Friday Must Reads: Birth Control, Secret Spy Centers and…um… Geese

This “Must Read” list strays a little afield from our usual criminal justice and related realms. (It’s that kind of Friday.)

Not to worry. We’ll be back to our regular programming Monday.

(And, for those of you who have been inquiring, see the end of the post for an update on the next installment of Dangerous Jails.)

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THE NEW YORKER’S MARGARET TALBOT LOOKS AT THE BIRTH CONTROL IDIOCY

New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot is a consistently intelligent and insightful journalist, thus it was nice to see her name on the magazine’s opening essay about the perplexing outbreak of birth control madness, the creepily anti-female diatribes of Rush Limbaugh, and what it all means to the rest of us.

Here’s a clip:

…..As long as the debate stirred up by the Blunt Amendment—which would have allowed employers to refuse coverage for health services they felt compromised their religious beliefs—stayed focused on freedom of religion, it was possible to forget that putting birth control back in political play meant ignoring reality. You could, after all, make a coherent argument about Catholic employers and the calls of conscience, without insisting on the moral turpitude of people who use birth control or talk about it in public. You could also argue that the Catholic hierarchy was basically asking the federal government to do what its own teachings apparently could not: to remind Catholic women of the evils of contraceptives in such a way that they would actually stop using them. But at least we were still in the realm of a legitimate policy debate.

Then Rush Limbaugh opened his mouth and showed us more than we wanted to know about the dank interior of his mind. Though repellent, it wasn’t exactly surprising. A few months ago, after Sharon Bialek charged that Herman Cain had sexually harassed her, Limbaugh pronounced her name “Buy-a-lick,” and called her thirteen-year-old son a Nazi “brownshirt,” for having encouraged her to come forth. That’s not really so different from calling Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law School student who testified before Congress about insurance coverage of contraception, “a slut” and “a prostitute.”

What was more revealing was the mild response from leading Republicans….

Yeah. No kidding. Mighty revealing.

Anyway, read the rest.

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THE NSA BUILDS THE WORLD’S LARGEST SPY CENTER (HOW COMFORTING.)

Wired Magazine’s Threat Level section (which is fast becoming a must read all on its own) has the details. Here’s a clip to draw you in.

For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.

In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.

Cheering, no?

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THE NOW INFAMOUS GOLDMAN-SACHS FAREWELL LETTER (IT TURNS OUT THAT GOLDMAN IS A GIANT VAMPIRE SQUID)

Just on the off chance you didn’t see the resignation letter to Goldman Sachs in NY Times Op Ed form that ran Wednesday in the paper, and caused Goldman’s market value to take a $2.2 million dive, here it is. (In reading it we learn, among other things, that Goldman’s managing directors refer to their clients as muppets.)

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THE LA WEEKLY FINDS THE…UM…GOOSE WHISPERER OF HOLLENBECK PARK (MAYBE)

This LA Weekly story does not require explanation. Here’s how it opens. (And, yes, goose whisperers are a social justice issue. I’m sure of it.)

This week, the Internet got wind of a man who allegedly bench-pressed a goose for 10 minutes at an L.A. park. Even more adorably, according to the actor who photographed the event, the goose was totally loving it.

We obviously had to get to the bottom of this.

Who is the man (and goose) behind the urban legend?

Lowell Tweeted that after bench-pressing the goose, the man “cradled it, tickled its tummy and then it walked away.” And over email, he gave us some more heartwarming details about this miraculously cooperative animal and the man whom he calls “the Goose Whisperer.”

Turns out the guy and the goose are well known. Read the rest of Simone Wilson’s column for the backstory.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: UPDATE ON NEXT DANGEROUS JAILS INSTALLMENTS

A number of you have either written us privately or inquired in the comments section about when we’d have the next chapter in the Dangerous Jails series.

Here’s the deal: We’re working on Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 will be out in the next two weeks. Chapter 6 will be out in April—presumably early April.

The wait will be worth it. I promise.