President Obama defended the administration's decision to "ramp up" their support to Syrian rebel forces by, among other things, providing some lethal aid, during a sprawling interview with Charlie Rose that aired late Monday night on PBS.
Americans are weighing in on how they want the Supreme Court to rule on upcoming cases dealing with affirmative action and gay marriage, and eventually some court to decide the new NSA spying suits. Their opinions — against, for, and mixed, respectively — are, of course, irrelevant to what the courts do.
The sexiest of the Foggy Bottom probes — all of which State Department officials are trying to explain away — has to do with the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, who "routinely ditched" his own bodyguards to "solicit sexual favors," including from minors. And now that Ambassador is calling his prostitution allegations "baseless" in part because ... he lives in "a beautiful park in Brussels."
The man who has been labeled an American "traitor" on the lam apparently hasn't even left the Chinese city from which he shared America's spying secrets, despite vanishing the day after his tell-all interview went public — and despite the reporters and investigators on the tail of a leaker and his lady. One local Hong Kong paper tracked him down, and there appears to be another tell-all on the way.
Looks like surveillance defenders just lost their main talking point in defense of the NSA's (formerly) secret phone and data tracking programs: Najibullah Zazi, the would-be New York City subway bomber, could have easily been caught without PRISM.
In a letter to to the attorney general and the FBI director, the head lawyer for the world's leading information crawler has asked the U.S. government for permission to publish the number of top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests it receives from the nation's spy agencies and beyond each year. It represented a shot across the bow from Silicon Valley, or at least an attempt to soften the blow of a startling week of NSA leaks. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg and his top lawyer are speaking out, too, and Microsoft followed suit.
According to the lastest commerce data published by retailer Amazon.com, sales of the classic fiction work have spiked 3,100% over the past 24 hours, which have seen fresh reports about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs and the 29-year-old Booz Allen Hamilton employee, Edward Snowden, who leaked them.
Of particular interest to attorneys on both sides is how much these 10 already over-scrutinized men and women mopped up from the ink spilled in the nearly 16 months since Trayvon Martin's shooting — and, of increasing importance, how many of the stories leaked in the last few weeks they've vacuumed into their objective consciousness.
A couple in Philadelphia has filed a class-action lawsuit against the NSA and Verizon, claiming they and their phone records were targeted for surveillance because of their outspoken criticism of Barack Obama and the U.S. military. Indeed, these aren't just any disgruntled Verizon customers.
Your perception of Chicago's murder problem isn't quite correct. While the city has seen a rash of shootings, many deadly, the murder rate is actually at a low for the year, on-pace with the 1960s. But it is also at a low point — and moving in several new directions — compared to another era of high crime in Chicago: Prohibition.
Ai Weiwei on the NSA's behavior, Alex Pareene on Edward Snowden's personality, Michelle Cottle on Michelle Obama's second term, Chris Hughes on how we control technology, S.E. Cupp on young lung transplant recipients.
Princeton University's entire 500-acre campus, in central New Jersey, is currently being evacuated after the university received multiple bomb threats targeting an array of campus buildings.
Government IT contractor Booz Allen has updated its official statement on employee Edward Snowden to let everyone know — in case it wasn't obvious enough — that he doesn't work there anymore.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more gross, a report from city officials due out today insists that the hot mess is just beginning — and that Alabama-level summers are on the way to the Big Apple. Yes, this has to do with climate change.
Now that Edward Snowden is on the lam, location unknown, the curious have tracked down the NSA whistleblower's family, friends, and (possible) girlfriend to learn more.
The Obama administration gave up their fight to keep age limits on sales of over-the-counter emergency contraception pill Plan B on Monday
The trial of George Zimmerman has begun, and immediately inspired one of the most baffling comments ever uttered by a talking head about Martin's late-night confrontation with Zimmerman, even for a story already so loaded with race, death, lawyers, Florida, and inevitably Nancy Grace.
@HillaryClinton is finally here. The verified handle for the former Secretary of State sent its first tweet on Monday afternoon, dropping references to the instantly viral Texts from Hillary meme. And her profile is so great it's hard to believe she pretty much skipped Twitter during the 2008 campaign. Now, what's this about 2016?
Arranging a designated driver seems pretty easy, but in practice, according to new research published on Monday in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, a large percentage of designated drivers swill booze anyway.
Edward Snowden is the most sought-after leaker of national security secrets on Earth right now, but it appears that nobody has any idea where he actually is. The 29-year-old former defense contractor has gone AWOL, and the chase is on, for sleuths both real and amateur.
According to a memo by the State Department's Inspector General, several members of the Diplomatic Security Service, which is in charge of protecting American diplomats overseas, were told to back off or stop investigating several criminal investigations involving department employees, including at least one ambassador, to ensure that no charges were ever brought.
Daniel Ellsberg on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Maria Bustillos on the slow rise of the security state, Kai Wright on how proprietary colleges prey on ambition, Bill Keller on the future of affirmative action, and Jessica Valenti on the realities of enforcing abortion policy.
Edward Snowden wasn't your traditional spy. He was, however, a very modern one, a guy who worked from a computer terminal in an office, similar to how a modern bomber pilot might control his drone. The weekend's big revelations about the NSA's biggest leaker prompt a natural question: How many Snowden-type spies with top secret security clearance are there?
Jury selection for George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial begins today, and in yet another controversial move seeking to prove their client's justification for self-defense, his lawyers have released a video that' allegedly one of the only recordings of Trayvon Martin's voice — and they claim it proves Martin wasn't, in fact, screaming for help in a 911 call.
Do you like computers, love Hawaii, and would thrill at the opportunity to access our government's most highly classified secrets? Then Booz Allen Hamilton has the job for you!
After a series of stunning reports from the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald on the NSA's data collection programs, the paper will no doubt remain a central figure in the story of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked the PRISM slides in the first place. But, according to one of the reporters by-lined on the Washington Post's PRISM story, the exclusive was theirs to lose.
What happens next with the man responsible for leaking a trove of National Security Agency documents to the Guardian rests in the hands of two countries who could decide to send him back to the U.S. with express shipping, or to keep him as a global bargaining chip.
The Guardian has revealed the identity of the man who leaked information about the NSA's surveillance programs, PRISM and Boundless Informant. Meet Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old defense contractor employee who's worked for the NSA for four years.
The Guardian's James Ball released a new slide from the PRISM presentation that he thinks proves the NSA has unfettered access to these servers. He still doesn't prove anything definitively, though.
Everyone, meet the National Security Agency's Boundless Informant. It's the pretty tool designed to help staffers get an overview of the data collected by the agency that comes complete with its own Frequently Asked Questions guide. How or if it includes data collected under FISA is unclear.
Santa Monica is the latest scene of a mass shooting resulting in multiple fatalities.
Ariel Castro, who allegedly kidnapped three women and held them captive in his home for the last decade, was indicted today on a whopping 329 charges.
This week's revelations about the National Security Agency's hyperactive interest in seeing what's happening online probably inspired you to wonder how much that privilege is costing you.
The brief investigation against Jose Canseco on allegations of rape is over. According to Las Vegas's Fox 5 station, the case against Canseco was closed on Friday and Canseco will not be charged with a crime.
Jonah Lehrer continues to thwart his own redemption. The fallen journalist and author now faces fresh charges of plagiarism — or at least copious derivation.
This afternoon, the FBI arrested Shannon Rogers Guess Richardson for sending ricin-tainted letters to Obama and Michael Bloomberg. There are perhaps worse ways to lash out at your estranged husband than to threaten the life of the president, but none come immediately to mind.
On May 1, Colorado took a step toward civil-rights progress on the gay rights and began recognizing same-sex civil unions. But Christian baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, took one big step backward — and now he's the subject of a formal complaint sitting at the state attorney general's office.
Glenn Greenwald on the courage of whistleblower, Amy Davidson on the NSA's panopticon, Walter Shapiro on Obama's Cheney transformation, Elizabeth Goitein on metadata monitoring, Jamelle Bouie on the GOP's revived Calhounism.
Something happens to coffee in the summer! It changes form. A lot of us don't want it hot, and instead, seek to quench our thirst with something cold. What do you need to know about ice(d) coffee — what separates the good from the average, and even bad? And what do you need to know about yourself, based on the kind of coffee you are drinking? We asked around.
Don't pretend you're terribly surprised. Kings County (Brooklyn's home) is the county with the most marijuana possession arrests in the state with the most marijuana arrests, according to the ACLU. But what might surprise you is that, if you're black, you're almost ten times more likely to be busted in Brooklyn than if you're white.
Today in on Ben Yagoda's Lingua Franca blog, he brings up a matter of two little letters. When we're talking about websites and blogs, do we say "in" or "on"? Why is this different from how we talk about what we read in, say, books or newspapers?
In a new interview with the Boston Herald, Governor Deval Patrick offers some interesting behind-the-scenes details of the Boston Marathon manhunt, including his day-after attempt to unwind when it was all over.
Charles P. Pierce on the NSA's collection of Verizon records, Rose-Ellen Lessy on patenting genes, Helena Andrews on Michelle Obama's heckler, Ana Marie Cox on rebranding the GOP, Michael Brendan Dougherty on punishing cheating in baseball.
Yes, the Internet has finally solved the problem of how to have a "small and intimate" wedding that's also live-streamed to everyone you might have met since kindergarten.
Two Massachusetts men who were falsely implicated in Boston Marathon bombing investigation have filed a lawsuit against the paper that dragged them into the story.
The Today show usually opens its 8 a.m. hour with its hosts outside in Rockefeller Plaza amidst the signs and smiling fans. But when, as Matt Lauer reported on-air, "a man attempted to harm himself with a knife" out there, the wholesome foursome moved back inside and turned what was a scary sight off-camera into a happy-go-awkward impromptu segment, Joe Biden jokes and all.
The 31-year-old California woman who reported yet another gang rape in India after she couldn't catch a cab back to her guest house in the popular resort town of Manali, has already picked all three of her attackers out of a lineup. But the unfolding horror of the country's latest rape case isn't exactly making tourists feel any better.
In a press conference late Wednesday night, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter confirmed that six died in a building collapse earlier in the day.
On Wednesday's evening news, NBC released a bombshell story on the government's drone targeting program, indicating that the U.S. isn't always certain of who they're targeting, despite assurances otherwise.
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