You know how the right has been constantly complaining about Obama's ballooning deficit? They have of course been wrong about that since the day Obama inherited Bush's $1.5t annual deficit and immediately slashed it by getting rid of private crony contractors. There has been a steady decline in budget shortfall ever since, and the latest numbers have set new records.
The deficit for the first half of this fiscal year starting last October 1st was $413b, and this was a decline of $187 billion compared to the same time last year. These numbers were provided by the Treasury Department, so the Right will claim the numbers are fixed. They can't prove that, because math is just voodoo as far as the Right is concerned.




Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times’ public editor, has written a thoughtful and important piece criticizing the way the newspaper complied with an Israeli-imposed gag order on the case of Majd Kayyal.
Employees of U.S. intelligence agencies have been barred from discussing without authorization any intelligence-related matter - even if it isn’t classified - with journalists, under a new directive issued by Director of National Security James Clapper.
A US prosecutor has asked the judge in the 9/11 military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay for more time to look into whether an FBI investigation will affect the stalled war crimes trial.
It turns out that there is a tenet in American politics that groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Obama administration, the anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List and the Republican National Committee can agree on: Elections thrive on free speech, even if that speech contains obfuscations, mudslinging, half-truths and, occasionally, blatant lies.
Political and military elites are seizing protected areas in one of Africa's last bastions for elephants, putting broad swaths of Zimbabwe at risk of becoming fronts for ivory poaching, according to a nonprofit research group's report that examines government collusion in wildlife trafficking.





























