Spying on reporters, DC social life and other links

It is, of course, blatantly hypocritical for Repubs to be shocked, shocked and appalled that the White House spied on reporters. Because let’s face it, if Bush had done it, we’d be hearing lectures on the treason of the media. However, spying on reporters is still wrong, though probably legal. Glenn Greenwald adds more.
•Tightrope Girl suggests the fact the Benghazi reports were edited does not, in fact, indicate a sinister conspiracy as much as standard bureaucracy. Washington’s press corps, however, is screaming scandal, but Digby says it’s more about Obama not being more of a socialite.
•Employers increasingly use credit checks to make hiring decisions. So if you’re out of work and unable to pay your bills, it becomes that much harder for you to find a new job, even though credit bureaus admit there’s no correlation between bad credit and bad employees.
•LGM fingers the Gap as one of the worst offenders in workplace safety overseas. But it’s not that great here, either.
•Paul Krugman looks at how the myth that austerity is the solution to our current financial crunch took hold. One cause is that a key financial paper supposedly proved government spending makes economic slumps worse (turned out they were wrong). Another is that it sounds so moral—let the unprofitable flounder and fail! Purge deadwood from the economy! Government should tighten its belt! David Brooks, for example, routinely invokes morality in explaining how those shiftless poor people need a good dose of poverty to improve them. Of course, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Brooks doesn’t feel he needs such a corrective himself.
•The history of who supports gun control and who opposes it is more complicated than we realize.
•I’ve heard arguments from both sides of the political aisle that the bailout of Wall Street and the big banks was a financially smart and necessary move. Matt Taibbi shows in detail that it wasn’t smart, was overwhelmingly tailored to the rich and powerful and by confirming the government will bail out some banks has made it easier for them to get in worse trouble (investors now see them as safer than more responsible banks that don’t have government protection).