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government transparency international affairs Snowden

The Turn-on-a-Dime’s Difference

Over two out of five. The first articles I saw put the ratio at “nearly 50 percent,” but the percentage is, more accurately, “nearly 41.” What’s significant is we would expect that figure to be much, much lower.

I’m talking about UFOs. Or “UAP” — as it is now trendy to say. I’m going to stick with the old term, just to rub the long history of the subject into smug, refined noses.

The story is this: in an upcoming-​any-​day-​now report to Congress on UFOs, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence claims that there were 366 military-​reported Unidentified Aerial … er … Flying Objects, last year, and 150 of them remain unexplained and not likely to be explained, since they behaved extremely oddly. That is, they acted in classic “flying saucer” manner. 

“The unexplained ones they just have no clue,” says Daily Mail reporter Josh Boswell, “because these things are moving in ways that we just don’t understand. At hypersonic speeds, and then they just turn on a dime. I mean, it’s incredible.”

The bad news is that it appears these things “exist.” The good news, one can hope, is that now the military has protocols in place to handle such reports rather than turn each UFO/​pilot interaction into a case fraught with secrecy and suppression, fear and consternation. The UFO reports now go to the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

It is worth mentioning that many of the stories in this upcoming report toe the old government line, insisting that these sightings are in theory explainable as enemy drones, etc. If true, drone tech has made serious advances!

And the world is even more dangerous than previously thought.

Or weirder.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom ideological culture media and media people Snowden

The Whistleblower Who Shall Not Be Named

“YouTube — Google, one of the largest, most powerful companies on the planet — has just censored political discourse from a U.S. senator on the Senate floor,” reports independent, online journalist Tim Pool. 

The case refers to the alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, around whom hangs a sort of hush-​hush infamy regarding the Ukraine phone call that became the centerpiece of the Democrat’s impeachment of Donald Trump. YouTube, under a self-​imposed/​tribe-​imposed gag order not to mention the man’s name, takes down all videos that dare breach this rule. YouTube just took down a C‑Span video featuring Senator Rand Paul discussing Mr. Ciaramella on the Senate floor — in which he defended whistleblower protections, but notes that they do not enforce anonymity.*

“Think about how dangerous that will be.”

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure [sic] speech,” the senator was quoted in The Washington Examiner after YouTube removed the clip. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”

Rand Paul has been demanding full disclosure of possible conspiracy on the part of Ciaramella — working with Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment push — but has not been getting very far. During the Senate impeachment trial, presiding officer Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question (“as written”) by the senator that had specified the Unnamable Name without identifying him as the “whistleblower.”

Google is free to play censor, of course, but who wants an information age without the information?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* The senator also expressed some incredulity about the near-​universal proclamations in support of whistleblower laws, calling Edward Snowden “the greatest whistleblower of all-​time” but noting that half the Senate wanted Snowden put to death and the other half to plunk him “in jail forever. So it depends on what you blow the whistle on whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.”

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What Does Snowden Deserve?

Who is Ed Snowden? And what does he deserve?

On May 20, 2013, 29-​year-​old security specialist Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii; in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. 

In late June, the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, and the Department of State revoked his passport. Two days later, he flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, to which he was restricted for over a month. Russia ultimately granted him right of asylum for one year, and has added extensions until 2020. Mr. Snowden is currently living in an undisclosed location in Moscow and continues to seek asylum elsewhere.

Though the United States Government still seeks his apprehension and prosecution, and politicians across the political spectrum have called him a traitor and worse, Mr. Snowden is far from universally reviled:

“He is a hero who exposed the most extraordinary violations of the Fourth Amendment in the history of the country.”
—Judge Andrew Napolitano

What Mr. Snowden revealed was a secret, illegal program undertaken by America’s Deep State. “It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional,” writes Paul Jacob on this website, “or me, but how a federal judge ruled.” And for this reason many defenders of the Constitution of the United States and of the American way of life dub Ed Snowden not a traitor or fiend, but patriot, whistleblower, hero:

“He has done a great service, because he is telling the truth. The American people are starved for the truth.… Essentially there is no Fourth Amendment anymore, and for somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort.”
—Ron Paul, former Congressman

Even some folks in government have acknowledged the importance of Snowden’s service to our country:

“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made.”
—Eric Holder, former Attorney General of the United States

The awesome power that Snowden revealed to us is truly astounding:

“When you are on the inside, when you go into work every day, when you go in in to sit down at a desk, you realize the power you have. You can wiretap the President of the United States. You can wiretap a federal judge. And if you do it carefully, no one will ever know because the only way the NSA discovers abuses are from self-​reporting.
—Edward Snowden

So, what does Ed Snowden deserve?

A pardon. And our thanks!

 


Paul Jacob has been on Ed Snowden’s side — and on the side of the Bill of Rights and citizen-​controlled government — from the beginning. Help in Paul’s effort to promote our shared American ideas and show your appreciation by contributing to This Is Common Sense today. And for $10 show your appreciation for Ed Snowden with this simple and eloquent poster:


18“x24” Edward Snowden Poster
$10 —  Click to go to store page (FREE SHIPPING!)

 


Skeptical? Well, consider:

Mr. Snowden: Five Years a Fugitive

A Birthday Present for the Deep State

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency individual achievement media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden U.S. Constitution

Happy Birthday, Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden turns 35 today and begins another year as a fugitive stuck in Russia.

Five years ago, he fled the country to Hong Kong, meeting with The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras to discuss documents he had released showing illegal National Security Agency collection of our phone records, social media posts and mega other metadata.

It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional, or me, but how a federal judge ruled.

Remember when James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, wittingly misled Congress by claiming our private information was not being swept up, except “unwittingly.” We only know that Clapper fibbed because of what Snowden divulged.

“[T]he breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress,” Snowden has explained. “There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions.”

Clapper is free, collecting his pension. Snowden has been indicted under the Espionage Act, which unconstitutionally limits his defense.

Snowden sure has paid for his courage. He was making very good money, and living with his girlfriend in Hawaii, when he decided he had a duty to alert us to our government’s lawlessness — at the cost of his livelihood, his future, his very life, perhaps.

While our leaders call him a traitor, I call him “friend.”*

Edward Snowden is a friend of every American who cherishes our Fourth Amendment right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” 

Freedoms the government was secretly stomping upon.

It is time to bring him home.**

Ed Snowden, thank you for your service. Happy Birthday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 


* I feel a connection to Mr. Snowden, and have an inkling of what it’s like to do what you believe is right and to find yourself wanted by the government, on the run, far from home. 

** Snowden deserves a presidential pardon. But he has said he would even return to face prosecution, provided the charges did not preclude him from defending his actions in open court.

 

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Snowden video

Mr. Snowden: Five Years a Fugitive

Free the People: Five Years After

Citizenfour — Movie Trailer

CNN: Greenwald Defends Snowden

CNN: Ron Paul on Snowden

CNN: Trump on Snowden

NBC: Clinton on Snowden

WSJ: Snowden on Trump & Clinton

Al Jezeera: More Snowden on Trump & Clinton

Bernie Sanders on Snowden

Learn Liberty: Snowden: Democracy Under Surveillance

ACLU: Edward Snowden statement at the Pardon Snowden launch event

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden

Clapper into the Clink?

Lying to Congress is a strange crime. A number of people have been prosecuted for it over the years, but Congress isn’t a court of law and, more to the point, Congress may present the densest source of lies in the United States.

The idea that it would be illegal for a citizen to lie to a den of liars is, well, a bit amusing.

But it is illegal, and definitely should be illegal, for government functionaries to give false testimony before Congress.

That’s why the case of the admittedly “untruthful”* James Clapper is so aggravating. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden, on the Senate floor, about data collection of phone calls by the U.S. federal government, he — the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2017 — lied through his teeth.

And had not Edward Snowden leaked information on the National Security Administration’s metadata collection program, we would not have learned anything about it.

No wonder, then, that several congressmen want to prosecute Clapper before March 12, when the Statute of Limitations runs out on his crime. Steven Nelson at the Washington Examiner quotes Rep. Ted Poe (R‑Tex.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R‑Ky.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R‑Tex.), and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R‑Wis.) as all being in favor of siccing federal prosecutors on the forked tongue spymaster.

Senator Wyden warns that letting lies such as Clapper’s go unaddressed encourages Americans to be cynical about government, and “makes it possible, even probable, for hucksters and authoritarians to take power.”

Too late?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Clapper’s March 2013 whopper at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was that the NSA was “not wittingly” collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Later, to MSNBC, he characterized his artful dodge as having been “the least untruthful” way for him to respond.


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