With the introduction of fast track authority (also known as "trade promotion authority") in Congress, by which Congress abdicates its constitutionally-granted sole power to regulate foreign commerce, the USTR (which gains that power) is out in force, spreading all sorts of lies about what this means. It's not exactly encouraging when the organization that has been hiding all the details of the TPP agreement for years is now trying to push it forward by directly lying to the American public. It's almost as if the USTR can't be honest or people might realize that it's spent the last few years pushing forward on an agreement designed to prop up old legacy businesses at the expense of the public and new innovators.

The USTR's statement on the fast track proposal is full of lies, half-truths and misleading statements. Let's look at a few.

TPA does not provide new power to the Executive Branch.

Hell yes, it does. Trade Promotion Authority gives the power of regulating foreign commerce directly to the USTR, rather than Congress. It allows the USTR to negotiate a "final" agreement with other countries, which Congress cannot seek to change, amend or fix. Instead, Congress can only give a simple "yes or no" vote on what the USTR comes back with. Without TPA, the USTR actually needs to engage Congress, and win its support and approval on everything within the agreement. That gives Congress -- which is supposed to represent the public -- a chance to make sure that (as the USTR has shown a proclivity to do) the agreement is not filled with ridiculous "gifts" for cronies and friends at the expense of the public and disruptive innovation.

TPA is a legislative procedure, written by Congress, through which Congress defines U.S. negotiating objectives and spells out a detailed oversight and consultation process for during trade negotiations.

If TPA didn't tie Congress' own hands, the USTR might have a point here. But it's not true. While the TPA bill does officially "define" the negotiating objectives, those objectives listed in the current bill are basically the USTR's own list of what it's working on, reprinted by friends in Congress. And, honestly, how is it possible that it "spells out detailed oversight," when what the bill really does is make sure that the USTR can give Congress whatever it comes up with and say "take it or leave it"? Without TPA, the USTR actually has to go convince Congress that what it's been proposing (secretly and with no public review) is actually in the public interest.

Under TPA, Congress retains the authority to review and decide whether any proposed U.S. trade agreement will be implemented.

Misleading at best. Insulting to anyone with at least half a brain. Congress has significantly less authority under TPA to review and decide any trade agreement. That's because without TPA, Congress can review and question different aspects, or introduce amendments and fixes to all the stuff that the USTR screwed up. With TPA, Congress can only give an up or down vote on the entire package. That means, as long as the USTR includes enough "pork" to outweigh the crap for the majority of Congress, it can get through a ton of dangerous proposals -- like those we've already seen in the still officially "secret" intellectual property chapter.

TPA ENSURES TRANSPARENCY AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN TRADE

TPA bills establish consultation and notification requirements for the President to follow throughout the trade agreement negotiation process – ensuring that Congress, stakeholders and the public are closely involved before, during and after the conclusion of trade agreement negotiations.

It's tough to read this and not laugh. This is an out and out lie. And it's a direct insult on the public. Remember, the TPP negotiations have been going on for years, and we still don't officially know what's in the TPP, other than what's been leaked. The idea that the public is "closely involved" is an insult. The public is not involved at all, entirely by the choice of the USTR, which has chosen to keep them out. As for Congress? They're also mostly in the dark. Yes, elected officials can go see the negotiating text, but they have to go to the USTR's offices, and they're not allowed to bring any staffers, make any copies or take any notes.

The USTR keeps pretending that because it will "meet with anyone who asks" that it's being transparent. But transparency is not about listening to whoever knocks on your door. It's about the other direction: it's about providing information out to the public -- something that the USTR has absolutely refused to do. The TPA does absolutely nothing to increase transparency, and actually gives the USTR fewer incentives to be transparent because now it knows there's no real oversight any more.

The USTR is flat out lying here, and it's a disgrace.

In addition to our congressionally mandated committees of industry and public sector advisers , the United States consults with all interested stakeholders at each trade agreement negotiating round and in between. We do this to share information and get views that make the negotiated product better. For TPP, these stakeholders have included representatives from academia, labor unions, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations. Under TPA, this activity would continue and be strengthened.

Misleading again. Yes, the USTR "shares" information, but only with a very small list of advisors -- who almost exclusively come from old legacy businesses. Everyone else? The USTR's response is to give them the middle finger. The claim about consulting with "interested stakeholders" at each round is also misleading. As we've covered in the past, at many (though not all) of the negotiating rounds, there would be an hour or two where "stakeholders" would have the opportunity to sit at a table and hope negotiators came to talk to them. Sometimes this would be done far away and at times when negotiators had better things to do -- like eat lunch. Sometimes stakeholders were allowed to give presentations, but with no guarantee that any negotiators would attend.

As for using those meetings to "share information" -- that's again highly misleading. Again, the USTR has been negotiating the TPP for years and still has not released any information at all on what's in it. What we know is what's been leaked out, and that little that's been leaked shows exactly why the USTR fears transparency and fears the public: because they're crafting an agreement designed to protect a few corporate interests at the expense of just about everyone else.

An honest an forthright USTR wouldn't fear the public, and it wouldn't insult and lie to the public as is happening here. The USTR is trying to pull a fast one over on the American public. It's negotiating an agreement in secret, pretending that it's being transparent, and then encouraging Congress to give up its right to review the agreement (without even seeing it), with insulting promises that by doing so, that will create more transparency.

We've been hearing regularly from the NSA's biggest defenders -- including former NSA boss Michael Hayden, current head of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers and President Obama -- that despite all of the revelations about the NSA, there hasn't been any evidence of abuses. We've discussed over and over and over again why that's clearly untrue. Over at the Guardian, Trevor Timm has done an excellent job laying out in detail how President Obama and others are simply lying when they say there's been no evidence of abuses by the NSA. He details example after example of abuses that have come to light. Here's just one which shows not just abuses, but a pattern of regular abuse:

For years, as new data came into the NSA's database containing virtually every phone call record in the United States, analysts would search over 17,000 phone numbers in it every day. It turns out only about 1,800 of those numbers – 11% – met the legal requirement that the NSA have "reasonable articulable suspicion" that the number was involved in terrorism.

What were the other 89% of the numbers being searched for? We're not exactly sure. But we do know that five years after the metadata program was brought under a legal framework, the Fisa court concluded it had been "so frequently and systematically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall … regime has never functioned effectively".

Part of the issue, of course, is that the NSA's defenders, including the President, seem to be trying to redefine the word "abuse" just as they've tried to redefine lots of other common English words concerning their surveillance efforts.

One reason might be that, like many other words, the NSA has a different definition of "abuse" than most people. After LOVEINT was brought up to Director of National Intelligence general counsel Robert Litt on a conference call with reporters, he replied:

I'm using abuse in a slightly more limited term. I'm not talking about the LOVEINT kind of thing, but people using surveillance for political purposes or to spy on Americans more generally or anything like that, as opposed to individual people screwing up.

Apparently to qualify as "abuse", the surveillance has to be on a massive scale, wilful, in bad faith, hidden from the Fisa court, and it has to about political views. Spying on loved ones or unauthorized spying on criminal behavior does not count.

Even worse, as Timm points out (and as we've discussed in the past), the LOVEINT disclosures revealed that many of those very willful abuses were only "discovered" years later when they were self-reported, meaning that there's a very good chance that there are many more abuses that were never discovered or reported.

But, of course, there's an even larger issue. Abusing the programs (no matter how you define that) presupposes the programs themselves are legitimate. That's highly questionable.

With all that said, it's unclear why we're quibbling over whether or not the government truly abused the data it has. The programs themselves are an abuse. A primary reason the founding fathers declared independence from the British was in protest of "general warrants" – the idea that the police could seize everything in a given neighborhood, only to go through it afterwards and find the criminal.

The Fourth Amendment requires particularized, individual court orders, and as long as the NSA is collecting such a vast database on every innocent person in the United States, and then searching it at their own discretion, they are abusing our constitution.

As Timm says, we don't allow police to search our homes or listen to phone calls without individual warrants and then say it's okay so long as they "don't abuse" what they discover. We say that those searches themselves are an abuse and unconstitutional. The same should be true of the NSA's efforts. They're all an abuse. An abuse of the Constitution and basic rights.

Another court, another set of problems for Team Prenda: Paul Hansmeier, Paul Duffy and John Steele are certainly in trouble, and the damage just keeps adding up. Following yet another big loss for Team Prenda in Illinois, in Lightspeed Media v. Anthony Smith, we noted that Prenda's ridiculous decision to sue Comcast and AT&T for failing to hand over names in that case was backfiring in a big way, since both of those companies asked for attorneys' fees as well. Duffy, Hansmeier and Steele did their usual dance: filing motions arguing that none of them did anything wrong, that the ruling should be overturned, and (of course) that there was a violation of due process because they weren't informed about these proceedings. This is basically the same crap they file every time.

Southern District of Illinois Judge Patrick Murphy is having none of that. In a scathing opinion he rips to shreds the arguments of Duffy, Hansmeier and Steele. Beyond noting the basic procedural deficiencies in their own filings (once again, they don't seem to actually understand the law and just fling as much shit at the wall as possible, and the judge clearly recognizes this), he also appears to be well aware of the larger scam Team Prenda has been pulling. There's a long discussion about the claim that Hansmeier and Steele weren't properly served, in which the judge makes it clear this is simply beyond belief. Here's just a snippet of a much longer discussion:

First and foremost, Steele’s claim that he never got notice of Smith’s motion for fees is baseless. A review of CM/ECF records reveals that notice of Smith’s motion for attorney fees (Doc. 61) went to numerous email addresses, including: docket@wefightpiracy.com—an email address used by both Steele and Paul Duffy. Therefore, it is irrefutable that Steele had actual notice of Smith’s motion for attorney fees prior to the Court’s order granting the motion.

The judge also points out the tremendous evidence that Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy are working quite closely together on all of this anyway.

Aside from being from the same firm, there is other evidence suggesting these three men worked in concert with one another. First, Duffy, Steele, and Hansmeier used each other’s CM/ECF login information, and/or filed documents on behalf of one another. For example, both Steele and Hansmeier used Duffy’s CM/ECF login information to enter their appearances, or Duffy attempted to do so for them (See Doc. 11, 15); Hansmeier also used Steele’s CM/ECF login information to file his motion to continue, or Steele filed it on Hansmeier’s behalf (Doc. 73). Second, the similarities in documents filed by Duffy, Steele, and Hansmeier indicate an ongoing relationship. For example, in the instant motions to vacate/reconsider, the three men use identical formatting from the caption, to the font, and the signature block, and the substance is largely the same...

Then, of course, there's the citation to the numerous other cases that have found against Team Prenda, and noted that those three are clearly in control. The judge also notes that even if they didn't have notice, they clearly had notice in time for a later hearing and still their filings did not state any actual grounds for relief. Basically, the judge points out that they absolutely knew about all of this, and he won't overturn the original decision because for all the shit they threw at the wall, none of it actually stuck.

But then the judge goes further. He calls them liars. He doesn't dance around it. He flat out calls them on it.

The Court also finds that Duffy, Hansmeier, and Steele exhibited a “serious and studied disregard for the orderly process of justice.” .... These men have shown a relentless willingness to lie to the Court on paper and in person, despite being on notice that they were facing sanctions in this Court, being sanctioned by other courts, and being referred to state and federal bars, the United States Attorney in at least two districts, one state Attorney General, and the Internal Revenue Service. For example, at the November 13 hearing, Hansmeier skirted the Court’s direct questions, Steele made feigned protestations, and both flat-out lied about their association with Prenda Law, Inc. in the face of documentary evidence on the record in this case, and their sworn declarations in other cases.

In the end, the judge grants all the requests for attorneys' fees, adding yet another $261,025.11 to the rapidly increasing total from other cases. I imagine it won't end there, though it's unlikely anyone will see any of that money. Instead, we're all still waiting for the main act, when the criminal charges almost certainly arrive.

Despite Dianne Feinstein's supposed "conversion" earlier this week about the NSA being out of control with its spying, and the associated performance of NSA folks claiming that they were screwed, it's quickly become apparent that this was all pure theater to make people think that real reform might be coming. Feinstein claimed she was shocked about this and called for a full investigation... and yet, just two days later, she held a markup of her planned "reform" bill for the collection of intelligence by the NSA (and held the markup in secret -- because nothing says "let's increase transparency of the NSA" like keeping the debates and votes secret). That bill was moved out of committee today by a vote of 11 to 4, leading Feinstein to release the bill with a bunch of misleading claptrap designed to make people think it's real reform. It even confused some folks who know this stuff into thinking, after a quick first pass, that it "banned" the bulk data collection. And you might think that's the case because her description says:

• Prohibits the collection of bulk communication records under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act except under specific procedures and restrictions set forth in the bill;
• Establishes criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for intentional unauthorized access to data acquired under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the United States;
• Prohibits the bulk collection of the content of communications under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act;

Reading that, you might think it actually banned the bulk data collection that's been reported on, but it does not. That "except under specific procedures and restrictions set forth in the bill" just takes the highly questionable reasoning of the FISA Court in approving the bulk data collection and makes that the "exception." In other words, it does exactly the opposite of what Feinstein claims. Rather than banning bulk data collection, it legalizes it. That third point on the "content" is just a red herring -- the same red herring that Feinstein and others have been waving about wildly for months, pretending people are upset about the collection of actual recordings, rather than the collection of metadata. She's wrong. People are upset about the collection of metadata, which this legalizes.

Even more ridiculous, the focus (both in the marketing and the bill itself) on collection of content "under Section 215" is another red herring, since it appears that much of that collection actually happens under other programs anyway. So this doesn't change a damn thing.

Other supposed "changes" in the bill -- including limiting who can perform queries on the data, how many "hops" they can analyze and how long they can retain the data, all match with current practice and don't change a thing. Even though James Clapper and Keith Alexander more or less seemed to concede at yesterday's House hearing that they'd be okay with cutting back on the data retention from five to three years, this bill keeps it at five. There are a few other minor changes, but this bill is almost entirely as expected, simply codifying the status quo, even though Feinstein has insisted that it was legal all along. The one minor "concession" which many had expected -- having a third party at the FISA Court who could fight for civil liberties -- is watered down. Rather than an actual adversarial setup, with this person representing civil liberties, it's set up as an appointed "amicus cureia" or "friend of the court," where they basically just advise the court on the issue.

This bill is a farce, and made even more farcical by the misleading way in which Feinstein has presented it, pretending it bans bulk data collection when it actually legalizes it.

As you hopefully have heard by now, a group of US intelligence community whistleblowers traveled to Moscow last week to present Ed Snowden with the Integrity Award from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. As I saw mentioned (and repeated) on Twitter, this image of all of them together is like the Justice League of Whistleblowers. Wikileaks has now released some short video clips from the dinner they all had together. A few of them are quite interesting. Here's the one I thought most on point: If you can't watch it, this is the key quote:

It's led us to a point in our relationship with the government, where we have an executive -- a Department of Justice -- that's unwilling to prosecute high officials who lied to Congress and the country on camera, but they'll stop at nothing to persecute someone who told them the truth. And that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.

That encapsulates so much of what the problem is with everything that's happened in the past few months. It's a point well worth repeating. The other video I really liked was the one where Snowden talked about the problem of secret laws and secret programs and the idea that the government is supposed to be in power with the consent of the governed, but how that's impossible without oversight. The key statement:

This is not about any particular program. This is about a trend in the relationship between the governing and the governed in Amercia, that is coming increasingly into conflict with what we expect as a free and democratic society. If we can't understand the policies and programs of our government, we cannot grant our consent in regulating them....

Snowden has mostly stayed hidden away from the public eye since all of this began. He's turned down basically all interview requests, so there's been very little shown of him actually speaking, other than the initial video he recorded with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. Once again, these videos show someone who appears to have thought deeply about what he is doing and why he did it.

In a recent comment on the site, reader PT pointed us to a statement from Representative Joe Heck explaining why he voted against the Amash Amendment. The statement was from back in July, soon after the Amash Amendment to defund certain NSA activities was narrowly defeated. While the statement is now a couple months old, what amazes me is the statements of fact that are flat out false in there. And we're not just talking about statements that were later proven to be false. These are things that were known to be false at the time -- from a Representative who is on the House Intelligence Committee and who must have known these statements were lies. Just for simplicity's sake, let's focus on the main one and stand back in amazement at just how many flat out lies Rep. Heck told in a single sentence:

The Amash amendment would have eliminated Section 215 of the Patriot Act which we know has thwarted 54 terrorist plots against the US (and counting).

This is a lie. It's not a half truth. It's not a misstatement. It's not confusion. It's an out and out lie. Actually, it's a whole series of lies. Almost nothing in that statement is true. In fact, I can't find anything in that statement that is true. Every single part is a lie. At no point has anyone in the Intelligence Community stated that Section 215 thwarted 54 terrorist plots against the US. First off, the 54 number, which was first released by the NSA's Keith Alexander, wasn't about "terrorist plots" but rather "potential terrorist events." Yes, that language is purposely broad and opaque. What counts as a "terrorist event"? A meeting? A party? It's not at all clear that these were actual "terrorist plots." In fact, a month before Heck's totally bogus claim above, the NSA clarified that only 42 "plots" were involved in that 54 number. The other 12 weren't plots, but rather "material support to terrorists" whatever that might mean.

Second, Alexander wasn't talking about Section 215 of the Patriot Act for most of those "events." He admitted that 53 of the 54 cases actually involved Section 702 of the Patriot Act (the PRISM program) which wasn't the part that was up for a vote in the Amash Amendment. So Heck is, once again, lying in claiming that Section 215 stopped those plots.

Third, at no time did Alexander or anyone at the NSA say they were all targeted against "the US" as Heck falsely claims. The very same day that Alexander shared the 54 number, he also admitted that only about 10 involved the US -- a number that was quickly clarified a few days later: only 13 "had a homeland nexus." So, already, it's pretty clear that the claim of "54 thwarted terrorist plots against the US" is completely bogus (and, remember, all of this was public a month before Heck's statement).

Fourth, of those 13 that "had a homeland nexus," almost none required the NSA's surveillance efforts. When confronted by Senator Leahy in a Senate hearing, the NSA's deputy director John Inglis admitted that the surveillance merely "made a contribution" to the efforts against 12 of those plots, but wasn't particularly key to stopping them. Inglis admitted that the surveillance programs were actually only "critical" in a single case: the Zazi NYC Subway case.

So now we're down to just one plot in the US -- and we're not even talking about Section 215 any more, but Section 702. Oh, and as for that one case, multiple press reports have pointed out that the claim that NSA surveillance was needed to catch Zazi just isn't true, because traditional police work was able to do the brunt of the work in identifying Zazi and the plot.

Oh, and finally, the Amash Amendment would not have "eliminated Section 215." It merely would have defunded using Section 215 to justify collecting metadata on every phone call. Section 215 would still be in place, and the government would still be able to use it to access "tangible things" and various "business records" so long as they were actually related to a counterterrorism operation.

So there you have it. A Congressional Representative who is on the Intelligence Committee, who voted against the Amash Amendment, and defended it with a cascading series of flat out lies. While the Amash Amendment would have defunded the data collection of metadata on all phone calls, it did not get rid of Section 215, which was not used to thwart 54 terrorist plots (not even one!) and many of those "plots" weren't "plots" and very few were actually in the US.

What gets me, however, is that few people seem willing to say that he flat out lied. This isn't a case of a misstatement or confusion or even things that were revealed later. Nearly all of the points that I highlighted above were public knowledge nearly a month before Heck made his untrue statement.

Isn't it time that someone actually called out elected officials when they state things that are clearly lies to constituents?

Bruce Schneier has yet another interesting article over at The Atlantic, in which he notes that the only real way for the NSA to regain trust is to get in front of the coming leaks by finally opening up. He makes a compelling case. First off, every time the NSA has tried to defend various leaks, its defenses have been shown to be lies or, at the very least, misleading, just days later. This is, in large part, because it still doesn't seem to have any idea what Snowden took. And in its usual fashion, it seems to hope that if it just keeps lying, or redefining words, that it will be able to get away with keeping stuff hidden. But that's clearly not working, and the public has pretty much lost all trust. The only real way to deal with that is to finally be honest for once. That doesn't mean making everything public, but having someone who can look through everything and see what's really going on.

It's time to start cleaning up this mess. We need a special prosecutor, one not tied to the military, the corporations complicit in these programs, or the current political leadership, whether Democrat or Republican. This prosecutor needs free rein to go through the NSA's files and discover the full extent of what the agency is doing, as well as enough technical staff who have the capability to understand it. He needs the power to subpoena government officials and take their sworn testimony. He needs the ability to bring criminal indictments where appropriate. And, of course, he needs the requisite security clearance to see it all.

We also need something like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where both government and corporate employees can come forward and tell their stories about NSA eavesdropping without fear of reprisal.

Now, obviously, some will claim that there's so much the NSA does that needs to be kept secret -- and, that's true. Except for one little tidbit: Ed Snowden already walked out the door with much of this stuff and gave it to reporters. Meaning that most of it isn't likely to be kept secret very long. And that's why this is the only reasonable course of action, even if it goes against the NSA's general DNA.

Yes, this will overturn the paradigm of keeping everything the NSA does secret, but Snowden and the reporters he's shared documents with have already done that. The secrets are going to come out, and the journalists doing the outing are not going to be sympathetic to the NSA. If the agency were smart, it'd realize that the best thing it could do would be to get ahead of the leaks.

The result needs to be a public report about the NSA's abuses, detailed enough that public watchdog groups can be convinced that everything is known. Only then can our country go about cleaning up the mess: shutting down programs, reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act system, and reforming surveillance law to make it absolutely clear that even the NSA cannot eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant.

In many ways, this is like the difference between real security and security by obscurity. If the NSA is confident in what it's doing and why it's necessary, it should be able to come out and show what's really happening, and the public can take an educated position on whether or not it's appropriate.

It appears that, for the first time, President Obama has, ever so slightly, conceded that perhaps laws need to be tightened up to prevent abuses by the NSA. Of course, that came immediately after he insisted (falsely) that the current checks and balances were working and that the NSA isn't spying on Americans. This is a flat out lie from the President, and people should call him on it. He's lying.

"What I can say with confidence is that when it comes to our domestic operation, the concerns that people have back home in the United States of America, that we do not surveil the American people or persons within the United States, that there are a lot of checks and balances in place designed to avoid a surveillance state," Obama said. "There have been times where the procedures, because these are human endeavors, have not worked the way they should and we had to tighten them up. And I think there are legitimate questions that have been raised about the fact that as technology advances and capabilities grow, it may be that the laws that are currently in place are not sufficient to guard against the dangers of us being able to track so much."

Once again, that first part -- the part he says "with confidence" -- is a lie. We've already seen plenty of evidence that while the NSA insists that it doesn't surveil people within the US, it appears to do so regularly. Of course, since it classifies these as "incidental," it doesn't think they count, but they do. No, it may not be watching every single thing that US citizens do, but US citizens' data are clearly captured and analyzed quite frequently.

That said, the second part of that statement is actually a tiny step forward, in that it's President Obama actually signalling -- for the first time -- that the program has been abused and that new rules are possible. Many people will complain that it's such a minor statement (and coming right after a flat out lie, not particularly trustworthy), but it is more or less a signal that the President is likely resolved to agree to changes in how the NSA operates. Now the fight will be over what kinds of changes. The administration will seek to minimize those changes, but just the admission that changes need to happen is at least a baby step in the right direction.

Just last week, we questioned how President Obama could make his claims about the NSA not abusing its power knowing full well that there were reports showing massive, widespread abuse, happening thousands of times per year. It just seemed bizarre. Yes, politicians lie, but they generally tell half-truths or misleading truths and they rarely make a definitive statement like that which can be shown to be plainly wrong so soon after it was made. Of course, most in the press have avoided calling the President a liar, but David Sirota, over at Salon, is realizing that we've probably reached the point where it's at least a valid question to ask if President Obama flat out lied to the American public about NSA surveillance. As he notes, the only realistic alternative, given the most recent leaks, is that the President was ignorant of the NSA's abuses, and neither of those options speaks well about the President.

So sure, I guess it’s possible Obama has merely been “wrong” but has not been lying. But the implications of that would be just as bad — albeit in a different way — as if he were deliberately lying. It would mean that he is making sweeping and wildly inaccurate statements without bothering to find out if they are actually true. Worse, for him merely to be wrong but not deliberately lying, it would mean that he didn’t know the most basic facts about how his own administration runs. It would, in other words, mean he is so totally out of the loop on absolutely everything — even the public news cycle — that he has no idea what’s going on.

Except, as he noted (as did we in our post last week), this is almost impossible. There's almost no way that the President was unaware of what was happening. And that leads to the inevitable conclusion: the President was just flat out lying.

I just don’t buy that he’s so unaware of the world around him that he made such statements from a position of pure ignorance. On top of that, he has a motive. Yes, Obama has an obvious political interest in trying to hide as much of his administration’s potentially illegal behavior as possible, which means he has an incentive to calculatedly lie. For all of these reasons, it seems safe to suggest that when it comes to the NSA situation, the president seems to be lying.

Further, Sirota wonders, for the DC press who seem to be afraid to call out the lies, shouldn't they at least be asking how the President could be "so completely unaware of what his government is doing?" It seems like a valid question.

Among the many stunning things in the report from Barton Gellman and the Washington Post last night was the fact that it totally debunked President Obama's statements from less than a week ago, arguing (1) that these programs were not abused and (2) that no one was "listening in on people's phone calls (see update below). Both of those appear to be untrue. Here were President Obama's direct comments at last week's press conference:

If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.

What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC

And yet, the Inspector General's report shows that just in the DC area alone there were thousands of violations and abuses, and some included intercepting the content of tons of phone calls in the DC area. Update: In an update, the Washington Post admits that the report was about metadata, not actual content, and they had misreported this initially.

Now, I know that some will take the cynical stance that politicians will just lie with abandon and not care about it. But the fact is that while many (perhaps all) are less than truthful at times, they very, very rarely will bumble into making a major statement like this that can be shown to be flat out false in black and white like this in a setting where the remarks were carefully scripted. So here's the thing I don't understand: by this point, the government must at least have some idea of what documents Snowden got, even if they haven't quantified all of them. They had to know that this Inspector's General report was out there and there was a high likelihood that Snowden had leaked it as well.

So I honestly can't figure out what the White House was thinking in having Obama make such a statement. You can argue that he offered a lie for convenience, and hoped that the truth wouldn't come out, but the White House had to know that there was a very high probability of him being proven a liar very soon after making those statements, which then would undermine the entire purpose of the press conference. Yes, politicians lie, but they lie for strategic reasons, and here it seems like the White House can't even think one step ahead in this chess game. Without last week's press conferences, the disclosures from last night would still be stunning and damaging, but coming so soon after the press conference, they're devastating.