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‘Nightmare Use for Data’: Why the Government Is Buying Your Info

‘Nightmare Use for Data’: Why the Government Is Buying Your InfoThe freakout moment that set journalist Byron Tau on a five-year quest to expose the sprawling U.S. data surveillance state occurred over a “wine-soaked dinner” back in 2018 with a source he cannot name. The tipster told Tau the government was buying up reams of consumer data — information scraped from cellphones, social media profiles, internet ad exchanges and other open sources — and deploying it for often-clandestine purposes like law enforcement and national security in the U.S. and abroad. The places you go, the websites you visit, the opinions you post — all collected and legally sold to federal agencies. In his new book, Means of Control, Tau details everything he’s learned since that dinner: An opaque network of government contractors is peddling troves of data, a legal but shadowy use of American citizens’ information that troubles even some of…


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Kansas AG sues to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan

Kansas AG sues to block Biden’s student loan forgiveness planKansas Attorney General Kris Kobach is leading a group of six states in filing a lawsuit against President Biden’s latest attempt at student loan forgiveness on Thursday.Kansas was among the six states who successfully challenged Biden’s original student loan forgiveness program last year. Kobach says this latest program flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling and breaks many of the same rules.”Not since the civil war has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway.’” Kobach told Fox News Digital in an interview. “Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan.”Biden announced his new $138 billion student loan plan in February, somewhat smaller than the $430 billion program from 2023.BIDEN VOWS TO FORGE AHEAD WITH STUDENT LOAN…


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A Senator Who Loved to Kibitz

A Senator Who Loved to KibitzSay what you will about Joe Lieberman, the self-described “Independent Democrat” senator from Connecticut and onetime Democratic vice-presidential candidate. He was many things—honorable, devout, sanctimonious, maddening, and unfailingly warm and decent—all of which have been unpacked since his death yesterday, at 82. He elicited strong reactions, often from Democrats, over his various apostasies to liberal orthodoxy.But what I’ll miss and remember most about Lieberman was that the man loved to kibitz. It is something of a lost art, at least the in-person version, which has largely given over to quippy faceless mediums (text messages, Twitter). This has been especially true in politics in recent years, as public figures have rightly become hypercautious—or paranoid—about saying anything that could become an instant viral disaster.I’m thankful that most of my encounters with Lieberman came before social media made politicians so suspicious and scared. I ran into him periodically…


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Trump Repeats Obama’s Mistake

Trump Repeats Obama’s MistakeDonald Trump has long detested Barack Obama and sought to present himself as the opposite of his presidential predecessor in every way. But in his takeover of the Republican National Committee, he risks echoing one of Obama’s biggest political mistakes.Last night, Trump’s handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge. The new regime, led by the new chair, Michael Whatley; the vice chair, Lara Trump; and the chief of staff, Chris LaCivita, fired about 60 employees—about a quarter of the staff—as part of “streamlining.” The “bloodbath” includes members of the communications, data, and political departments. Insiders told Politico they anticipate that existing contracts with vendors will be voided.When the new leaders were announced last month, I suggested that the GOP was ceasing to function as a political party, and becoming another subsidiary of Trump Inc. But there is another way to view it. For…


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The Ego Has Crash-Landed

The Ego Has Crash-LandedDonald Trump dominated the news cycle this weekend. Everybody’s talking about the outrageous things he said at his rally in Dayton, Ohio—above all, his menacing warning of a “bloodbath” if he is defeated in November. To follow political news is to again be immersed in all Trump, all the time. And that’s why Trump will lose.At the end of the 1980 presidential debate, the then-challenger Ronald Reagan posed a famous series of questions that opened with “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”Why that series of questions was so powerful is important to understand. Reagan was not just delivering an explicit message about prices and wages. His summation also sent an implicit message about his understanding of how and why a vote was earned.As a presidential candidate that year, Reagan arrived as a hugely famous and important person. He was the champion of the…


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Ken Paxton Is Going to Take Some Classes on How to Be More Ethical

Ken Paxton Is Going to Take Some Classes on How to Be More EthicalOn Tuesday, nine years after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was indicted for securities fraud, and just a few weeks before he was finally set to go on trial, prosecutors struck a deal with the powerful Republican to call the whole thing off. Under the terms of the pre-trial agreement, as reported by Texas Tribune, Paxton will avoid any admission of wrongdoing but will have to do 100 hours of community service and pay $300,000 in restitution to the people who made investments at his encouragement—including his former roommate. He will also have to go back to school. Specifically, Paxton has to take 15 hours of classes on legal ethics. Remedial legal education is an appropriate prescription for Paxton, who has earned a reputation as one of the most shameless political figures in American public life. Paxton’s…


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