Surveillance

"The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters."So ominously began an editorial in Sunday's New York Times.Those with accounts at such websites should pay attention, for according to the Times, and other sources, Big Brother is watching you:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has said some things that would make your scratch your head - like getting a thrill up his leg from a speech given by Barack Obama. However, this one will really make you wonder what he was thinking. On his Nov. 9 broadcast of "Hardball," in an interview with Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Matthews compared the incident of Maj. Nidal M…

New York Times Magazine critic Deborah Solomon conducted an all-over-the-map interview with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, alternating between conservative "terrorism," lesbianism and Girl Scout cookies. At one point she wondered, "But do you think certain radio and television hosts are feeding intolerance and even terrorism?" Solomon’s interview, which will appear in…

**UPDATE ADDED BELOW!** Recycling the mid-1990s liberal smear campaign against grassroots conservatism, CNN has posted an article on the new DHS threat report complete with a Getty Images photo (shown at right) of neo-Nazi and white supremacist flags.If the report were about Nazi extremists, that picture would be warranted. However, the DHS report warns against an amorphous “right-wing extremism…

A search of Nexis between April 7 -- the day when pirates seized the U.S.-registered and American-crewed Maersk Alabama -- and today, April 10, shows that both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times failed to even mention President Barack Obama in their stories on the ongoing hostage situation. The New York Times did, once, in a page A6 April 9 story by Mark Mazetti and Sharon Otterman, but it…

Far be it from me to sow discord in MSNBC ranks, to stir up old animosities between colleagues there.  But if Joe Scarborough is going to do a mocking imitation of Keith Olbermann in full Special Comment rant, well then, blogging ethics compel me to report it.The jumping-off point on Morning Joe today was Eugene Robinson's current WaPo column. After claiming that he didn't want to kick the…

On Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Bob Schieffer seemed to be acting out a scene from Frost/Nixon as he questioned Vice Presdient Dick Cheney about the terrorist surveillance program: "Do you feel you went too far, Mr. Vice President, in your surveillance?...Do you -- do you believe that the president, in time of war, that anything he does is legal?" Cheney shot back with some historical…

Well, it seems that the folks at Vanity Fair realized that they won't have George W. Bush to kick around any more. So they decided to launch the journalistic equivalent of thermonuclear war against him in an attempt to get its shot at a "draft of history." In a 14 web-page tome (the photo at the top right is at its beginning) that fancies itself an "oral history," the magazine hauls out every…

"Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans; U.S. Officers' "Phone Sex" Intercepted; Senate Demanding Answers," reads the headline and subhead for an ABCNews.com "Blotter" post by Brian Ross.Written with fellow ABC staffers Vic Walter and Anna Schechter, Ross's October 9 post aimed to make National Security Agency phone monitoring of calls into and out of Baghdad out to be…