Unsurprising

At least a few NSA officers have used their tech to spy on love interests. The NSA, of course, assures us this almost never happens, but then as Digby points out, they used to insist it never happened. Nope, no Americans caught in the dragnet (he also links to at least one case of someone spying on Bill Clinton’s email). And I notice there’s no suggestion from the NSA or its congressional overseers that they’re going to do anything to make it harder for their people to exploit the system.
Meanwhile NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander is shocked and appalled that people don’t trust the agency and don’t realize how vital everything they’re doing is to America’s defense. Here‘s an example from the FBI files of how easily someone with the wrong views can be marked as suspicious. And here’s yet another case of NSA collecting data on non-terrorist American citizens.
•As Echidne says, the great thing about evolutionary psychology is that you can twist it into anything you want to prove any theory. We’re often told women are naturally the mothers because men had to go out and hunt and bring home the food while women were left to nurse the babies. Now we’re told hunting is really a passive, slow activity, so that explains why men make better computer programmers (no, it doesn’t make any more sense than us). In short, the usual rationale that whatever see around us must be the result of human biology, not, say, discrimination.
•Speaking of illogic, one right-to-lifer claims abortion traumatizes people because every kid since Roe vs. Wade knows he could have been aborted, so they all have “survivor syndrome.” And that’s why people go postal.
•An expensive high-rise gives the poor some extra units, but also a separate poor-people door.
•Once Obamacare kicks in, some companies plan to cut off spousal coverage. Colleges are reducing staff hours to reduce the number of people they have to cover.
•ESPN may want to provide news about pro sports, but apparently Disney (which owns ABC which broadcasts Monday Night Football) isn’t keen on ESPN covering serious football injuries.
•A rape victim chooses to keep her child. Now the rapist keeps dragging her to family court over visitation rights (this may be a tactic to get out of child support.
•North Carolina slashes its budget and gives no raise to teachers this year. However $20,000 raises for political aides are cool with Governor McCrory.
•Here’s a lovely one: The Daily Beast claims that a lot of guys go to prison secretly hoping for that prison rape. Yeah, they’re just asking for it.
This is disgusting, though not entirely surprising. A friend of mine pointed out how often prison rape or male rape generally is treated as some kind of “he had it coming.” Shows end with cops grumbling they can’t lock the crook up for as long as he deserves, but hey, at least he’ll be heavily gang-raped! Or a cynical rape apologist gets raped, discovers what it’s really like to have people not believe you and thereby it becomes a Learning Experience.
•Right-wingers are claiming a recent black-on-white shooting as the new Trayvon Martin case. Not so. Nor was an Air Force sergeant punished for opposing gay marriage.
•Digby discusses the costs of being an imperial state.
•A quarter of Louisiana Republicans blame the poor federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 on then-Senator Barack Obama rather than President Bush. 44 percent aren’t sure who was responsible.
•Grueling working hours may have killed a financial-services intern.
•Slacktivist discusses the desire to believe your opponents are pure evil.