drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:And the group got 501c4 status because our primary mission was to educate voters. I think that's been the standard.

501c4's tell lies about candidates in the guise of "education". that they don't just come out & tell you to "vote against so & so" is no grounds for tax-favored treatment.

Think of the burden on honest taxpayers that these freeloaders impose!! (present company excepted of course)

What burden do they put on taxpayers?

true. however, a 501c4 org doesn't pay tax on accumulated dough they haven't squandered on "education" by the end of a year

but think of all the incompetents that need be hired to review the organizations' applications for 501c4 status in the 1st place

jerseyhoya wrote:501c4s don't pay taxes on accumulated money at the end of a year, but of course neither do political campaigns, parties, political action committees, Super PACs, 527s, etc. Suggesting they receive tax favored treatment when they don't seems kind of silly.

drsmooth wrote:I don't just read about this stuff in august beacons of truth like the Washington Examiner, I work with it. I work with people who design/implement/communicate it. My livelihood, such as it is, depends on my knowing more about this stuff than people like, say, you. So I do.

drsmooth wrote:You're right - the fact that I know more about this particular subject than you is not conclusive. But between me & you, I'll take the over

drsmooth wrote:I'm pretty sure your prosaic facts are getting in the way of some kind of point that was being made

Werthless wrote:

drsmooth wrote:I don't just read about this stuff in august beacons of truth like the Washington Examiner, I work with it. I work with people who design/implement/communicate it. My livelihood, such as it is, depends on my knowing more about this stuff than people like, say, you. So I do.

drsmooth wrote:You're right - the fact that I know more about this particular subject than you is not conclusive. But between me & you, I'll take the over

drsmooth wrote:I'm pretty sure your prosaic facts are getting in the way of some kind of point that was being made

Actually, jersey, the appropriate response to drsmooth would have been something like the above.

jerseyhoya wrote:Pretty solid answer there from Christie. It was a stupid question. Why not ask what NJ Transit was doing storing rail cars in an area that had been declared vulnerable to flooding?

Roger Dorn wrote:Holder admits 4 Americans have been killed by drone attacks since 2009.

pacino wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pretty solid answer there from Christie. It was a stupid question. Why not ask what NJ Transit was doing storing rail cars in an area that had been declared vulnerable to flooding?

the buck stops over there. who is he, Obama?!


and, there is no dispute that climate change made the storm's impact worse, anywhere from 5-10%, which makes the damage to humans even worse. no one is saying that it CAUSED the storm, they're saying it made it worse. not acknowledging that because it came from a 'liberal' is sad.

pacino wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pretty solid answer there from Christie. It was a stupid question. Why not ask what NJ Transit was doing storing rail cars in an area that had been declared vulnerable to flooding?

the buck stops over there. who is he, Obama?!


and, there is no dispute that climate change made the storm's impact worse, anywhere from 5-10%, which makes the damage to humans even worse. no one is saying that it CAUSED the storm, they're saying it made it worse. not acknowledging that because it came from a 'liberal' is sad.

The search warrant — like the recently reported seizure of Associated Press telephone records by Department of Justice — indicates the federal government may be changing the rules on how it spars with reporters. If that’s the case, and I’m not sure it is, journalists should use whatever legal means at their disposal to resist.

But reporters should never depend on the law alone to protect them and their sources from exposure. By observing sound tradecraft in the reporting of such delicate stories, they can keep themselves and their sources from getting buried when digging for a story.

Rosen’s journalistic technique, if the Post story is accurate, leaves much to be desired. He would have been less conspicuous had he walked into the State Department wearing a sandwich board lettered with his intentions to obtain classified information and then blasted an air horn to further alert authorities to his business. For example, one data point investigators used to connect Rosen with his alleged source, Kim, was the visitor’s badge the reporter wore when calling on the State Department offices. According to security records, Rosen and his source left the building within one minute of each other and then returned only several minutes apart inside the half-hour. A few hours later that day (June 11, 2009), Rosen’s secret-busting story was published.

Even teenagers practice better tradecraft than this when deceiving parents.

Next, Rosen’s email communications also appear to have compromised his alleged source. According to the Post, one email exchange between Rosen and Kim “seems to describe a secret system for passing along information,” including code names. Wrote Rosen: “One asterisk means to contact them, or that previously suggested plans for communication are to proceed as agreed; two asterisks means the opposite.” Rosen also wrote to Kim requesting “breaking news ahead of my competitors,” “what intelligence is picking up” and “some internal State Department analyses.”

None of these entreaties are in themselves damning, but a smart reporter seeking secret information might want to afford a source more protective cover than stating his requests in a form that is as insecure and eternal as email.

Other ways Rosen compromised Kim: Phone records establish at least 36 calls between Kim’s desk phone and Rosen’s various phone lines. And according to computer logs, two of those calls coincided with Kim opening a classified report on his computer. Didn’t these guys watch The Wire? Don’t they know about burn phones? Kim didn’t help himself much, either, printing out and leaving next to his computer a copy of Rosen’s article.

Last, the nature of Rosen’s report was almost guaranteed to attract attention from the intelligence establishment. The story described the CIA’s findings, “through sources inside North Korea,” of that country’s plans should an upcoming U.N. Security Council resolution pass.

Although Rosen’s story asserts that it is “withholding some details about the sources and methods … to avoid compromising sensitive overseas operations,” the basic detail that the CIA has “sources inside North Korea” privy to its future plans is very compromising stuff all by itself. As Rosen continues, “U.S. spymasters regard [North Korea] as one of the world’s most difficult to penetrate.”

Once the North Koreans read the story, they must have asked if the source of the intel was human or if their communications had been breached. In any event, you can assume that the North Koreans commenced a leak probe that made the U.S. investigation look like the prosecution of a parking ticket.

I have a hard time understanding what purpose Rosen’s scoop served. He appears to have uncovered no wrongdoing by the CIA in North Korea and no dramatic or scandalous change of U.S. policy that’s being concealed from the U.S. public. Boiled to its essence, the story says the U.S. has penetrated North Korean leadership. It’s a story, all right, but I can’t imagine any U.S. news outlet running it without more cause, and I’ll bet that Fox News would take it back today if it could. I doubt that Rosen has committed any crimes against the state, but offenses against common journalistic sense? I’m not so sure.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pretty solid answer there from Christie. It was a stupid question. Why not ask what NJ Transit was doing storing rail cars in an area that had been declared vulnerable to flooding?

the buck stops over there. who is he, Obama?!


and, there is no dispute that climate change made the storm's impact worse, anywhere from 5-10%, which makes the damage to humans even worse. no one is saying that it CAUSED the storm, they're saying it made it worse. not acknowledging that because it came from a 'liberal' is sad.

How is there no dispute that climate change made the storm's impact worse? It's an unprovable assertion.

Where do you get the 5-10% from? That's a completely made up number. One doesn't advance indisputable arguments by randomly making up statistics.

Why NJ Transit kept trains or buses or whatever in an area that was labeled to be at risk for flooding is a good question worth investigating. I presume Christie didn't draw up those plans himself, but it's a state agency so it's something he should have an answer for. But the thing they weren't prepared for was severe weather, not the amorphous 'climate change'. Whether the storms were brought on by climate change, as the questioner asserted, seems a) open to debate and b) not really the point. He has no business answering that question.

Data compiled by the New York Police Department as a result of the city’s controversial focus on stop-and-frisk measures has shown that those suspects who were white were more often to be found in possession of weapons and drugs.

The analysis of 2012 statistics provided by the Public Advocate’s office shows that the likelihood that an African American detained for search would be found in possession of a weapon was half that of a white person.

Specifically, the New York Police Department uncovered a weapon in one out of every 49 stops of white New Yorkers, while for Latinos a weapon was found for every 71 stops, and for African Americans that number was 93 stops.
Meanwhile, the likelihood that a stop of an African American New Yorker would yield contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped.

This most recent analysis of the NYPD’s statistics may well add more fuel to the fire over the stop-and-frisk controversy. The report by the Public Advocate’s Office leaves little room to interpret its findings after surveying the 2012 data.

“Despite the overall reduction in stops, the proportion involving black and Latino New Yorkers has remained unchanged. They continue to constitute 84 percent of all stops, despite comprising only 54 percent of the general population. And the innocence rates remain at the same level as 2011 – at nearly 89 percent.”

Meanwhile, in a separate analysis by the New York Civil Liberties Union of these same statistics, the group revealed that out of 532,911 stop-and-frisk searches in 2012, just 729 guns were found.

On Monday, Judge Scheindlin referred to the “high error rate” correlated with the stop-and-frisk practice, in which 88 per cent of stops yielded no evidence of criminality.

“You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time,” said Scheindlin to a lawyer representing the city.

CalvinBall wrote:funny yall are talking about this now. this american life just had a new episode this past week about climate change. i love this program and this episode is good.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... y-backyard