Nation's Biggest Spy Center Settles into Utah

By David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Utah - Officially called the Utah Data Center, the enormous facility under construction will eventually house one million square feet of computers. Its mission will be to intercept, decipher, analyze and store large volumes of communications collected by the NSA from around the world.

 

Everything from private emails to cell phone calls to Google searches and more will be stored at the center, which is scheduled to operational in September 2013. It will also collect the details of financial transactions, big and small, secret communication of foreign governments, suspected terrorists and, perhaps, just about everybody else.

 

“It is, in some measure, the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy,” according to James Bamford in an excellent article in Wired. Bush went ahead anyway, enlisting the aid of the telecoms, and the Obama administration has moved the strategy forward.

 

The Utah Data Center will also be a center for cryptanalysis—code breaking—since one of its primary targets will be password-protected and intricately encrypted information.

 

The Data Center is expected to have at least 200 full-time employees and cost $40 million a year to maintain.

States Slash Birth Control Subsidies as Federal Debate Rages

United States - Even as a national debate rages over contraception insurance, tens of thousands of low-income women and teenagers across the United States have lost access to subsidized birth control as states slash and restructure family planning funds.

Montana and New Jersey have eliminated altogether their state family planning programs. New Hampshire cut its funding by 57 percent and five other states made more modest program trims.

But the biggest impact, by far, has been in Texas.

State lawmakers last fall cut family-planning funds by two-thirds, or nearly $74 million over two years.

Within months, half the state-supported family planning clinics in Texas had closed.

The state network, which once provided 220,000 women a year free and low-cost birth control, cervical cancer tests and diabetes screenings, will now serve just 40,000 to 60,000, officials said.

Another 130,000 low-income Texas women who get free exams and contraceptives through Medicaid could lose those benefits by month's end, due to a dispute between the state and federal governments over whether Planned Parenthood should be allowed to serve women on that program.

At the People's Community Clinic in Austin, the cuts mean that many low-income patients, except the very poorest, are now charged for contraception that used to be free: $5 for a dozen condoms; $10 for a month of birth control pills; $225 for an IUD.

"I have no clue what I'm going to do," said Rhetta Pope, 22, of Austin. A stay-at-home mother of two, she lives off disability payments of less than $1,500 a month.
Pope said after paying basic living expenses, she has so little left she scrimps on electricity by keeping the lights off and takes her laundry to an aunt's house. She can't imagine how she would pay for birth control.

"I guess I'm going to have to stop using it because I don't have the money," Pope said. "I'm pretty shook up. I really am."

SAVINGS IN DOUBT

Texas legislators who backed the 66-percent family planning cuts say they had no choice - the state budget was in crisis and many worthy programs suffered.

But a budget board analysis concluded the cut would actually cost Texas taxpayers more than it saved.

The board projected that women unable to get low-cost birth control would deliver 20,500 additional babies - costing state and federal taxpayers $231 million in prenatal, maternity and infant care. The state's share would be close to $98 million - significantly more than the family planning cut savings.

State Representative Wayne Christian, a Republican, acknowledged that the cuts might be counterproductive "if you look at it from a financial cost, perhaps."

But he disputed the notion that additional babies were a cost burden. "We value a human life more than just the cost," he said.

In general, he said, the state should not try to deter births by widely distributing free contraception. If women who want birth control cannot afford it, he said, they should first seek help from families or communities.

"I'm sorry," Christian said, "but there's this thing called individual responsibility."

Some women have found ways to pay for the care they once received free, but many have not.
After losing much of its state family-planning grant, the Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas in January began charging most patients a flat $25-per-visit fee.

In the first two weeks of the policy, 362 women cancelled appointments because they could not make the co-pay. Only 20 percent found the money to get care within a week or two, hospital officials said.

Another 20 percent were referred to one of the two Parkland locations still providing free services. Those sites are now so busy, the first available appointment at the Irving Women's Health Center is August 21.

Most of the remaining women never came back for care after learning about the co-pay, said Paula Turicchi, a Parkland senior vice president.

BLOCKING TAXPAYER DOLLARS

In several states, including Texas, questions about birth control access are now entangled with the politically explosive abortion debate.

Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion provider, with about 330,000 procedures a year. It also runs a network of urban and suburban clinics offering birth control, gynecological exams and care for sexually transmitted diseases.

The organization gets about a third of its revenue, $360 million in 2009, from government grants to provide those services to poor women.

In the past year, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and Texas all have moved to block Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer money. Several other states, including Ohio, Oklahoma and New Hampshire, are considering similar moves.

While public funds don't pay for abortions, critics of Planned Parenthood argue that hiring the organization to provide family planning to poor women helps the organization stay afloat and thus indirectly supports abortion services.

The Texas funding cut prompted Planned Parenthood to shut down 11 clinics. It also has jeopardized a $40 million family-planning program run as a Medicaid extension.

The program provides free birth control and annual exams to 130,000 low-income women of reproductive age who don't qualify for regular Medicaid. The federal government pays 90 percent of the cost; Texas puts up just $4 million a year.

About 40 percent of women in the Texas program get subsidized care from Planned Parenthood clinics, but a new state law blocks those clinics from participating. The Obama administration has said that violates federal Medicaid rules. If neither side compromises, the program will likely close by the end of March.

That infuriates Jonee Longoria, a single mother in Houston who relied on the program for free services for several years as she put herself through college. "I had one child living in poverty and I didn't want another," Longoria said.

She now works for a social service agency and refers many clients to the program for contraception. Without it, she said, "where would they go?"

Advocates of defunding Planned Parenthood say they regret any service disruptions for poor women. But they call it a necessary price to pay to take a moral stance on abortion.

"We're just doing what we think is best," said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, which opposes abortion.

Tobacco Health Labels Unconstitutional: U.S. Judge

By Jeremy Pelofsky

United States - A U.S. judge sided with tobacco companies on Wednesday, ruling that regulations requiring large graphic health warnings on cigarette packaging and advertising violate free-speech rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Cigarette makers challenged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rule requiring companies to label tobacco products with images of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and other images intended to illustrate the dangers of smoking.

"The government has failed to carry both its burden of demonstrating a compelling interest and its burden of demonstrating that the rule is narrowly tailored to achieve a constitutionally permissible form of compelled commercial speech," U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said in the ruling.

The judge granted a preliminary injunction last year blocking the new label requirement from taking effect in 2012, a decision the Obama administration has already taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The government is also likely to appeal the new ruling.

While educating the public about the dangers of smoking "might be compelling, an interest in simply advocating that the public not purchase a legal product is not," Leon wrote in a 19-page ruling.

Further, Leon noted the warning labels were too big to pass constitutional muster and that the government has numerous other tools at its disposal to deter smoking such as raising cigarette taxes or including simple factual information on the labels rather than gruesome images.

Congress passed a law in 2009 ordering the FDA to adopt the label regulation, which requires color warning labels big enough to cover the top 50 percent of a cigarette pack's front and back panels, and the top 20 percent of print advertisements.

The FDA released nine new warnings in June to go into effect in September 2012, the first change in U.S. cigarette warning labels in 25 years. Cigarette packs already carry text warnings from the U.S. Surgeon General.

Tobacco companies, including Reynolds American Inc's R.J. Reynolds unit, Lorillard Inc, Liggett Group LLC, Commonwealth Brands Inc, which is owned by Britain's Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co Inc challenged the rule, arguing it would force them to engage in anti-smoking advocacy against their own legal products.

"Unfortunately, because Congress did not consider the First Amendment implications of this legislation, it did not concern itself with how the regulations could be narrowly tailored to avoid unintentionally compelling commercial speech," Leon wrote.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, which represented the FDA in the case, had no comment. Representatives for the tobacco companies involved in the litigation were not immediately available for comment.

Tobacco companies have said it would cost them millions of dollars to comply and also argued the graphics offer no information that could not be accomplished through messages similar to warnings already on cigarette packages and ads.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates some 45 million adults smoke cigarettes, which are the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States.

The ruling "ignores decades of First Amendment precedent that support the right of the government to require strong warning labels to protect the public health," Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said in a statement.

The case is R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co et al v. FDA, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 11-1482.

Supreme Court Rejects Emergency Carp Measures

By John Flesher

Traverse City, Michigan - The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to order emergency measures that might prevent Asian carp from reaching the Great Lakes, despite a warning that the exotic fish pose a "dire threat" to the region's environment and economy.

Michigan and four neighboring states wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to install nets in two 

Chicago-area rivers and to expedite a study of permanent steps to head off an invasion by bighead and silver carp, which have advanced up the Mississippi River and its tributaries to within 55 miles of Lake Michigan. Scientists say if the large, prolific carp spread widely in the lakes, they could starve out native species and devastate the $7 billion fishing industry.

The justices' ruling, which was issued without comment, was their fourth rejection of pleas by the states for interim steps — including closure of navigational locks in the Chicago waterways — while their lawsuit against the corps is pending in a federal district court.

"It is our duty to aggressively fight to protect the Great Lakes from invasive species," Michigan Attorney Bill Schuette said. "So while I'm disappointed, we will continue forward on all fronts."

Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania have joined Michigan in demanding faster action against the carp, which eat vast amounts of tiny plants and animals at the base of the food chain.

The Corps of Engineers says it will complete in 2015 a study of ways to prevent migration of fish and other species between the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds. The five states and environmental groups say that's not quick enough, because it could take many additional years to carry out the study's recommendations.

They advocate placing barriers in Chicago-area waterways to cut a link between the watersheds created more than a century ago when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to flush the city's sewage toward the Mississippi. A recent report by groups representing Great Lakes states and cities proposed three methods for doing so, with estimated costs as high as $9.5 billion.

Because permanent separation could take nearly two decades to complete, the states are suing for short-term actions. Their petition to the high court requested installation of block nets in the Little Calumet and Grand Calumet rivers along with quicker completion of the corps study.

Federal officials say the nets would do more harm than good and the study timetable is necessary because of its complexity.

The Obama administration has devoted more than $100 million to shielding the lakes from the carp and recently announced plans to spend $51.5 million this year. Plans include operating and monitoring an electric fish barrier near Chicago, stepped-up commercial fishing in the area, and field testing new strategies such as high-pressure underwater guns and pheromones that could lure carp into lethal traps.

Chicago business interests oppose separating the watersheds and closing the locks, which they say would disrupt commercial barge and pleasure boat traffic.

"Thankfully, the Supreme Court came down on the right side of this issue," said Mark Biel, spokesman for a group called UnLock Our Jobs. "Suitable and effective steps are being taken to ensure we protect the lakes. Unfortunately, those who have used this issue for their own political agendas will continue to push for devastating actions that prevent the Great Lakes region from working together on a comprehensive solution."

Joel Brammeier, president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes, said the court ruling was "not so much a setback as a way station on the road to separation. We've got to keep our eye on a long-term outcome."

Noam Chomsky: Obama Administration and US Foreign Policy

Feds Argue for Graphic Images on Cigarette Packs

By Nedra Pickler

Washington D.C. - The federal government fought an uphill battle Wednesday to convince a skeptical judge that tobacco companies should be required to put large graphic photos on cigarette packs to show that the habit kills smokers and their babies.

Cigarette makers told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon at a hearing that they can't be forced to spread the government's anti-smoking advocacy with "massive, shocking, gruesome warnings" on products they legally sell. Attorneys for the Obama administration countered that the photos of dead and diseased smokers it wants on all cigarette packs are "factually uncontroverted."

Leon has already ruled that the cigarette makers are likely to succeed in their lawsuit to stop the requirement, which was supposed to go into effect next year. Leon blocked the rule from taking effect until after the lawsuit is resolved.

Leon found in his earlier ruling that the nine graphic images approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June go beyond conveying the facts about the health risks of smoking or go beyond that into advocacy — a critical distinction in a case over free speech.

Leon also ruled the size of the labels suggests they are unconstitutional — the FDA requirement said the labels were to cover the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back and include a number for a stop-smoking hotline. The labels were to constitute 20 percent of cigarette advertising, and marketers were to rotate use of the images.

The judge showed no sign that he was changing his position in favor of the government after the hour-long hearing Wednesday. "It sounds like they are headed to a place where you have to watch a 10-minute video before you can even buy a pack of cigarettes," he said.

The packaging the government wanted to require included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat; a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother's kiss; a pair of diseased lungs next to a pair of healthy lungs; a diseased mouth afflicted with what appears to be cancerous lesions; a man breathing into an oxygen mask; a cadaver on a table with post-autopsy chest staples; a woman weeping; a premature baby in an incubator; and a man wearing a T-shirt that features a "No Smoking" symbol and the words "I Quit"

The Obama administration has appealed Leon's preliminary injunction stopping the rule from taking effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hear the case April 10.

Attorney Mark Stern, representing the government, told Leon they don't expect he'll change his mind after siding so strongly with the tobacco companies in his initial ruling. But he said the government disagrees and argued the images factually show what can happen to smokers. "This will kill you," Stern said. "This will kill your baby."

Tobacco lawyer Noel Francisco said the government is free to try to tell Americans how to live their lives, but not to require cigarette manufacturers "to serve as the government's unwilling spokesman in that paternalistic endeavor."

Congress instructed the FDA to require the labels by a wide bipartisan majority, following the lead of the Canadian regulations that require similarly graphic images on cigarette packs. But Leon said Wednesday "there's just nothing — nothing — on the record" to indicate lawmakers consider the First Amendment implications of compelling commercial speech.

The cigarette makers that sued the FDA are R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. of Winston-Salem, N.C., Lorillard Tobacco Co. of Greensboro, N.C., Commonwealth Brands Inc. of Bowling Green, Ky., Liggett Group of Mebane, N.C., and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. of Santa Fe, N.M.

The Keystone Pipeline and Obama's Missteps

The Proposed Keystone XL pipeline runs through six states

United States - While Republicans are saying the Keystone XL pipeline needs to be approved as soon as possible, the Obama Administration is still questioning if an alternate route would be a better solution.  Sadly the Obama's White House is seeing this project in the completely wrong light.

Republicans have announced, however, their game plan.  If Obama rejects it - and chances are he won't given he caves in to pressure - they will force it through Congress' power to regulate commerce with other countries.

Ryan Bernstein, energy adviser to Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, said in an interview "We believe that express authority in the Constitution gives Congress the ability to approve and move forward on such a project." While Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce states, falsely, the pipeline will create about 20-thousand jobs the day it's approved.  It will create about six-thousand menial jobs which are temporary until its completion, upon which only 20 people will have a permanent job.

If this happens this could put the State Department at odds with Congress, as it holds authority when it comes to cross-border pipeline permits.

What Obama needs to do is to look at the facts and go with them.  While labor organizations are supportive of the pipeline, believing the Republican lie about how many jobs will be created, the fact is it will not only create less of them, but actually take away jobs from people.  He also has to deal with the few environmentalists who are left on his side.  Moving forward with thi idea will cause almost all of them to abandon him completely and he needs every single bit of support he can hold for the election.  The only way to solve this issue is to work on genuine energy alternatives and leave the Keystone XL pipeline idea where it's sitting.  He then needs to get the Democrats who are supporting this project in line with him and state the actual facts about the pipeline.  It's supported by Republicans and Democrats who are in the pockets of oil interests, that it harms the environment in a devastating way, and if a spill happens it could destroy the Midwest for an untold period of time.  All the people who live there will get is a dirty life, 10 to 20 cents more per gallon  added to the price at the pump and dirty water.  Nobody wants any of that stuff.

Senate to Vote on Bill Allowing Unlawful Detainments

Washington D.C. - RT and Democracy Now, unlike CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, reported on a piece of legislation that allows the government to detain anyone they deem a terrorist both domestically and abroad.

Go ahead and re-read that.

If this bill gets through the Senate - it already passed the House in May - it will mean the United States government is declaring the entire world, including the country itself, as a battlefield.

The Obama Administration threatened to veto the bill but knowing the Republican Party they will say he is weak on defense.  With his approval numbers getting worse as time passes, the mainstream news acting like it's true, and the President's obvious lack of a spine, people will believe it although it's not only not true, but accept the narrative as well without looking at the provision that caused him to veto it.

What's really telling is a provision in section 1031, which states:

(b) Applicability to United States Citizens and Lawful Resident Aliens-

(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to a lawful resident alien of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.

 For those of you saying "The Republicans are crazy," I have news for you.

Update: Be sure to sign the petition as well as write, phone, protest in front of, or occupy in order to get your point across.

Another update: The Senate voted against the Udall Amendment, which would ban this from happening yet let the rest of the legislation pass. Can you say "police state" everyone?

It was proposed by Michigan Democrat and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services Carl Levin.