Matt Duss flagged this video of Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana), a senior member of the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, talking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about why he unquestioningly supports Israel.

Pence is literally saying, Israeli officials should tell us what they want us to do, and we’ll support it. That’s an insane premise, and if you replace “Israel” with any other country, no U.S. politician would accept it.

I’m pretty pessimistic about Obama’s Middle East policies — but it’s worth remembering that Obama has to work within the confines of the U.S. political system, and there’s broad bipartisan consensus for Pence’s views on Israel (as he notes in the video).

The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.”

Residents in King were fumed over the weekend after a state of emergency declaration restricted the sale of alcohol and the carrying of firearms in vehicles.

King Police Chief Paula May said she’s received hundreds of threats related to the restrictions, which banned driving from 12 a.m. Sunday to 5 a.m.

The state of emergency for King was declared by members of the City Council after Stokes County authorities also declared a state of emergency.

Under North Carolina law, May said, when a state of emergency is put into place that includes a ban on driving, the sale of alcohol and carrying of firearms in vehicles is also banned.

It was bad enough that President Barack Obama lost his US Senate super majority to a Republican. Now it turns out that Scott Brown, the newly elected senator from Massachusetts, is Mr Obama’s cousin.

Running tally of Barack Obama’s “coincidental” family ties: Dick Cheney, Warren Buffett, Scott Brown.

According to the New York Post, “Obama is related to Vice President Dick Cheney through a 17th-century descendant, as well as President Bush” which of course means Bush and Cheney are also related, odd in and of itself. “In addition to John Kerry, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Di and half a dozen ex-presidents, Bush is related to Pocahontas’ living relatives.”

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

The GOP makes me sick overall, but I am happy to see that 42% are at least open to the idea of secession.

Despite gallons of newspaper ink, hours of air time and untold clicks in the blogosphere, the effect of the tea party movement in local and national politics remains to be seen.

Even as supporters gathered Friday in Nashville, Tenn., for a National Tea Party Convention, some question whether it’s a movement at all, or rather a collection of isolated protests, just like similar events for any of a million other causes. Tea party organizers in Maine, though, say the influence of the events is not only enduring. It’s building.

“I have seen more people at political functions than have ever been there before,” said Lois Bloomer of Hermon, who ran two tea parties in Maine last year and has organized today’s Penobscot County Republican Caucus.

“There’s something definitely in the wind,” she said on Thursday. “People are stirred up.”

The establishment is trying hard to convince the masses that this “movement” is some fringe element of one far wing of the political spectrum. Certainly the last thing they want is for the “moderates” and the “mainstream” to get the impression that they have good reasons to be angry about the lies and fraud they’ve been getting from the Democans and Republicrats all these years. The harder the corporate media organs try to marginalize the disaffected segment of the population, the more I’m convinced that a genuine revolution might just be taking place.

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They’re pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to “exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process” through an encrypted, police-only “nationwide computer network.” (See one excerpt and another.)

The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for laws requiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.

But the most controversial element is probably the private Web interface, which raises novel security and privacy concerns, especially in the wake of a recent inspector general’s report (PDF) from the Justice Department. The 289-page report detailed how the FBI obtained Americans’ telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Related link for the privacy conscious individuals out there: Panpopticlick – a new site from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.