I had already corrected that, but congratulations on scoring a pedantic point.

LOL. Asking Russia for additional information about a person who was living in the U.S. now constitutes an "investigation"? (And you're not even quoting what the article actually said; you're talking about what it "suggested.") You've got to be kidding.

The CIA submitted the name of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects for a terrorist watch list in fall 2011 after an inquiry about Tamerlan Tsarnaev from Russian authorities concerned about his possible ties to extremists, a U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The FBI had received a nearly identical request from the Russian government six months earlier, prompting a review of Tsarnaev's activities that turned up nothing improper, a federal law enforcement official said.

As someone here asked on a different topic a few months ago, if your neighbor tells you your house is on fire, and then you ask him if it's your house or your garage but he doesn't get back to you, do you just shrug your shoulders and forget about it, or do you look into the original tip?

Conservatives now think we should believe in the veracity of Russians without reservations.

Look, it may well be that this is all CYA by the different agencies. I tend to suspect something got dropped. But for goodness sake have a little pride in your work man. Your articles don't support you and in fact contradict you. Faced with that, you go straight to the insults. Weak sauce.

So, being the fervent anti-communists you all are, why are you all supporting Putin and his cohorts in this instance? If you were given a tip by the Russian intelligence agencies, did an investigation, discovered nothing, asked for additional information and were ignored, wouldn't this be a red flag to you and relegate this case to the false lead trash bin? When you have likely hundreds of more promising leads to follow up on? No?

I've bit my tongue about it for months now,

You could make a decent argument that because the U.S. is a free society, it suffer less attacks like these compared to other countries with overly harsh governments and restrictions. Just look at the IRA and the UK. Those attacks happen precisely because London didn't want to give up control of Ireland.

Weirdest part about all of this:

Conservatives now think we should believe in the veracity of Russians without reservations.

Conversely, since its the world hegemon and self appointed police force it draws more foreign ire.

I've bit my tongue about it for months now, but a big demographic change in which a bunch more people look to government to give them #### is nothing to celebrate, and your perpetual giddiness about it -- particularly in this economic climate -- is downright bizarre. Your attitudes are primarily those of the political hack, not the concerned citizen.

This is nothing new; it's been Andy's raison d'etre for as long as he's been posting here. He's not concered about the country, or even the people who live here; it's all about sticking it to his enemies. See my post in #5751 for an explanation of what drives the Andys of the world.

Personally, I think RonJ's earlier comment was probably accurate. The Russians warned us, the FBI took one look and said, "Chechen? Eh, if he's a problem, he's Russia's problem," and closed the file.

Perhaps so, but that doesn't speak to the point about the folly of writing off the Latino vote and concentrating your efforts solely on whites, which is what you were saying should be done in the aftermath of the Romney fiasco.

But again, all that's saying is that Latinos also support the health care bill. It certainly doesn't say that they don't care about immigration, or that the GOP isn't driving them away with their position on that subject. The first part of Plouffe's comment was this:

I've bit my tongue about it for months now, but a big demographic change in which a bunch more people look to government to give them #### is nothing to celebrate, and your perpetual giddiness about it -- particularly in this economic climate -- is downright bizarre. Your attitudes are primarily those of the political hack, not the concerned citizen.

Sure sounds like there was a first investigation (or at least a review of his activities) that occurred before the CIA made its request.

That is a terrible analogy. If your neighbor says your house is on fire, and you check it and see nothing, do you check it again if your brother says your neighbor told him your house was on fire?

Look, it may well be that this is all CYA by the different agencies. I tend to suspect something got dropped. But for goodness sake have a little pride in your work man. Your articles don't support you and in fact contradict you.

Faced with that, you go straight to the insults. Weak sauce.

Again, it's not clear that the FBI "checked it and [saw] nothing." The articles might "suggest" that, as you claimed, but I've seen no confirmation from the FBI on this, and I've seen plenty of stories that claim otherwise (i.e., that the FBI got a tip from the Russians; the FBI asked for more info., which didn't come; and then the FBI passed on putting the older brother on the watch list).

Huh? Please list the insults I've tossed at you during this exchange. I've done no such thing.

Again, it's not clear that the FBI "checked it and [saw] nothing." The articles might "suggest" that, as you claimed, but I've seen no confirmation from the FBI on this, and I've seen plenty of stories that claim otherwise (i.e., that the FBI got a tip from the Russians; the FBI asked for more info., which didn't come; and then the FBI passed on putting the older brother on the watch list).

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government

In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign

Your statement that I was "incorrect at best or blatantly dishonest at worst" (on facts that you got wrong in your original post and even now are backing off) sure seems like an insult.

Incorrect at best, blatantly dishonest at worst. The Daily News headline uses the word "ignored," and the story says that "no action was taken by any agency." It's unclear why you're inferring "no action" includes an investigation.

A senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the information says "the issue with Russia is that the initial information was extremely thin."

You're hanging you hat on a headline which uses the word "ignore", and a poorly written article, which apparently carries a lot more weight with you than a direct quote from a "senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the information."

Again, it's not clear that the FBI "checked it and [saw] nothing." The articles might "suggest" that, as you claimed, but I've seen no confirmation from the FBI on this, and I've seen plenty of stories that claim otherwise

The Daily News headline uses the word "ignored," and the story says that "no action was taken by any agency." It's unclear why you're inferring "no action" includes an investigation.

Question 1: One of Sarah Palin’s notorious gaffes was her dismissal of “fruit fly research” — she thought it was absurd that the government actually funded science on flies. How would you explain to a congressman that basic research is important? I’m going to put two constraints on your answer: 1) It has to be comprehensible to Michele Bachmann, and 2) don’t take the shortcut of promising that which you may not deliver. That is, no “maybe it will cure cancer!” claims, but focus instead on why we should appreciate deeper knowledge of biology.

Headlines, as you know, can be wildly misleading. Citing them as proof of anything is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst. As for the text, it is either poorly written or deliberately vague. The no action quote leave a bunch of wiggle room. It certainly implies no action was ever taken by the FBI (we now know that to not be true), but it could also mean that no action was taken after the CIA contacted them. As I said, poorly written, or deliberately vague.

BOSTON — The mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the attack, government officials said Thursday.

Two government officials said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva’s name listed along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants about to travel to Russia



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/boston-bombing-suspects-mom-terrorism-database-officials-article-1.1328379#ixzz2RbFHJRm6

So what does "priotriz[ing] the white vote mean", other than appealing to anti-immigration sentiments? What other sort of programs are supposed to appeal to white voters as opposed to others?

And what about the long run, if the economy fails to crash and anti-immigration sentiment fades---as it's done in every previous wave of immigration. What's the next move for the GOP? To double down on whites who listen to Rush and promise gun stamps in place of food stamps?

Our sixth grade goddaughter, attending the same DC public school that I did in the late 1950's, is so far advanced beyond what we were back then that it's beyond jawdropping. But then we didn't have an IBD program, so the gap is quite understandable. To the extent that she has problems with her school, it's due to overwork, not underwork.

I wonder what the projections were for such things back when we were importing millions of illiterate European peasants who kept to themselves and spoke in indecipherable babble. Then and now, it's the same shortsighted view of humanity that never seems to lack for Chicken Littles like yourself. If they'd been listening to people like you 100 years ago, most of us here would still be somewhere over in Europe.

It shouldn't be all that difficult for the GOP to come up with a candidate who better appeals to working-class people of all races and ethnicities,

There is a party that appeals to working-class people of all races and ethnicities, but it isn't the GOP.

There is a party that appeals to working-class people of all races and ethnicities, but it isn't the GOP.

here's more evidence of why this lunatic shouldn't (to listen to liberals) have been watched by anyone, apparently:

Indeed. It's the party of no-responsibility-or-accountability-if-you-are-not-successful-you-are-a-Victim-here-take-this-free-stuff-that-you-are-entitled-to-we-got-it-from-those-racists-or-bigots-or-coldhearted-people-who-are-responsible-for-your-lot-in-life-did-I-mention-racists?

In the winter of 2010, after a decade of defending the government against bias claims by Hispanic and female farmers, Justice Department lawyers seemed to have victory within their grasp.

Ever since the Clinton administration agreed in 1999 to make $50,000 payments to thousands of black farmers, the Hispanics and women had been clamoring in courtrooms and in Congress for the same deal. They argued, as the African-Americans had, that biased federal loan officers had systematically thwarted their attempts to borrow money to farm.

But a succession of courts — and finally the Supreme Court — had rebuffed their pleas. Instead of an army of potential claimants, the government faced just 91 plaintiffs. Those cases, the government lawyers figured, could be dispatched at limited cost.

They were wrong.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling, interviews and records show, the Obama administration’s political appointees at the Justice and Agriculture Departments engineered a stunning turnabout: they committed $1.33 billion to compensate not just the 91 plaintiffs but thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court.

There are over half a million people in the "terror watch list". The FBI doesn't have the manpower to watch them all 24/7, or even a fraction of that (despite the name).

The modern Democrat party is the party of dependency

The modern Democrat party is the party of dependency, not the party of work. The fact that the Dems have stopped prioritizing the working class is precisely why an opportunity exists for the GOP.

Another useful link in 5847. According to the article, "The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it."

Meaning that getting on to TIDE is low signal.

But what is the point of all of this? That once Russia warned us of him, we shouldn't have bothered to listen?

That despite us being warned of him, we shouldn't have asked questions upon his return from a half-year trip to Dagestan during which his wife and child were left behind? We shouldn't have gotten serious about him?

“The Department of Agriculture admitted that it discriminated against every black person who walked into their offices,” he told the crowd. “They said we discriminated against them, but we didn’t keep a record. Hello? You don’t have to prove it.”

In fact, he boasted, he and his four siblings had all collected awards, and his sister had acquired another $50,000 on behalf of their dead father.

She cinched the claim, he said to a ripple of laughter, by asserting that her father had whispered on his deathbed, “I was discriminated against by U.S.D.A.”

“The judge has said since you all look alike, whichever one says he came into the office, that’s the one to pay — hint, hint,” he said. “There is no limit to the amount of money, and there is no limit to the amount of folks who can file.”

He closed with a rousing exhortation: “Let’s get the judge to go to work writing them checks! They have just opened the bank vault.”

Another useful link in 5847. According to the article, "The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it."

Meaning that getting on to TIDE is low signal.

This is true. If the GOP weren't quite so stupid, they'd seize the opportunity to represent the middle and working classes by going populist.

This would be a winning coalition, which is why the current corporatist Republican and Democratic parties are so deeply engaged in the culture wars and the race-baiting to keep it from coalescing. Eventually, someone will successfully bring them together.

Yup, 100%. The Republicans keep slavishly doing the bidding of the top 0.1%, even though those people are as likely to support Democrats as Republicans.

DC ranks far below the national average in SAT scores and virtually every other measurement of educational achievement, although there may be a bit of progress in the last decade.

But what is the point of all of this? That once Russia warned us of him, we shouldn't have bothered to listen?

That despite us being warned of him, we shouldn't have asked questions upon his return from a half-year trip to Dagestan during which his wife and child were left behind? We shouldn't have gotten serious about him?

We shouldn't have gotten serious about him?

The current Democratic party exists to do the top 1%'s bidding,

We did follow up and we did ask questions. We asked Russia for more information and got nothing. What should we have done, illegally searched everything until something comes up in which we can charge him and deport him in spite of having no reason at the time to want to?

There was no reason to get serious about him. Ray, will you read the GD links so you can get your facts straight please?

What should we have done

No one has said anything about "illegally search[ing]" anything, but putting the guy on the watch list and maybe doing an occasional Google search might have been a good idea.

it appears the FBI was unaware that he had gone to Dagestan for six months, allegedly because of a spelling error on his plane ticket.

His flight reservation set off a security alert to customs authorities when he departed, Ms. Napolitano said, in spite of a “mismatch” in the spelling of his name on his airline ticket, his travel document and the passenger manifest of his flight. As a result of “redundancies” in the system, the error was detected, the secretary said, and “there was a ping on the outbound to customs.”

But when Mr. Tsarnaev returned, more than a year had gone by since the F.B.I. closed a background review of his possible links to extremist groups that had been requested by the Russian government in January 2011. It was determined that he posed no threat. The security alert “at that point was more than a year old and had expired,” Ms. Napolitano said.

Base on what exactly? A cryptic Russian request? That's all? Do you realize what a ########### of a precedent that would set? All Russia would have to do to #### over anybody on US soil, citizen or non-citizen, it wants is to put a request in to the FBI to follow up on someone they think is up to no good, without a single iota of validating evidence or documentation.

The article in #5838 states that the the government was aware that Tamerlan was going to Russia, despite the spelling error.

It seems unclear why the "security alert" would have expired while he was in the midst of a six-month trip to Dagestan, which is apparently a hotbed of Islamist activity.

Because the FBI had investigated him, and after one year, had found no real terrorist link, so it expired. And going to Dagestan is not really a red flag, since that is near his original home and he still has family living there.

Why would that have occurred if the file had already been closed without any negative info. and Tamerlan wasn't on a watch list?

Because even though the FBI had investigated and not found anything, his name had still been added to the TIDE list. That list is huge, over half a million names, and is much bigger than the list of active investigations. So he was flagged on both his international travel, and when he applied for citizenship, even though he was no longer part of an active FBI investigation.

Four years ago, Maryland’s top corrections official vowed that a scandal at a state prison in Baltimore involving violent gang activity and corrupt guards was not widespread.

But this week, Gary D. Maynard, secretary of public safety and correctional services, found himself confronting a nearly identical crisis at a detention center next door, with 13 corrections officers charged with helping the same Black Guerilla Family gang launder money, have sex with guards and give orders to the street.

The activity was so brazen, the FBI said, that in addition to smuggling in cellphones and drugs, four guards became pregnant by a single detainee, and the names of 14 guards available for trysts were written on a jailhouse wall — along with prices for various sexual favors. [emphasis added]

It's obvious from recent discussions that you either don't understand or don't care about the plain meaning of words, but the phrase "no action was taken by any agency" doesn't leave much to the imagination unless one has a very overactive imagination.

They're rich enough thet they're willing to pay a few % extra in taxes so they can do whatever the hell they want w/o social opprobrium.

A British friend of mine whose been in the States for a while likes to say about American politics that the Republican Party needs to trick people into voting against their own self interest to win, while the Democratic Party needs to trick people into voting against the country's best interest to win. With an increasingly narcissistic society and flagging patriotism, the Dems are clearly in prime position to dominate.

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.

In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family. [...]

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn't speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.

In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Washington Field Office, where that investigation was based, declined to comment.There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside the United States, officials said.

It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn't share more information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence is being collected.

e conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family. [...]

Speaking of which ...

U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination

Free money! Come get your free money!

The entire article has to be read to be believed. Tens of thousands of people are getting $50,000 checks just for claiming, without any proof or documentation whatsoever, that the government discriminated against them — and they're getting those checks after the government was on the verge of prevailing in court. It's a case study in how the government is way too big and way too inefficient.

Justice Department lawyers worried about false claims. But the lawyer familiar with the Clinton administration’s stance said they had decided that “it was better to err on the side of giving money to people who might not qualify if they went through litigation than to deny money to people who actually deserve it.”

So what you're saying is we should pay more attention to Breitbart?

Justice Department lawyers worried about false claims. But the lawyer familiar with the Clinton administration’s stance said they had decided that “it was better to err on the side of giving money to people who might not qualify if they went through litigation than to deny money to people who actually deserve it.”

Of course they did, because it wasn't their money.

Agreed, that is one really dimwitted observation.

It does sound like the FBI and/or CIA should have done more follow-up monitoring of Tamerlan post-2011, even if it was just a periodic Google search or an interview when he returned to the U.S.

Please explain to the class how inverting that logic leads to a more just or moral outcome, Davy.

So what you're saying is we should pay more attention to Breitbart?