President Obama “is set to make the case for a new phase in nuclear-weapons reductions,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Despite mounting tensions with Cold War adversary Russia over the Syrian civil war and missile-defense, Mr. Obama is expected in the speech to say that the U.S. and Russia can reduce their arsenals of deployed nuclear weapons by up to another one-third, beyond the cuts mandated under the 2010 New START, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, without undercutting deterrence or capabilities.”

I joined Judd Legum and Craig Melvin on MSNBC to discuss today’s hearing on the NSA surveillance programs and the politics around it.

[Read more…]

Former Vice President Al Gore told The Guardian that the National Security Agency’s secret telephone data collection program violates the Constitution.

Said Gore: “I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way. Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

“A recent briefing by senior intelligence officials on surveillance programs failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs,” The Hill reports.

“Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials.”

“I think people have gotten the idea that there’s an Orwellian state out there that somehow we’re operating in. That’s far from the case.”

— Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, quoted by Politicker.

“I believe it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

— Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), quoted by the Huffington Post, on the secret NSA surveillance program recently made public.

“I think that there’s a group of people, younger people who are not fighting the war, who are libertarians mostly, who feel like the government is the problem.”

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Time, on the NSA surveillance programs he helped write into law.

A new Time poll finds that 42% of Americans say there is little difference between President Obama and former President George W. Bush in being careful about protecting Americans’ privacy.

“Some members of the Congress say that getting straight answers from intelligence agencies about top-secret surveillance is like playing the game ’20 Questions,’ where answers come only if a questioner knows exactly what to ask,” Reuters reports.

“They say quality of closed briefings depends largely on who conducts the sessions and whether members go in with a working knowledge of programs and pointed questions.”

“The head of the National Security Agency defended his agency’s broad electronic surveillance programs Wednesday, saying that they have helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks and that their recent public disclosure has done ‘great harm’ to the nation’s security,” the Washington Post reports.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that nearly half of all Americans say the U.S. government’s broad surveillance tactics are acceptable within limits and also found widespread concern about the methods that were revealed last week.

The poll also found that “few were completely untroubled by the news that the National Security Agency has been secretly monitoring telephone and Internet activity of millions of Americans. More than one in three of those surveyed said the activity was completely unacceptable. Others sought a middle ground, saying the government needed to balance national security with personal privacy and explain why the activity was necessary.”

“I’m worried about somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile.”

— Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), quoted by the Huffington Post, on the safety of NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

New York Times: “For years, intelligence officials have tried to debunk what they called a popular myth about the National Security Agency: that its electronic net routinely sweeps up information about millions of Americans…. But since the disclosures last week showing that the agency does indeed routinely collect data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, Obama administration officials have struggled to explain what now appear to have been misleading past statements.”

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post notes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) chastised lawmakers who claimed they were in the dark about the programs: “For senators to complain that ‘I didn’t know this was happening,’ we’ve had many, many meetings that have been both classified and unclassified that members have been invited to.”

Wonk Wire: Can we trust the NSA with our secrets?

“U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group’s followers,” the Washington Post reports.

“The operation succeeded, at least temporarily, in thwarting publication of the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine distributed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When it appeared online, the text on the second page was garbled and the following 20 pages were blank. The sabotaged version was quickly removed from the online forum that hosted it, said independent analysts who track Islamist militant Web sites.”

John Avlon notes that what connects the unruly and still-evolving scandals distracting the White House — ranging from the IRS to AP to Verizon — “is a portrait of an increasingly out-of-control federal bureaucracy that moves with an unaccountable borg-mind of its own. “

“This is the leviathan that libertarians and conservatives have warned about in sometimes overheated, hyperpartisan terms. The problem predates President Obama–government has been growing more or less consistently since the founding of the Republic, but especially since the New Deal, outpacing the growth of population. Now the complexities and temptations that come with new technology have hatched scandals that move almost on autopilot: leak investigations are announced and the gears of secret government churn on their own, often under the constitutional imperative of national security, sometimes leading to conditions contrary to the chief executive’s wishes and vision.”

Pew Research: “A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. And while the public is more evenly divided over the government’s monitoring of email and other online activities to prevent possible terrorism, these views are largely unchanged since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

“I don’t look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it’s an act of treason.”

— Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), quoted by The Hill, on the man who leaked information on National Security Agency surveillance programs.

Wall Street Journal: “The National Security Agency leaks by Edward Snowden reveal a vulnerability in U.S. intelligence since 9/11, triggered by a surge of information collected on people around the world and the proliferation of private government contractors to store, sift and manage it.”

“Thousands of workers employed by government contractors sit side by side with federal workers and hold security clearances that provide access to intelligence databases. The result is a system so enmeshed that government and contract workers are often indistinguishable.”