TV News LIES

In the discussion of the significance of chemical warfare and the importance of the U.S. red line, Atlantic National Correspondent James Fallows remains unconvinced that military intervention in Syria is advisable. As do most Americans.

Fallows noted today, "The United States has not acted previously as if chemical-weapons use was an end-of-history, line-drawing occasion," referring to the 1988 use of nerve gas on civilians by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. As he put it, "Nerve gas was hideous then. Chemical weapons are hideous now."

A Montana judge on Wednesday stood by his decision to send a former teacher to prison for 30 days for raping a 14-year-old girl who later killed herself, but said he "deserved to be chastised" for his comments about the young victim.

District Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced former Billings Senior High School teacher Stacey Rambold to 15 years, then suspended all but 31 days and gave him credit for one day already served.

A covert national security programme allows the FBI and US immigration authorities the power to indefinitely delay immigration benefits to Muslims and those from Muslim countries, according to an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The previously unknown programme, which began in 2008 under George W Bush to identify those with links to terrorism, has continued under President Obama to blacklist law-abiding applicants and profile Muslims as "national security concerns", according to the ACLU.

A secret federal court found that the National Security Agency violated the civil rights of Americans when it collected thousands of emails and other digital messages between Americans, according to a 2011 opinion released Wednesday.

The FISA court ruled parts of the program to be unconstitutional and ordered them to be revised. The government made changes and the court signed off on the program in November of 2011.

The release of a key opinion from October 2011 (pdf) and other documents was authorized today by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in response to requests from privacy advocates.

The National Rifle Association has rallied gun owners — and raised tens of millions of dollars — campaigning against the threat of a national database of firearms or their owners.

But in fact, the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.

All 107 nuclear reactors in the United States are inadequately protected from terrorist attacks, according to a Defense Department-commissioned report released Thursday.

The report, by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin, warns that the current security required of civilian-operated reactors fails to safeguard against airplane attacks, rocket-propelled grenades and more than a small handful of attackers.