Several months after calling for legislation to unlock cellphones, the White House filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices so that users can easily switch between carriers.
Source: Obama administration urges FCC to require carriers to unlock mobile devices – The Washington Post
Jeffrey Wiese (center), PHMSA’s associate administrator for pipeline safety, testifies at a hearing on pipeline safety.
“Do I think I can hurt a major international corporation with a $2 million civil penalty? No,” he said.
Because generating a new pipeline rule can take as long as three years, Wiese said PHMSA is creating a YouTube channel to persuade the industry to voluntarily improve its safety operations.
In New Orleans, Wiese said “an under-informed populace highly dependent on fossil fuels” is prone to negative perceptions of the industry. He said that penchant is exacerbated by a press corps that doesn’t “have time to fully understand the story” and has instead served as a vehicle for “gang warfare” through its coverage of events like the March 29th rupture of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline in Mayflower, Ark.
Congress, Wiese contended, hasn’t done much to help.
“It’s very political in Washington. Nobody wants to try to figure out what’s the best thing to do. They’re thinking about what’s the most advantageous position to take,” he said, later adding that he’d recently had an unpleasant meeting with a “very hot” congressional delegation about the Pegasus spill in Arkansas.
Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., a member of the delegation Wiese was referring to, has criticized the operations and maintenance of the pipeline and PHMSA’s lack of transparency.
“If public officials and Arkansans would have known then what we know now, changes to the operation of the pipeline may have been demanded years ago,” he said.
Source: Exclusive: Pipeline Safety Chief Says His Regulatory Process Is ‘Kind of Dying’ | InsideClimate News
The consequences of intervention are unknown because they are unknowable.
injecting bombs and cruise missiles into a civil war probably isn’t the most cost effective way to help people
Source: A Brief Argument Against War in Syria – The Atlantic
His tone on Friday was inappropriately dismissive, while the substance was misleading at best and mendacious at worst.
By observing Obama’s condescension, I don’t mean to suggest tone was the most objectionable part of the speech. The disinformation should bother the American people most. The weasel words. The impossible-to-believe protestations. The factually inaccurate assertions.
Obama has always had it within his power to initiate a fully informed debate. The state secrets that he guards, rightly or wrongly, are the biggest obstacle to a fully informed debate. Love the leaks or hate them, they’ve indisputably made Americans, including some members of Congress, much better informed than they were before about NSA surveillance, not less informed. And as any student of the civil-rights era ought to know, debate need not be “orderly” to be salutary.
The official secrecy surrounding the NSA has already corroded U.S. democracy in real ways.
Source: The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama’s Presidency – The Atlantic
CNN reports that dozens of CIA agents were on the ground there — and that they’re being pressured to keep quiet. Why?
Source: The Attack in Benghazi: Worth Investigating After All – The Atlantic
Love or hate their coverage, the notion that a scandal went uncovered is a conservative delusion.
Source: Whopper of the Year: ‘The Mainstream Media’ Ignored Benghazi – The Atlantic