The Intercept busts the NSA

What I find fascinating is that Glenn Greenwald (and hence the Intercept) has been repeatedly denying the connection between the Russians and the Wikileaks dumps. After all, he' s utterly dependent on Putin to make sure that Edward Snowden remains safe and well fed. I suspect that Ms. Winner's leak was actually motivated by a desire to get him to shut up.

The latest from Wikileaks

Some people are making note that among the revelations in the latest Assange release is the fact that the CIA can forge digital footprints and therefore make their malware appear to have come from the Russians. They are therefore using this discovery to suggest that Russia didn't really work in concert with the Trump campaign.

The trouble with this comes from thinking it though.

We are now to believe that the CIA itself worked tirelessly to elect Donald Trump so they could immediately turn on him and work to undermine his Presidency by selectively leaking their own strategy. I wonder why I didn't think of that!

The trouble with bias.

A Facebook friend recently suggested that if he swaps the identities of people in news stories and it changes his reaction to the story then it's a sign of bias on his part. here is my response: The trouble with that whole exercise is that there is no mythical center wherein truth lies. While politicians from all parties can get in trouble for similar reasons (self dealing and lying), there are issues where one party or the other is just flat out wrong in their beliefs. Your views are not biased if they are based in ascertainable factual information.

Concerning Reince and The FBI

"If the White House chief of staff can make public claims about the supposed conclusions of an FBI investigation, then Director Comey can come clean with the American people," Wyden said.

Here. Let me help!

Although we did not find clear evidence that President or his colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of information stolen by a hostile foreign power,, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, hacked information. In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.

Re the Flynn resignation.

In tweet form: I couldn't help notice that they put a lot of emphasis on Pence being "misled" So he can be left standing when the rest crumbles. Longer: Not only has the press been operating as if it's possible that Flynn was acting without Trump's knowledge (and direction) but they've given particular credence to the notion that Flynn flat out lied to Pence about the nature of his communication with the Russian ambassador and therefore left him hanging when the media pressed him on the subject. All I can say is that when it comes time for impeachment hearings, Pence's so called innocence is going to come in really handy.