Starr Vile

“He Took the Time to Chat”: Ken Starr’s Plea for a Child Molester:

What’s Ken Starr up to these days? According to Virginia court documents, the famously pious former Clinton prosecutor recently pleaded with a Fairfax County judge to let a confessed child molester go free. Because he’s a family friend. Here’s the letter...

One of the commenters over at Gawker wondered why this story wasn't front-paged on the New York Times. Good question.

Speaking Lies To Power

Seeking to tamp fears, confusion, intelligence officials defend spy programs as safeguards - The Washington Post:

 Dogged by fear and confusion about sweeping spy programs, intelligence officials sought to convince House lawmakers in an unusual briefing Tuesday that the government’s years-long collection of phone records and Internet usage is necessary for protecting Americans — and does not trample on their privacy rights.

But the country’s main civil liberties organization wasn’t buying it, filing the most significant lawsuit against the sweeping phone record collection program so far. The American Civil Liberties Union and its New York chapter sued the federal government Tuesday in New York, asking a court to demand that the Obama administration end the program and purge the records it has collected....

Speaking of that...

Brooks Blows On Hagel

One of the great 1% enablers pontificates on a potential SecDef nominee.
Why Hagel Was Picked - NYTimes.com

...Chuck Hagel has been nominated to supervise the beginning of this generation-long process of defense cutbacks. If a Democratic president is going to slash defense, he probably wants a Republican at the Pentagon to give him political cover, and he probably wants a decorated war hero to boot.

All the charges about Hagel’s views on Israel or Iran are secondary. The real question is, how will he begin this long cutting process? How will he balance modernizing the military and paying current personnel? How will he recalibrate American defense strategy with, say, 455,000 fewer service members?

How, in short, will Hagel supervise the beginning of America’s military decline? If members of Congress don’t want America to decline militarily, well, they have no one to blame but the voters and themselves.

GI For SecDef

Chuck Hagel’s Experience as a Soldier Uniquely Qualifies Him to Head Defense - The Daily Beast

If nominated and confirmed, Chuck Hagel would become the first secretary of defense in decades—perhaps in U.S. history—to have served in combat as an enlisted soldier.

U.S. senators considering whether to support Hagel would do well to reflect on this qualification, whose benefits—both practical and symbolic—easily outweigh the arguments now being marshaled against his nomination. At a time when fewer politicians in Washington have served in the armed forces than at any point since the 40s—a disturbing trend, given the gravity of sending people and taxpayer’s dollars to war--Hagel’s realistic and seasoned perspective on the utility and limitations of military force would be an asset to policymakers hunting for a sustainable defense strategy...

Spy Cuts

Congress trims US spy budget in deepest cuts since 9/11, drops anti-leak measures | Fox News

Congress has drastically trimmed the budget for U.S. spies and satellites for 2013, though not quite as deeply as the White House wanted.

In one of the last votes of the year, House lawmakers voted Monday 373-29 in favor of a Senate-passed bill to slightly boost the president's $72 billion budget request for intelligence agencies including the CIA, adding extra cash for the counterterrorism fight against al-Qaida, and the counterintelligence fight against foreign governments trying to spy on the U.S...