Morning News Round-Up

For decades, the gun manufacturer-owned fringe outlier group, the NRA has helped build up its membership by ginning their fears of a massive database of gun owners kept by the government.  In fact, as Buzzfeed reports here, "the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners."

In a twist of whimsy worthy of George Orwell, if George Orwell had any whimsy, it's turned out that that database is collected and kept by the NRA itself.  It's the country’s "largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners."

I don't know if this falls under the Law of Unintended Consequences, or "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it," or -- "Geez, what did you expect from a far-right wing, radical, paramilitary, vigilante, hate organization"?

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So, you remember that fake, supposed-scandal about the IRS "targeting" far right political groups?  Not only has that already be debunked with reports of liberal groups being scrutinized, as well -- as the IRS should, for both sides -- but documents were released today by members of the House Ways and Means Committee that the Internal Revenue Service encouraged investigators to single-out groups that had the left-leaning word "emerge" in their names, as well as groups that could be seen as successors to the now-defunct, GOP-hated ACORN.

In fact, the only thing that Republicans seemingly hate more than the non-existent ACORN is that the clearly aren't being persecuted for being Republicans.  Just ridiculed.

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The Wall Street Journal has reported that the NSA has developed a surveillance network that can reach 75% of Internet traffic.

While most Americans responded with outrage, officials at the service provider AT&T have sent a team to the NSA to inquire "So, what's your trick?"  They called the home office with updates, but couldn't get a signal.

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One of the funniest hypocritical arguments in many decades has been the far right defense that Tea Party corporation love child Ted Cruz (R-TX) is eligible to run for president as a natural-born American because his mother was a U.S. citizen, even though his father was Cuban and he was born in Canada and lived there for four years.  Given that almost exactly overlaps the "birther" charges against Barack Obama (were they remotely true), it is literally impossible for them to argue that Ted Cruz is an American Citizen but the president is not.

But the funniest part of the story is that it now turns out that the one aspect of all this that is indisputable is that Ted Cruz is eligible to be Prime Minister of Canada.  Under Canada's  Citizenship Act of 1947, anyone born on Canadian soil is Canadian.  “He’s a Canadian,” said Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section.

The big problem for the fiery Cruz though, now that it turns out he is Canadian, is not whether he's eligible to run for president, it's whether or not he can now suddenly become incredibly polite.