Liberal blogger gets skewered on Twitter for failed Obamacare prediction
Poor Matt Yglesias.

The liberal economics blogger for Slate thinks he knows more than you. So when people began predicting that the Obamacare exchanges might not get off to such a great start, he was there to correct them.

“I wanted to once again take the opportunity to lay down a marker and say once again that Obamacare implementation is going to be a huge political success,” he wrote in July on his blog....

Bill Maher: Fear of assassination drives Obama’s policies
HBO’s Bill Maher suggested during his show Friday that President Obama is leading as a “centrist” out of fear of being assassinated like John F. Kennedy.

The “Real Time” host said that leaders such as JFK always “get cut out of the picture, violently or otherwise, and maybe that is why Barack Obama is a little more of the centrist than we want him to be.”

MSNBC host Chris Matthews, appearing as a guest on the show, said he was surprised by the “extraordinary statement.”

“I’m amazed. I’m impressed you think that,” Mr. Matthews said.

Mr. Maher explained that assassination is probably something that President Obama thinks about at night.

“He has to change his policies for that reason?” Mr. Matthews asked.

“I don’t think that is an insult to say to somebody that he may modulate his policies because he is afraid of all the hate that he sees,” Mr. Maher replied....

Edward Snowden’s secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them
If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them?

...In which case, guys, uncurl your lips and explain what it is, exactly, that the NSA and GCHQ, are doing that is so profoundly terrible? What justifies all the posturing we’ve been subjected to these past months? I watched The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who obtained the Snowden scoop, on Newsnight the other evening and was nonplussed. I wanted him to say what the real scandal was that he had uncovered. But he did not....

...Which leads on to the second issue. If the security services insist something is contrary to the public interest, and might harm their operations, who am I (despite my grounding from Watergate onwards) to disbelieve them? ...