Light Fare

++Mariano Rivera has 23 saves out of 24 chances this year. He appears on this week's cover of New York magazine.

++Sandy Koufax appeared at the Dodgers-Yankees' Old Timers game at Chavez Ravine. Sandy looked great and ready to pitch again. On the Yankee side Ricky Henderson appeared.

++I wish the NSA would data-mine the Washington Post's baseball writers. With 100 games left in the season, these guys are all gloom and doom because the Nats are at .500 ball. What would happen to these writers if they had to cover the 1962 Mets?

++The really great writer Iain Banks died this week,only a few weeks before his last book "The Quarry" appeared. His publishers told his fans that he received a copy before he died. Iain Bangs was probably one of the few writers who could understand Prism and make something fabulous out of it.

++For reading about the NSA flap,look at Jane Mayer's piece in this week's New Yorker on why Data-mining is more intrusive than your Gene Hackman wire tap. On these matters, I trust Ms. Mayer than the Washington pundits.

++The ACLU today sued the Obama White House for its "dragnet" approach to communications saying it violated the 1st and 4th amendments. The last time they tried this with the Bush Administration they lost at the Supreme Court 5 to 4.

++Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch is suing the Obama Administration over the Verizon court order.

++Google has requested the administration allow them to publish the NSA requests for their cooperation.

++Having struggled with Google for the past several months, I wonder whether there are real humans working there. Maybe they can forward me my passwords.

++Immigration Reform passed the Senate subcommittee. The Senate also approved by wide margins it coming to the floor and again agreed to debate the issue. Before I left for Africa, the House had passed legislation to deport all the Dream Act kids. Senator Cruz complained that Obama was the biggest obstacle to immigration reform because he insisted on a pathway to citizenship. I thought that was the point. Still 13 years to citizenship looks long.
The GOP is expected to flood the bill with amendments that include prohibiting new immigrants from receiving Obamacare. 

++The Salvation Army said that parents of gay children should die. And gays should be put to death. Not the kinder, gentler Salvation Army I used to know with their Christmas kettles.

++Expect all the same-sex marriage decisions from the Supreme Court this month. Also the Voting Rights decision.

++Check out Josh Marshall's writings about Edward Snowden at TalkingPointsMemo.com. He's taken some heat but raises the good questions from private contractors in intelligence to whether Snowden really had access to what he claims. He is not persuaded that Snowden is a martyr.

++Today marks the first time since 2005 that more Americans like George W. Bush than dislike him. 

++Today also marks six months after Newtown and with the Santa Monica shootings, the NRA now surpasses the deaths of Americans in Iraq with shooting deaths here in the States. Congratulations! A convict wrote the NRA a thank-you letter saying when he is out of prison he now can buy a gun and restart his life of crime.

++The background check bill will make a recurrence soon.

++Mitt Romney, he who paid no income taxes for ten years,has called for a Special Prosecutor for the IRS "scandal". The problem with this faux scandal is that all the perpetrators are Republicans. The supervisor in charge of ordering the review of Tea Party applications is a self-proclaimed conservative Republican. And he said there was no evidence that the White House knew anything about what he was doing.

++Conservatives are lusting for the new batch of e-mails from previously unknown State Department personnel on Benghazi. The great scandal has petered out. While I was away Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who headed the Review Board on the shooting, protested that he was never asked to present his recommendations about embassy security.

++Apparently, the State Department's Inspector General has issued a report on State Department personnel procuring prostitutes, buying drugs, and sexually harassing local women. He said that further investigations were stopped by higher-ups. While one ambassador was involved, the bulk of the complaints seemed to be against "private security contractors".

++President Obama has backed away from appealing the court decision on the Plan B pill. Instead, it will be  offered to women of all ages.

++Susan Rice and Samantha Powers appear to be moving to their new posts--as NSC director and UN Ambassador respectively. Republicans are apoplectic over Rice because of her role in the great Benghazi talking points scandal. Michael Gerson and Senator John McCain like Samantha Powers, while other conservatives claim she is anti-Israel, in the manner of Hagel.