, even in the midst of all the growling from both the pro- and anti-NSA camps.

We still think Greg Sargent's take on the NSA reforms hits it right on the head: It's a good start to reforming our problematic "guard dogs." That said, even with all the new reforms, we aren't going to feel comfortable, knowing the NSA and others like it will continue to stick their noses in places they don't belong.

Jumping Off On An Idea

As the week winds to a close, much of the legitimate news media is still focused on the slow-motion drive off a cliff that is Gov. Chris Christie's political career. Although that story is still important, after some careful consideration, we noticed another thread winding through the news today, off the beaten path, that we thought warranted a more serious look.

While the bipartisan budget bill was far from the most progressive budget ever, on Thursday afternoon, the bill passed both the House and Senate, and went to the desk of President Obama to sign. That action is just one example of a Federal government that - after five years of perpetual Republican obstructionism - finally appears to be showing some movement again.

Even while some Republicans remain obsessed with skewed narratives about topics like Benghazi that make them feel better but aren't factually true - as Brian Beutler highlighted on Thursday - other Republicans have begun dealing with the electoral realities facing them in 2014 and 2016.

Take the newest proposal for fixing the Voting Rights Act, that the Supreme Court broke last year. Led by a bipartisan yet progressive-leaning group from both sides of Capitol Hill, a fix for the VRA was introduced Thursday that would once again strongly protect the right to vote for all Americans.

On the issue of immigration, the long push by immigrant's rights groups also seems to have finally begun to have some effect, as a growing number of GOP leaders seem to be finally accepting immigration reform as an issue they can no longer avoid. As Greg Sargent has been saying for more than a year now, if Republicans want immigration reform to happen, Democrats will be ready to pass it any time.

Even the issue of economic inequality - which still includes massive amounts of work - has seen some progress. While not as rosy a picture as Ben White paints, Wall Street regulation that Democrats in Congress and President Obama passed into law has begun to rein in some of the worst excesses of the financial moguls. Further, as Greg Sargent also noted, President Obama is even seriously considering executive action to raise the minimum wage nationwide, if Congress won't act.

On the issue of our twisted American health insurance system, a great deal of progress has been made over the last five years. On the state level, as Josh Marshall observed, Republicans are still doing everything they can to sabotage Obamacare. Still, as well-known right-wing pundit Erick Erickson admitted Thursday, a growing number of Republicans are beginning to acknowledge - finally and publicly - that they've lost their long, pointless war against the Affordable Care Act.

Small progress on multiple policy areas doesn't mean every problem in America is repaired. There is still a great deal of work to do on all the topics we mentioned, as well as other major issues like government secrecy, foreign policy, international trade, and climate change, to name a few. Some of the same forces that are currently destroying the GOP are also still a danger for the political left - like the kind of false framing that says the Democratic Party is divided into only two groups, liberals and corporate Democrats. [There are actually THREE major groups on the left: Progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Liberals like filmmaker Michael Moore, and Corporate Democrats like Rahm Immanuel.]

After we take a look at the full picture of American politics, though, the thread that's clear to us is that after five years of leadership under President Obama, America is moving in a more progressive direction.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is trying desperately to throw themselves out of the metaphorical car that Chris Christie is driving over the cliff - and they have nowhere to go but down.

Maybe 2014 won't be such a bad year to be a Democrat after all.

The Village Idiots Have Returned

Between the ongoing 'Bridgegate' scandal of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the mass destruction of water supplies in West Virginia, and the Republicans in the U.S. Senate shafting more than a million Americans by not extending unemployment insurance, our attention has been a bit distracted over the last day or so.

Those stories have somewhat crowded out other critical domestic news, such as the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, DC killing internet neutrality, or the House passing its part of the $1.1 trillion federal budget bill. You also might have missed some critically important foreign news stories, like the "Imprison The Gays" law in Nigeria, the ongoing war in Syria, or the tentative and early stages of the nuclear peace deal with Iran.

While all these stories have been competing for our attention, the political clowns and bullies from our home state of Nebraska have also been pulling some significant focus of attention from our staff over the last day or so.

We've never been in favor of the kind of bill proposal Nebraska state Sen. Mark Christensen introduced Tuesday, to arm school teachers with concealed handguns. We thought it was a clownish approach to school security when Sen. Christiansen proposed a similar bill in 2011. After both Antoinette Tuff in Georgia in August of 2013, and John Masterson in New Mexico this week both stopped school shooters without being personally armed, our point is validated that schools do not need more guns to stop gun violence.

Sadly, we doubt any facts on this issue will prevent Sen. Christiansen from shooting his mouth off about the topic, on his way to another likely failure of his proposed legislation.

Returning to previously failed ideas seems to be a hallmark of Nebraska's political class of clowns and fake tough-guys.

In that vein, Nebraska's little bully of a Governor, Dave Heineman, was the perfect example of this personality defect as he gave his State of the State address on Wednesday. Regardless of the report that was just released last year - after months of study by the Tax Modernization Committee - that said the state of Nebraska should NOT give a deep tax cut, Governor Heineman is now insisting that Nebraska lawmakers ignore the facts of that study and toss a tax cut to the kinds of folks he likes best.

Likely, those people include the already incredibly wealthy and astoundingly ignorant scion of the family that created TD Ameritrade, Pete Ricketts. Ricketts, who is attempting to buy his way into the Governor's mansion this year, also received the kiss of death/political endorsement of Wisconsin's extremist teabagger governor, Scott Walker, on Wednesday - effectively sealing his fate one way or another.

With all of these crazy stories, and even crazier politicians, it's a wonder our editor Amy even had time to give birth on Wednesday afternoon to a healthy five pound, twelve ounce baby girl.

Congratulations Amy & Eric. You take care of your girls at home - we'll keep an eye on the clown show while you're away.