Let's examine his process, shall we?

Step 1: Frame an effort to curb rampant sexual assault in the military as a "war on men" 

If you thought that Sen. Claire McCaskill's, D-Mo., objections to the nomination of Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to vice commander of the Air Force Space Command were about Helms' decision to overturn -- against the advice of legal counsel -- the conviction of a captain twice accused of sexually assaulting women he served with, then you would be wrong, says Taranto.

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There has been a lot of coverage about the potential for fast food chains and other employers to cut the hours of some of their employees to under 30 a week in order to avoid having to offer them health coverage. To the extent that employers do cut back hours, it will accelerate a long-trend toward part-time low wage work; part-timers increased from 17 percent to 22 percent of the workforce just from 2007 to 2011.

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In a lawsuit being filed Tuesday, the lawyers said the spying has hindered the ability of residents to freely practice their religion. It is the third significant legal action filed against the NYPD Muslim surveillance program since details of the spy program were revealed in a series of Associated Press reports in 2011 and 2012.

The lawsuit said that Muslim religious leaders in New York have modified their sermons and other behavior so as not to draw additional police attention. The suit is expected to be filed against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, police commissioner Raymond Kelly and the deputy commissioner of intelligence, David Cohen.

The lawsuit, which accuses the city of violating the First and Fourteenth amendments, is the latest legal challenge to the activities of the NYPD Intelligence Division. A year ago, the California-based civil rights organization Muslim Advocates sued the NYPD over its counterterrorism programs. Earlier this year, civil rights lawyers urged a judge to stop the NYPD from routinely observing Muslims in restaurants, bookstores and mosques, saying the practice violates a landmark 1985 court settlement that restricted the kind of surveillance used against war protesters in the 1960s and '70s.

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If you haven't seen Joanna Rohrback's original workout video before, Mayer's video seems random and absurdist, a throwback to Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" or "Weapon of Choice" music videos. But if you are already familiar with the greatness that is Prancercise, it feels more like total bro John Mayer is superficially attaching himself to an Internet meme, which is kind of lame.

The trying-too-hard-to-be-funny video becomes lamer still when you realize that "Paper Doll" is most likely an outright diss to former flame Taylor Swift, whose tendency to overshare in her lyrics have already spawned jokes, Twitter parody accounts and Internet memes ad absurdum. Prancercise, you are much, much better without John Mayer:

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CHICAGO — Last December, rumors about a North Korean unicorn lair circulated on the internet. Word got out that an ancient Korean king once rode this mythical beast. But soon it was discovered that this “unicorn” was not an actual unicorn, but rather an English mistranslation of the word “unicorn.” According to a report on International Business Times, the animal was actually a “beast with a dragon’s head, a deer’s body, the tail of a cow, hooves and a mane.” Because North Korea is known in the US for mysteries like these, and because the internet loves to consume bizarre or “weird” news, headlines about the supposed mythical unicorn creature lived for a while in readers’ minds.

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“Every president in this century should be put on trial,” Ayers told Real Clear Politics. “Every one of them goes into an office dripping with blood and then adds to it. And, yes, I think that these are war crimes. I think that they’re acts of terror.”

“I like him personally,” he added. “I mean, he’s a really good guy.”

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Hey, look, Google not being evil! Kind of. The news sent an electric shock through a community of privacy activists and advocates who had already spent a busy morning being exasperated by a vigorous government defense of the NSA's surveillance activities mounted during a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing.

Questions of morality aside, what Google is really trying to do is protect its reputation. The legal filing asserts that on June 6, the Guardian newspaper "published a story mischaracterizing the scope and nature of Google's receipt of and compliance with foreign intelligence surveillance requests. In particular, the story falsely alleged that Google provides the U.S. government with "direct access" to its systems, allowing the government unfettered access to the records and communications of millions of user (sic)."

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Thanks to what I've previously called the No Money Rule, however, there have only been indirect references to how cash undoubtedly tilts the debate against those who challenge the national security state.

Those indirect references have come in the form of stories about the business model of Booz Allen Hamilton, the security contractor that employed Edward Snowden.

CNN/Money notes that 99 percent of the firm's multibillion-dollar annual revenues now come from the federal government. Those revenues are part of a larger and growing economic sector within the military-industrial complex -- a sector that, according to author Tim Shorrock, is "a $56 billion-a-year industry."

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The FIFA website was (and, stunningly, remains) replaced with footage of protesters marching then meeting a vicious police response:

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“They’re just not wearing white cloaks, but this is exactly KKK type of intimidation,” Kobach told Glenn Beck.

Watch, via Right Wing Watch:

Here's how the Topeka Capital-Journal described the protest:

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SNAP rolls increased sharply in the recession, as you’d expect—along with UI, SNAP was and is highly elastic to increased need—[and] they’ve decelerated of late as the economy has slowly improved, though here again, it’s not improved as fast for those more exposed to food insecurity.

But did they increase more than they “should have” over the past few years?  One simple way to answer that question is to build a statistical model of SNAP caseloads as a function of the economy, estimate the model through 2007, and then project caseloads over the next few years based on actual economic outcomes. Then compare your forecast to the actual path of food stamp rolls.  If the conservatives are right (and you’ve got a solid model), then your prediction should be well below the actual caseload path.

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Clearly, the organization's aiming to open the tent to broadly famous individuals; Cindy McCain, who's posed for a "NO H8" photo and spoken publicly about her support of gay rights, may not exactly have done as much as the writer of "Angels in America" on behalf of gays, but the parallel-universe-First Lady may be more of a marquee name.

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Public health officials sprang into action and tested further samples from the area that triggered the system, but turned up negative results. The alert, like others issued by the system in the past decade, was ruled to be a false alarm. Obama still made his acceptance speech that night, of course, in an open-air stadium as planned. But the system’s critics say BioWatch has repeatedly triggered an alarm when no threat has existed. Now the program faces the scrutiny of Congress.

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Blackburn would seem to be an odd choice to help Republicans improve their popularity with women. On “Meet the Press” just two weeks ago she made headlines by insisting women “don’t want” equal pay laws (she of course voted against the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act.) Now she’s insisting that the House GOP’s anti-abortion bill is meant to help women, too. While it now includes an exception for victims of rape and incest, it will only apply to women who have reported those crimes to police, when a majority of survivors do not.

On MSNBC Tuesday morning, Blackburn tried to explain to an incredulous Craig Melvin that the measure is designed to help women, because it will “rid our society of these perpetrators who carry out these crimes, many times repeatedly.”

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You’ll recall that Cummings had previously charged Issa with misrepresenting the Committee’s findings when he charged that the investigation was uncovering evidence that pointed to “Washington” involvement. Cummings demanded that Issa keep an earlier pledge to release all of the transcripts of committee interviews to date. Issa refused, calling Cummings “reckless” and “irresponsible” for sharing a partial transcript of the Republican screening manager's interview, and insisting any further disclosure of interviews would “undermine the integrity of the Committee’s investigation.”

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Demonstrations began about two weeks ago in opposition to a public transit fare hike. They've since snowballed into a movement drawing hundreds of thousands across Brazil airing complaints about the government.

A record 65,000 people met in the western area of the city known as Largo da Batata on Monday to protest a 10-cent rise in metro and bus fare. The movement started with a group called Passe Livre (Free Pass), largely made up of students, which argues that students should be able to ride public transit for free. Last night, united by outrage, they were joined by members of other social movements — and others who didn't belong to any formal group at all.

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For the past two weeks, Brazil -- first Sao Paulo and now Rio too -- has been ablaze with protest and riots, which both have everything and very little to do with the raising of public transportation fare from BRL 3.00 to BRL 3.20 which went into effect on June 6. Angry Paulistanos threatened to shut the city down -- and they did.

Dan Amira --  a writer I usually like at New York's Daily Intel -- grossly patronized the Brazilian situation with a post showing images of Brazilians smashing windows and starting fires, titled "17 Photos of Brazilians Overreacting to a Nine-Cent Fare Hike." Amira gives the Brazilians the credit to say that it's not "just"about the fare hike but "the government's priorities in general." Here's the paragraph that hit me like a police baton to the stomach:

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He described the season as "not my cup of tea" and compared the viewing experience to “flipping through Instagram just watching your girlfriend blow everyone” and seeing a friend “Like” a photo of your ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend on Facebook. But Harmon's rant went into the distinctively unfunny territory when he made a rape joke, saying: "There's something awesome about having all of those preconceived notions ripped away from you. It's exciting. There's something exciting about being held down and watching your family get raped on a beach. It's liberating. It makes you focus on what's important."

Harmon has since apologized to "Community" fans, the season 4 cast and crew -- but not before former "Community" writer Megan Ganz responded to Harmon's rape comment:

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A former unpaid intern is suing the legendary music label after claiming he was required to work full-time for eight months, sometimes up to 10 hours a day, without pay.

Justin Henry, a resident of Brooklyn who interned for Atlantic in 2007, primarily spent his days filing, faxing, answering phones and fetching lunch for paid employees, according to a proposed class-action complaint obtained by IBTimes.

Maurice Pianko, Henry’s lead attorney and founder of Intern Justice, said he expects the complaint to be filed early Monday in New York Supreme Court. Lloyd Ambinder, managing partner of Virginia & Ambinder, LLP, and Jeff Brown, senior partner of Leeds Brown Law P.C., are also attorneys for the plaintiff.

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These photographs are best viewed in full-screen mode.

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Many of the hacks perpetrated by Anonymous are pretty straight-forward. Whether you agree with the hacktivist group’s methods or not, they are at least comprehensible. The latest “op” however really is baffling.

LulzSec Albania, a group of Albanian hackers associated with the LulzSec group of Anonymous allies, have hacked the Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Canada. Nope. You didn’t just have a stroke.

The website of the Swiss Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which was developed using PHP, had a vulnerability to a confirmed SQL injection flaw, which is how the hackers struck.

They stole a database containing names and login information, which the group released on Pastebin.

What was the motivation? The hackers themselves say “for the lulz.”—but what lulz?

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