Black Swan author Nassim Taleb on the current election cycle.

From Task and Purpose.

From Radley Balko’s blog at WaPo.  Relevant chunk: “This basically formalizes what was already happening under the radar. We’ve known for a couple of years now that the Drug Enforcement Administration and the IRS were getting information from the NSA. Because that information was obtained without a warrant, the agencies were instructed to engage in “parallel construction” when explaining to courts and defense attorneys how the information had been obtained. If you think parallel construction just sounds like a bureaucratically sterilized way of saying big stinking lie, well, you wouldn’t be alone. And it certainly isn’t the only time that that national security apparatus has let law enforcement agencies benefit from policies that are supposed to be reserved for terrorism investigations in order to get around the Fourth Amendment, then instructed those law enforcement agencies to misdirect, fudge and outright lie about how they obtained incriminating information — see the Stingray debacle. This isn’t just a few rogue agents. The lying has been a matter of policy. We’re now learning that the feds had these agreements with police agencies all over thecountry, affecting thousands of cases.”

The War on Terror is about grabbing power while the government can, once it’s accumulated it’s almost impossible to take away.

Their downing of a Russian fighter jet on November 24th proves it, but here’s further evidence.

From The Intercept.  He casually disparages privacy activists as phone fetishists who enable child pornographers, tax evaders, and terrorists.

Pacific coast surveillance utopia will not be outdone by DC.  From EFF.

From the LA Times.

Jeffrey Tucker on the co-opting of the term “liberal” by Statists, and why we should take it back.  From FEE.

Or was it wishful thinking?  From the Daily Beast.

George Will ponders.  Relevant chunks:

““Peak Trump” — the apogee before the dwindling — might be approaching for the perhaps bogus billionaire (would a real one bother with fleecing those who matriculate at Trump University?) who purports to prove his business wizardry, colossal wealth and stupendous generosity not by releasing his tax returns but by displaying a pile of steaks. The eventual end of our long national embarrassment might be foreshadowed by Donald Trump’s pattern of doing better among early voters than among “late deciders”: He firmly has those he entranced early; others are more elusive.

If Trump does become acquainted with gravity — no, not intellectual sobriety; nature’s downward tug — it will be for two reasons: The Republican Party, which together with the Democratic Party has framed the nation’s political debate since first running a presidential candidate 160 years ago, is not a flimsy dinghy to be effortlessly commandeered by pirates hostile to its purposes. And the lavish media exposure that has fertilized the growth of the weed of Trumpism in the garden of conservatism might still stunt its growth by causing his supporters to have second, or perhaps first, thoughts. A steady diet of his self-adulation can be cloying; even an entertaining boor can become a bore.”