Tuesday, October 29, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

News of the day

Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”  
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said  Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.
The White House does not dispute that many in the individual market will lose their current coverage, but argues they will be offered better coverage in its place, and that many will get tax subsidies that would offset any increased costs.
“One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions.  The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits,” said White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo.
“Nothing in the Affordable Care Act forces people out of their health plans: The law allows plans that covered people at the time the law was enacted to continue to offer that same coverage to the same enrollees – nothing has changed and that coverage can continue into 2014,” she said
Individual insurance plans with low premiums often lack basic benefits, such as prescription drug coverage, or carry high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. The Affordable Care Act requires all companies to offer more benefits, such as mental health care, and also bars companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.
Today, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about the president’s promise that consumers would be able to keep their health care. “What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide,” Carney said. “So it's true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.”
Other experts said that most consumers in the individual market will not be able to keep their policies. Nancy Thompson, senior vice president of CBIZ Benefits, which helps companies manage their employee benefits, says numbers in this market are hard to pin down, but that data from states and carriers suggests “anywhere from 50 to 75 percent” of individual policy holders will get cancellation letters. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who chairs the health committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, says that estimate is “probably about right.” She added that a few states are asking insurance companies to cancel and replace policies, rather than just amend them, to avoid confusion.
A spokesman for America's Health Plans says there are no precise numbers on how many will receive cancellations letters or get notices that their current policies don’t meet ACA standards. In both cases, consumers will not be able to keep their current coverage.
Those getting the cancellation letters are often shocked and unhappy.
George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.
And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.
"The deductible is less," he said, "But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable."
"I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick," Schwab added. "Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable." 
 
Heather Goldwater, 38, of South Carolina, is raising a new baby while running her own PR firm. She said she received a letter last July from Cigna, her insurance company, that said the company would no longer offer her individual plan, and promised to send a letter by October offering a comparable option. So far, she hasn't received anything. 
 
"I'm completely overwhelmed with a six-month-old and a business,” said Goldwater. “The last thing I can do is spend hours poring over a website that isn't working, trying to wrap my head around this entire health care overhaul."
Goldwater said she supports the new law and is grateful for provisions helping folks like her with pre-existing conditions, but she worries she won’t be able to afford the new insurance, which is expected to cost more because it has more benefits. "I'm jealous of people who have really good health insurance," she said. "It's people like me who are stuck in the middle who are going to get screwed." 
 
Richard Helgren, a Lansing, Mich., retiree, said he was “irate” when he received a letter informing him that his wife Amy's $559 a month health plan was being changed because of the law. The plan the insurer offered raised his deductible from $0 to $2,500, and the company gave him 17 days to decide.
The higher costs spooked him and his wife, who have painstakingly planned for their retirement years. "Every dollar we didn't plan for erodes our standard of living," Helgren said.
Ulltimately, though Helgren opted not to shop through the ACA exchanges, he was able to apply for a good plan with a slightly lower premium through an insurance agent.
He said he never believed President Obama’s promise that people would be able to keep their current plans.
"I heard him only about a thousand times," he said. "I didn't believe him when he said it though because there was just no way that was going to happen. They wrote the regulations so strictly that none of the old polices can grandfather."
For months, Laszewski has warned that some consumers will face sticker shock. He recently got his own notice that he and his wife cannot keep their current policy, which he described as one of the best, so-called "Cadillac" plans offered for 2013. Now, he said, the best comparable plan he found for 2014 has a smaller doctor network, larger out-of-pocket costs, and a 66 percent premium increase.
“Mr. President, I like the coverage I have," Laszweski said. "It is the best health insurance policy you can buy."


Until I got Medicare a few years ago I had no health insurance due to the cost. My health was very good and I simply didn't go to the doctor very often. I see from this that a large number of individuals do carry insurance, but it doesn't cover prescription drugs or mental healthcare. Now the Affordable Health Care mandates full coverage, but allows the insurance company to set the premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and being one of the big boys of the business world, they are setting the prices high. The president says the government will help cover premium costs and lower premiums may be found on the network they have set up – whose website isn't working – so I hope that will turn out to be true. $1,200 a month for health insurance is a very high cost on most budgets. It would be impossible on mine. I wonder what the fine that the IRS is planning to charge will be. If it's not too high, I'm betting many people will opt out on buying insurance and just pay the fine. There will be more bad news for the Obama administration on all this as time goes by, I'm sure, and there may be even more problems with the plan yet to be seen. I'm safe because I have Medicare, but I'm sorry to see this. I wonder how many buyers they have to have in order to keep the Affordable Care plan afloat?



Spy chiefs to face Congress as European allies complain about surveillance


WASHINGTON -- When top U.S. intelligence officials testified at a congressional hearing weeks ago, the public uproar was over the National Security Agency collecting the phone and email records of Americans.
But when the NSA director and other spy chiefs appear at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday it will be against a backdrop of angry European allies accusing the United States of spying on their leaders and citizens.

The most prominent target appears to have been German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose mobile phone was allegedly tapped by the NSA.
More than any previous disclosures from material given to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the reports of spying on close U.S. allies have forced the White House to promise reforms and even acknowledge that America's electronic surveillance may have gone too far.
"We recognize there needs to be additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate's intelligence committee, joined the ranks of critics on Monday, expressing outrage at U.S. intelligence collection on allies, and pique that her committee was not informed.

"With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies -- including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany -- let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed," said Feinstein, who appeared to confirm U.S. spying on Merkel's communications since 2002.
The White House is conducting a review of intelligence programs prompted by disclosures about top secret spying programs to the media by Snowden, who is living in Russia, out of reach of U.S. attempts to arrest him.
NSA Director General Keith Alexander, NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Deputy Attorney General James Cole will testify at an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee at 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Their testimony will cover NSA programs and potential changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which regulates electronic eavesdropping.

"The House Intelligence Committee continues to assess a number of proposals to improve transparency and strengthen privacy protections to further build the confidence of the American public in our nation's FISA programs," said Susan Phalen, spokeswoman for Republican committee Chairman Mike Rogers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a similar hearing in late September at which Feinstein said proposals included putting limits on the NSA's phone metadata program, prohibiting collection of the content of phone calls, and legally requiring that intelligence analysts have a "reasonable articulable suspicion" that a phone number was associated with terrorism in order to query the database.
Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe, said the administration needed to be more proactive in handling the uproar.
"The administration has been completely reactive to these leaks," she said.
The allegations of U.S. spying on Merkel and other leaders are likely to have a lasting impact on relations, Conley said.
In the last several years, Europeans have been disappointed with the Obama administration over its failure to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and its use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects. The spectacle of the recent federal government shutdown also dented U.S. prestige in Europe.
"It's just raising really big doubts, uncertainties and question marks about not only the president's leadership but whether the United States is a reliable ally," Conley said.


The danger in having the capability to track the conversations of millions of people is that a government – any government – is likely to use it and cloak it under Secret clearances. Then millions of patriotic citizens will defend it as a duty of their loyalty. Many Americans are in love with an idea of America as the most powerful, and therefore the “best” nation in the world. It seems to me that the rule “absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies. We need to be more transparent in our actions to retain the good will of our allies, and also to deserve the claim that we are the “best.” Israel was in the news several years ago for spying on the US and I was angry. It doesn't feel good to be on the receiving end of aggressive actions, so we should only do such things if there is a pressing need. We are at peace with Germany, and the head of an allied state should have a reasonable right to privacy.



'Don't giggle': Law firm under fire for memo to female employees
A law firm's employee memo about professional behavior has gone viral — and is being blasted online for what some say are sexist undertones. 
Prestigious global law firm Clifford Chance, which has 35 offices in 25 countries, is coming under fire for the five-page guide, sent to all the female employees in its two U.S. offices in New York and Washington, D.C. The tips, including “don’t giggle,” “don’t take your purse up to the podium,” and “no one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage” was sent last week and leaked online shortly after.
The legal blog Above the Law acquired the memo and published it. Immediately, commenters began to weigh in with a wide range of opinions — some felt that the email was sexist, while others thought that the advice was solid despite a couple of clunkers taken out of context.
“Where is the corresponding document for men?” one commenter asked.
“Read the memo and take a lesson from what might apply to you. If some of the points don't apply to you, ignore them and move on,” wrote another.
A spokeswoman from Clifford Chance dismisses the allegations that the firm is sexist, saying that the memo was actually written by a woman. “It was put together by a female partner from her personal perspective after years of public speaking,” the rep told TODAY.com. “A lot of the tips in the document were gender-neutral. We believe that it is important that women as well as men are given access to a range of different viewpoints and approaches.”
According to Staci Zaretsky, the Above the Law assistant editor and law school grad who posted the memo, the Clifford Chance email was seen as insulting because so many of its tips (like “wear a suit, not your party outfit”) seemed obvious. 
“By the time you graduate from law school and pass the bar and work in a law office , you know how to dress,” she said, pointing out that any newly hired lawyer has already worked internships or summer associate jobs. “You saw other people dress poorly and get in trouble, and you know how to stay on the safe side.”
This isn’t the first time that a female Clifford Chance employee has spoken out about work. Last year, one of the firm’s female associates, who called herself Ms. X, quit her job by writing an email about the struggles of balancing family and a demanding workload.
The email, written in the form of a daily schedule, went viral. It included items like “Attempt to prioritize to-do list and start tasks; start an email delegating a portion of the tasks (then, remember there is no one under me)” and “finally arrive at daycare, baby spits up on suit, get kids to their classrooms , realize I have a conference call in 15 minutes.”
Victoria Schwartz, associate professor at Pepperdine University’s law school, believes that the Clifford Chance memo may have been a response to stories like Ms. X's — an attempt to specifically help out female employees by giving them advice from older, more experienced colleagues.
“Part of what we teach our law students is how to be professionals,” explains Schwartz. “I can’t model for my male students what male attire should look like, but I make a point of modeling it for women.”
Schwartz feels that female-specific advice from women is a good way to address workplace inequality. “Part of this memo is saying, ‘look, there are different dynamics.' You can pretend it doesn’t exist or you can give women tools. There’s at least potential that the firm was trying to do something good here.”


This was interesting to me in that some of the things mentioned (don't show cleavage) are apparently a problem at the current time or they wouldn't have been mentioned. I know they are in some work environments that I have been in. I've seen people in what looks like party dresses at work – super soft and sheer fabrics – and while I don't want to have to wear a suit to work because I like a “business casual” office, I would buy suits if I worked in a prestigious law office. “Don't giggle” does sound sexist to me. For the men we might say “don't be a bully.” Some of the things in this memo seemed to be aimed at the non-professional level of employees and not at the lawyers. I would expect the lawyers to try to be dignified and follow conservative dress rules as a matter of course. One thing I didn't see mentioned was “don't wear a mini-skirt.” Many business suits have very short skirts. That should be stated while they're at it. And maybe “don't wear perfume or other highly scented products.” Many people are allergic to perfume in the air, especially the stronger scents. I think sending this memo around was more fair than firing employees without warning over one of these issues. And I don't find that the phrase “be professional” is informative enough, if the business is thinking about dismissing the employee. They need fair warning in that case. So, for me, this memo was not anti-feminist. It might have more to do with “class” and personal maturity instead.



Poverty linked to smaller brains, study finds

NEW YORK - Children who grow up in poor families may have smaller brains than their more well-off peers, says a new study. But good parenting may help overcome that disadvantage.
Researchers found that kids who grew up poor tended to have smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes. Those areas of the brain are partly responsible for regulating memory and emotions.
"Generally speaking, larger brains within a certain range of normal are healthier brains," Dr. Joan Luby, the study's lead author, said.
"Having a smaller brain within a certain range of normal is generally not healthy. It's associated with poorer outcomes," Luby told Reuters. She is a professor of child psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Prior studies looking at poverty and brain size found similar patterns. But Luby and her colleagues also wanted to look at what may bring about brain changes.
They found kids tended to have smaller brains when they had experienced stressful life events or when their parents were hostile or unsupportive.
The new findings give parents and researchers a "very specific and changeable" target, Luby said.
For their report, published in JAMA Pediatrics, she and her colleagues used data from an existing study of 145 children from in and around St. Louis.
The children were between the ages of six and 12 at the time their brains were imaged. They had been followed since preschool with annual screenings.
The screenings included tests for stress and whether or not the children had entered puberty. At one session, parents and their children were observed together and the researchers assessed parenting styles.
They found children from poor families tended to have smaller brains. But stressful life events and a lack of parental support in family interactions explained some of that link.
The study can't prove poverty or parenting caused the changes in brain size. But the findings suggest the chance that poor children will have smaller brains may be reduced with supportive parenting, Luby said.
She added that kids would do best with parents who are sensitive, nurturing, attentive and emotionally available.
"It's not as if those affluent families are protected from these same (parenting) issues," Charles Nelson, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study, said.
"The reason it's probably more common in poorer families is that they're lacking in resources and trying to make ends meet."
"There is a level of background stress … that may keep them from being the parent they want to be," Nelson told Reuters. He is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital.
Nelson said the findings are limited by the fact that many children in the study were depressed or at high risk of depression. That may influence the results. But he said the new study adds to what is already known about poverty and childhood brain development.
Luby said it will be important to find out what interventions - such as early preschool programs, for instance - may encourage a healthy environment for the developing brain.
"Biology is very much influenced by the environment," she said. "The question is what period might be the time when the brain is most sensitive to influence."


It looks like poverty tends to affect how well people parent their children in many cases. It is stressful on a daily basis to struggle with the lack of money. That it actually affects the size of their child's brain is surprising and could show how a kid's background causes him to have poorer grades in school and less emotional control – like the girl who recently was arrested for bullying another child. Her mother has been arrested for beating two of the other children, and she probably did the same to all her children. Maybe social service agencies should intervene earlier when abuse is suspected and remove the child from the home. Of course sometimes foster parents are no better in their parenting skills than the original parents, and they don't have the natural love that most parents do. I noticed that this article didn't mention the simple differences in nutrition that also tend to be part of the poverty cycle. Poor nutrition causes all sorts of developmental problems.


Study reveals people physically take pleasure in others' pain
Scientific evidence shows that people take pleasure in others' pain, a study claims.
A collection of four experiments showed biological and self-reported evidence that people experienced happiness when someone they were jealous of or despised had something negative happen to them.
The phenomenon is known as "Schadenfreude."
The first experiment measured subjects' physical responses to various people and situations. The participants had their cheek movements monitored with an electromyogram (EMG), which measures the electrical activity of facial movements when a person smiles.
The participants were shown photos of various stereotypical people: the elderly (pity), students or Americans (pride), drug addicts (disgust) and rich professionals (envy). Then, the photographs were paired with a positive, neutral or negative events like winning five dollars, going to the bathroom or getting soaked by a taxi. The subjects were then asked how they would feel if this event happened to the person in the picture.
No matter what people said, the scientists saw that people tended to smile more when something negative happened to the rich individuals.
The second experiment used self-reporting and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to see if subjects were okay with harming certain people. The fMRI looked at blood flow changes in the brain. The subjects were shown the same photographs and events in the first study, and then asked on a scale of one to nine (with nine being extremely good) how they felt about the event happening to the person.
The participants said they felt the worst about the positive events happening to the rich individuals, and felt the best about the negative occurrences happening to people in that group.
Two weeks later, the subjects were asked to take an online survey. They played a scenario-based game that allowed them to hurt another person with electric shocks in order to avoid others from being hurt. They were all too willing to allow the rich professionals to be shocked when they didn't have to physically tell someone their answer.
"People were willing to hurt an envy target, saying, 'Yes, let's shock her,'" lead author Mina Cikara, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a press release. "We found that surprising because we weren't certain participants would self report that. While it's true that people are generally averse to harming others, the bottom line is that people don't feel this way all the time."
The third experiment switched up the stereotypes of the rich individual in order to get rid of stereotype bias. The subjects were asked to read various scenarios about an investment banker, including one where he was employed and a member of the status quo (signifying envy), another where he was advising clients pro-bono (pride), another where he was using his money to buy drugs (disgust) and another where he was unemployed but still dressing as if he was going to work (pity).
As the previous experiments showed, the subjects were less understanding about the envy and disgust scenarios than they were about the pride and pity.
In the final experiment, subjects were asked to watch a game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. All participants had been prescreened for "intense fandom" for either team. They were monitored with fMRIs, and self-reported how they felt when they watched a series of plays where the opponent of their favorite team was struck out, scored runs or made amazing plays.
Not surprisingly, subjects reported more pleasure when they saw their team winning. But, when they watched a neutral team -- the Baltimore Orioles -- do the same thing, the fans had little to no reaction to positive or negative events. They also did not wish Orioles fans any harm.
That was until the subjects saw their rival team lose to the Orioles -- they all reported intense happiness.
An online self-reported survey two weeks after the test showed that both groups of "intense" fans were more likely to heckle, insult, threaten or hit a opposing fan while watching the plays.
"We used a sporting event because it's something you can bottle," said Fiske. "Rabid fans are passionate about it, and we were looking for an intergroup phenomenon that reaches people where they live. This is certainly it. But it's important to remember that this study isn't just about sports teams. It's about intergroup rivals of more consequence."
The authors argued that a lack of empathy for others isn't always a pathological problem. It can be a human response that many people experience. They pointed out that if Schadenfreude exists, setting up competitions in the workplace may backfire -- and breed a desire among co-workers to see others fail.
"It's possible, in some circumstances, that competition is good. In other ways, people might be preoccupied with bringing other people down, and that's not what an organization wants," Cikara said.
This mentality can also spread to the American government, which the authors argued is seen as a world power but not necessarily one that can relate to other people or countries. Studies have shown that this makes America a bully in other people's eyes, and the authors pointed out this study may show that this mentality can increase animosity among citizens of other countries.
The study was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in September.


This story is about the human tendency to compete. I am not generally competitive unless confronted, though I do feel it with political party issues, sports teams if I watch the sport, or certain human interactions such as bullying behavior and extreme social class privileges. I don't approve of bringing up kids to be competitive people, since I think humility is better. Striving to achieve can be done without ego ruling the personality – just try to do your best in your own endeavors. That's good enough. I like to see people cooperate instead of having conflicts, and be nurturing individuals in their relationships. Love if you can, tolerate if you can't. Then relax a little and enjoy life.



Amid controversy over NSA programs, Congress mulls changes
Amid growing questions about the United States' international surveillance programs, the House Intelligence Committee is turning its attention back to the question of whether to amend the laws about metadata collection by the National Security Agency.
The rare open hearing before the panel Tuesday features Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander, and Deputy Director of the NSA Chris Inglis. The witnesses from the NSA are all but certain to be asked about U.S. surveillance of its allies, which has been in the news this week.
Chairman Mike Rogers opened the hearing with a defense of the country's intelligence collection, which he said has and will help to break up terrorist plots in an increasingly interconnected world.
"Our challenge is to build confidence and transparency while keeping our intelligence services agile and effective against our adversaries," he said. Rogers added that what makes the U.S. unique is not that it collects foreign intelligence - every country does that, he said - but that it has a unique commitment to privacy.
"China does not ask a FISA court for a warrant to listen to a phone call on their state-owned and censored network. The Russian Duma does not conduct oversight on the FSB" he said. "But America has those checks; America has those balances. That is why we should be proud of the manner in which America collects intelligence."
NSA spying: Will Obama end surveillance program on world leaders?
NSA surveillance: Officials defend programs
Among the changes the panel is putting the attorney general, instead of the NSA, in charge of making a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" determination that a particular phone number is related to a terrorist and therefore may be used to search bulk telephone records. They are also examining ways to increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, including the possibility of requiring more court orders to be declassified or publicly released in redacted form.
Rogers said transparency could also improve by codifying the process and standards for what happens to information that is incidentally collected about U.S. citizens who are not the target of their programs, and to provide more public reporting how often it happens.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger,D-Md., the committee's ranking member, said, "One key fact we need to keep in mind is that NSA's focus is on foreign threats. Under FISA, NSA does not target Americans in the U.S. and does not target Americans anywhere else, without a court order."
The entire U.S. surveillance program has been under fire this year after leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the collection of both domestic and foreign communications.
Germany has been particularly incensed after learning that the U.S. government monitored the communications of Chancellor Angela Merkel for years. The White House insists it is not and will not spy on Merkel in the future, but media reports indicate that President Obama only learned of the program this summer.
On Monday, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., indicated that the Senate was also not informed about the program and called for a total review of all intelligence programs.
"With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies--including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany--let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed," she said in a statement. She also said the White House had informed her that monitoring of the U.S.'s allies would not continue.
The White House did not comment on Feinstein's statement, instead asserting that they are in the middle of a broad review of intelligence collection that will examine "whether we have the appropriate posture when it comes to Heads of State; how we coordinate with our closest allies and partners; and what further guiding principles or constraints might be appropriate for our efforts," according to National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. "We are also looking at whether the system that's been in place for many years, called the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, could be modified to provide better policy guidance for our intelligence activities."
The review is expected to conclude by the end of the year.


I hope they do cut back on information collection from people who are not under rightful suspicion, both in this country and abroad. Having it be restricted to cases that are approved by the Attorney General as stated above would be very helpful. In an article several years ago about the kind of information they were collecting it gave as an example that a reference in a telephone conversation to “a birthday party” could be in actuality about a terrorist attack. It's clear to me that it is far more likely to be about a birthday party, just like it says.

After 9/11 our regulations concerning the government spying on the people of the US changed. In one way it was understandable, but in another way it was dangerous. We came one more step toward being a “Big Brother” society. Not long after that there were several instances in the news of people going to the airport to travel somewhere and finding that there was a “no fly” ban on their name. Sometimes it was a common name and therefore a mistake was made, but sometimes it could easily be that “evidence” collected by the NSA had made it's way into a file somewhere in the government on that citizen. With a rule like “birthday party” means “bomb attack” I can see how a mistake like that could be made.

I do hope that Congress will make some meaningful changes in our laws. It's bad indeed that spying on the likes of Angela Merkel has been going on, apparently without any real suspicion of her, but the citizens of this country should be safe from it as well. Unfortunately I can see why some people hate and fear “the government.” While those people are generally on the borderline of the law --- members of the NeoNazi party, etc. -– they are looking at the great amount of information that is arbitrarily withheld from the populace. That poisons the atmosphere of politics in this country and makes us less stable as a society.