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+17 +3
The Day Mandela Was Arrested, With A Little Help From the CIA
One of the great things about the late great Nelson Mandela is that he didn’t hold grudges. How else could he have accepted normal relations with the CIA, which tipped off the white-supremacy regime to his whereabouts in 1962? According to a 1990 Johannesburg Sunday Times newspaper account, a CIA agent by the name of Millard Shirley fingered Mandela for the apartheid regime’s secret police, allowing them to throw up a roadblock and capture him.
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+15 +1
Government whistle-blowers to Edward Snowden: Don't come home
Every day at 5:45 a.m., John Kiriakou wakes up. He pulls on green pants and a green button-down shirt with his name and number on the front. Breakfast is at 6. He watches the news from 6:30 to 7:30, then goes back to sleep. He wakes up again at 11 a.m. for lunch, after which he exercises until around 2:30 in the afternoon. Mail call is at 3:30. Dinner is at 5 p.m.
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+13 +2
AT&T aims to sidestep shareholder request on surveillance data
AT&T has asked regulators to let it ignore a shareholder request for details of its customer-information sharing with government agencies, a move that could forestall a heated debate at the telecommunications giant's annual meeting. The No. 2 U.S. mobile operator made the request in a Dec. 5 letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in response to shareholder activists pressing it on the matter.
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+12 +2
Cold War to cyber war, here's how weapon exports are controlled
The Financial Times last week reported the UK government is pushing for new restrictions on software – in particular, on tools that would prevent surveillance by the state. This was the focus of negotiations to incorporate cyber security technologies into the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies.
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+14 +4
Obama administration considers changing driver license guidelines for elderly
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it will work to change its strategic plan to ensure the safety of the U.S.’s growing population of older drivers and passengers.
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+9 +2
Is 834 the new 404? For Healthcare.gov, it might be
The White House was eager to sell American consumers on the improved Healthcare.gov earlier this month. But despite significant improvements on the front end, there are still lingering reports of back end problems keeping insurance companies from getting accurate information about their new clients.
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+11 +2
Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.?
Why won’t the President rein in the intelligence community?
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+19 +4
The Death of Expertise
I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but on many things in a particular but wide area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people, particularly laymen. In fact, I have been paid by many institutions, academic and professional, to speak, based precisely on the assumption that my views on certain matters are worth paying for. And they are, generally.
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+14 +3
The Government Really Isn’t Sure What Snowden Took
Out this morning in the New York Times is a stark tale: The United States’ intelligence apparatus has little idea what Edward Snowden took, despite spending half a trying to find out. As the full scope of what Snowden absconded with likely can’t be known, the government is forced to operate on its toes, unsure of what might be coming next. And that could be anything.
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+8 +2
U.S. Flouts Its Own Advice in Procuring Overseas Clothing
One of the world’s biggest clothing buyers, the United States government spends more than $1.5 billion a year at factories overseas, acquiring everything from the royal blue shirts worn by airport security workers to the olive button-downs required for forest rangers and the camouflage pants sold to troops on military bases.
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+14 +5
ObamaCare enrollment tops 1 million
More than 1.1 million people enrolled in ObamaCare before a December 24 deadline for consumers seeking healthcare plans that begin Jan. 1, the Obama administration said early Sunday.
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+22 +4
Why Secret Law Is Un-American
In recent years, the National Security Agency has relied on secret interpretations of the law to justify its actions, as noted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and a letter that 26 U.S. senators wrote complaining that "the 'business records' provision of the Patriot Act has been secretly reinterpreted." NSA defenders are fond of saying that its activities are legitimized and overseen by all three branches of government.
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+16 +2
The Wedding That a U.S. Drone Strike Turned Into a Funeral
A human-rights activist who interviewed witnesses said women and children in a nearby village are still too fearful to sleep through the night.
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+17 +3
Taxes on severance pay? U.S. Supreme Court to hear case
The Obama administration on Tuesday will fight before the Supreme Court to keep a defunct retailer from potentially triggering a wave of tax refund claims that could drain $1 billion
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+24 +4
Obamacare rules on equal coverage delayed
The Obama administration is delaying enforcement of a provision of the new healthcare law that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than to other employees, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Tax officials said they would not enforce the provision this year because they had yet to issue regulations for employers to follow, according to the Times.
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+15 +3
The Great Mom & Dad Experiment
The federal government has spent nearly a billion dollars to help poor couples stay together—with almost nothing to show for it. So why not pull the plug?
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+23 +3
Metal band find their music is being used for torture in GITMO, send US government invoice
The US Army's use of Metallica's oeuvre as a tool in its interrogations in Iraq is well documented, but it opted for something a little more esoteric in Guantanamo Bay, according to one Canadian industrial metal band.
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+19 +1
Why I'm Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare
It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.
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+2 +1
Poll: Only 79% of Obama voters would vote for him again
Given a chance to do it all over again, only 79 percent of those who voted for President Obama would vote for him again and 71 percent of Obama voters now inclined to vote for somebody else “regret” their vote to reelect the president, according to a new poll.
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+15 +1
There's a Shadow Govt. Running the Country, and It's Not Up for Re-Election
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections.
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