Whatever you think of gun control, Obama's assertion that "Closing the No-Fly List loophole is a no-brainer" is pretty brainless.
The no-fly list, a notorious, secretive, evidence-free zone in which Americans and foreigners alike are denied the freedom of movement based on secret, sloppy evidence that no is allowed to see or refute, is a terrible proxy for "people who should be treated as suspicious."
This is an issue that the political left and libertarians have been all over for more than a decade. The American right seems to be finally waking up to the Kafka-esque absurdity of the no-fly list now that Obama is proposing to ban gun ownership for people who end up on it.
According to the FBI’s terrorist screening center, which maintains the list, there were approximately 16,000 people, fewer than 500 of them Americans, on the no-fly list as of September 2011. This had risen to 47,000 people in August 2013, including about 800 Americans, a leak to the Intercept news media site revealed.
The numbers are thought likely to be higher now but the FBI declined to comment.
Dave Joly, a spokesperson for the screening center, said that it did not publicly confirm or deny whether someone was on the list.
“Disclosure of an individual’s inclusion or non-inclusion in the TSDB [Terrorist Screening Database] or on the no-fly list would significantly impair the government’s ability to investigate and counteract terrorism,” Joly said.
'The illusion of security': no-fly list draws scrutiny from left and right
[David Smith/The Guardian]
The Washington Post reports: The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it will loan $700 million to a trucking firm that ships military equipment, in exchange for having U.S. taxpayers acquire an almost 30 percent stake in the company. Under the unusual arrangement, the Treasury Department will provide the emergency loan to YRC Worldwide, while taking […]
Bad legal news for Orange President Kleptocrat today. He’s gonna be in a mood.
Asked about the Justice Department’s intent to drop all criminal charges against impeached President Trump’s first national security advisor, Mike Flynn, Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr says nothing matters, and “history is written by the winners.”
With everybody working from home now, it’s natural to start thinking about careers where not going into the office is more the norm than the exception. Better yet, many are looking to start careers as freelancers, professionals who build their livelihoods around the scope of their talent and not the fortunes of one all-encompassing employer. […]
“The way to have power is to take it.” — Boss Tweed. We think an 18th-century political power broker probably had a different definition of power in mind when he made that statement, yet the sentiment still applies. We’ve all got devices all but falling out of our pockets and the need for power to […]
If the last 50 years of education have taught us nothing else, it’s that it often requires different tactics to best reach different learners. To pick up a foreign language, some students take best to the old-school high school language lab method, using heavy repetition, verb conjugation and grammar emphasis to embed a new language. […]
