In news that will startle exactly nobody, a Fox yapping head resorts to cheap race baiting.

Do our cyberwarriors consider it a legitimate “win” to simply delay the publication of a transnational internet operation for a week or so? At what cost? And by “cost,” I mean both the tens of millions we’re investing to develop, apparently, the capability to engage in juvenile pranks. And also the cost in credibility as a purported defender of free speech wastes its time harassing, but not preventing, the free speech of groups it doesn’t like.

Call me evil, but I think that holding innocent kids for months and years without charge (and getting off scot-free for it) is far more of a crime than any Twitter exchange.

Usually, the apparent purpose of hacks is fairly banal. To steal defense secrets. To profit organized crime. To embarrass a political opponent.

But a reported sophisticated hack on the IMF is far more intriguing…

I’m so old I can remember when Lieberman wanted to expand Medicare. It was in 2009. He endorsed at that time a plan to lower the eligibility age for Medicare to 55 and allow people from 55 to 64 to buy into the program. Then he got wind that liberals liked that idea, and revoked his support, killing the idea when it was on the precipice of passing as part of the Affordable Care Act. Now, in this op-ed, he’s gone completely in the other direction, by endorsing a plan to “raise the Medicare eligibility age every year starting in 2014 by two months until it reaches 67 in 2025.”

Why is the US Department of Justice locking away non-violent eco-activist prisoners in domestic GITMOS? Why did the US Government spend vast resources on a provocateur named Anna to set up prosecution of Eric McDavid? Eric was her lover, he along with another young man was arrested right after they stepped out of a hardware store with materials for a bomb making plot designed and instigated by the FBI’s paid informant and provocateur, Anna. At a time when we all know corporatist banksters have done trillions of damage to America’s economy and walked free, why was Eric McDavid sentenced to Federal prison for over twenty years on terrorism charges when he hadn’t actually destroyed anything? How did Marie Mason – an eco-activist who actually had carried out property destruction – come to be sentenced to over twenty years in prison on “terror” charges?

I’ll leave it to foreign policy wonks to explain the strategic rationale for having your outgoing Secretary of Defense deliver a very public rebuke to our NATO allies on the duties they owe to maintaining US hegemony. I’m sure it’s more complicated than a mere scarecrow could possibly imagine.

I’ll just limit myself to note how preposterous it is, never mind arrogant and cluelessly not-self-aware, for an American official to pretend that it’s Europe, and not US taxpayers and their elected Congress, who have steadfastly refused to pay the cost of US foreign adventures.

It now appears that Nancy Pelosi has now joined Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Israel in asking Mr. Weiner to resign. We are fortunate that Congress is standing up for ethical behavior among its members.

By now, it’s pretty clear that Wisconsin Republicans will run multiple “spoiler” candidates in recall elections set for July 12. Because of the peculiar rules of the recall, these spoiler candidates, basically Republican operatives, would run as Democrats, creating a Democratic primary election on July 12 against the official Democratic challenger. This moves back the general elections against six state Senate Republicans to August 9.

At the end of May, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed a bill that can put Vermont on the path to single-payer health care. As it stands, Vermont’s plan is to cover every resident of the state for actual health care they can use. But the Green Mountain State’s ambitious plan can only succeed if the Federal Government grants several critical waivers of existing health care laws.