News Nuggets 1252

DAYEE PICTURE: Jökulsárlón Beach in Iceland.  From National Geographic.

Iran President-Elect Wants to Ease Strains With U.S., but Sees No Direct Talks from the New York Times
"In his first news conference after winning Friday’s presidential election promising more freedoms and better relations with the outside world, Mr. Rowhani called the issue of nonexistent relations between Iran and the United States “an old wound, which must be healed.”"

The U.S.-Russian Information Gap (Paul J. Saunders) from the National Interest
"Spats on Syria at the G-8 highlighted how the Western and Russian media have different interpretations of the same world."

After Slow Start, Obama Administration Finds its Voice on Surveillance (Michael Crowley) from Time Magazine
"After a stunned, fumbling response to Edward Snowden’s leaks, a clearer defense of NSA and FBI programs."

Snowden’s Questionable New Turn (David Firestone) from the New York Times 
"In the last few days, however, Mr. Snowden’s leaks have taken a questionable turn. He told the South China Morning Post that the United States had hacked into many Chinese computer systems, including those at universities and businesses. And yesterday he showed documents to the Guardian revealing that the N.S.A. and its British counterpart had spied on politicians from around the world who attended the 2009 G-20 summit in London.  These documents are of a different and more dubious order than the first ones."
Another Julian Assange.

As I said...
Echoes of Julian Assange in Edward Snowden’s Latest Comments (Zeke J Miller) from Time Magazine
"Both men suggest that much, if not all, American spying abroad is wrong, including the spying on allies and foreign leaders that perhaps every government has practiced for decades, if not centuries."

Cummings Releases Full Transcript of IRS Screening Manager Interview (Jed Lewison) from Daily Kos
"So now we know why Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa didn't want to to release the full transcripts—they show everything he's been saying is bunk."

IRS Official: White House Was Not Involved In Targeting Of Conservative Groups from the Huffington Post
"Interviewers also asked Shafer if he told his screeners to specifically pull Tea Party cases. "Again, I was not asking them for those kind of cases," he said. "[I]f I would have directed them to pull our Tea Party cases, little Susie's Tea Party would have been pulled and it wasn't.""

Immigration Reform Seen Cutting Billions From Deficit from the New York Times
"A long-awaited analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the benefits of an increase in legal residents would outweigh the costs."

The Need to Feed The Crazy will Cost the GOP (Jonathan Bernstein) from the Washington Post
"Could the Republican need to obsessively oppose Obamacare, even if the alternative is something that they themselves would regard as improving it, run smack into the priorities of their allies — and leave clergy, of all groups, paying the price?"

Mitch McConnell’s Not-Very-Threatening Filibuster Threat (Jonathan Chait) from New York Magazine
"McConnell’s counter-threat is notable for a couple reasons. First, he is not promising to respond in kind to Reid, but to escalate. ... Second the frightening specifics of McConnell’s threat turn out to be … not very frightening:"

Why Democrats Are Already Jumping Aboard the Hillary Clinton Bandwagon (Josh Kraushaar) from National Journal
"Claire McCaskill's endorsement was a bow to reality: Democrats don't want to challenge Clinton in 2016."

ACADEMIA NUGGET!!
Is There a “Liberal Bias” in Academia? from Salon
Sociologist Neil Gross dispels the myth that college campuses are overrun with lefty East Coast intellectuals."