Traveling Notes

This year is on notice.

• Motown is 50.  (Brilliant at Breakfast)
• Comrade Misfit reports that apparently those leaked White House emails on Benghazi were misquoted:

  The White House released the real emails late Wednesday. Here's what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans.
  
  One email was written by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.
  
  White House Benghazi email release prompts GOP to demand more
  WH releases emails showing changes to Benghazi talking points
  Complete Coverage: U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi
  
  On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes: "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation."
  
  But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.
  
  It read: "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."

  Video (which continues) and transcript at link.
• We might be in for strong solar eruptions.  (Mills River Progressive)
• Phoenix Woman (Mercury Rising) on someone who is not rejoicing that Minnesota is the twelfth state to permit same-sex marriage.  ("Hissy fit" is about right.)
• Bustednuckles spotlights an interesting link to a story in the Long Island Press averring that the military has given itself power to intervene in civil disturbances.  A taste:

  For Hedges and the other plaintiffs, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the government’s ever-expanding authority over civilian affairs has a “chilling effect” on First Amendment activities such as free speech and the right to assemble. First District Court Judge Katherine Forrest agreed with the plaintiffs and handed Hedges et al a resounding victory prompting the Department of Justice to immediately file an injunction and an appeal. The appellate court is expected to rule on the matter within the next few months.
  
  Another of the plaintiffs in the Hedges suit is Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and organizer who joined the lawsuit after she discovered a Wikileaks cable showing government officials attempting to link her efforts to terrorist activities. For activists such as O’Brien, the new DoD regulatory change is frightening because it creates, “an environment of fear when people cannot associate with one another.” Like Afran and Freedman, she too calls the move, “another grab for power under the rubric of the war on terror, to the detriment of citizens.”
  
  “This is a complete erosion of the rule of law,” says O’Brien. Knowing these sweeping powers were granted under a rule change and not by Congress is even more harrowing to activists. “That anything can be made legal,” says O’Brien, “is fundamentally antithetical to good governance.”
  
  As far as what might qualify as a civil disturbance, Afran notes, “In the Sixties all of the Vietnam protests would meet this description. We saw Kent State. This would legalize Kent State.”
  
  But the focus on the DoD regulatory change obscures the creeping militarization that has already occurred in police departments across the nation. Even prior to the NDAA lawsuit, journalist Chris Hedges was critical of domestic law enforcement agencies saying, “The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.”
  
  This de facto nullification isn’t lost on the DoD.

  I'm taking it with a grain (or two) of salt for the moment. Although the possibility of a shift of power has been mentioned by Arthur Silber. Recently, even.