Deputy finds $800,000 in undeposited checks at Ravalli treasurer’s office

By Dan Brooks in Ravalli County Treasurer 2 Comments
Suspended Ravalli County treasurer Valerie Stamey, photographed by Alex Sakariassen of the Independent

Suspended Ravalli County treasurer Valerie Stamey, photographed by Alex Sakariassen

The Montana Department of Revenue has threatened to fine Ravalli County $37,000 if it does not file delinquent property tax reports soon. The good news is that the interim heads of the county treasury, Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg and the pleasingly-named deputy Dan Whitesitt, found $800,000 worth of undeposited checks dating back to November. Valerie Stamey, the treasurer who claimed to have uncovered a criminal conspiracy among county commissioners when they accused her of doing nothing since she was appointed, turns out to have done pretty much nothing since she was appointed.

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Worldwide spying exceeds bounds of actual world

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 2 Comments
Some high-value tactical communication on World of Warcraft

Some high-value tactical communication on World of Warcraft

I don’t know about you—because what am I, the NSA?—but I worry that blanket domestic surveillance will be a problem because the federal government could use it for evil. Recent developments suggest that I may have overlooked another possibility: blanket surveillance could be a problem because the government will use it to waste vast quantities of money and time. I refer, of course, to the news that intelligence agencies are monitoring Second Life and World of Warcraft. Props to Mose for the link. The NSA, FBI and CIA believe that terrorists and other international criminals could use online multiplayer games to secretly communicate with one another and exchange resources. In fact, terrorists are most likely to use World of Warcraft to get called fags by 14 year-olds in Ohio. It’s a real misunderstanding.

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FISC court builds body of secret law

By Dan Brooks in War on Terror 7 Comments
But this guy is the dick for telling you about it.

But this guy is the dick for telling you about it.

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal ran stories about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this week, and I urge you to read them. The FISC, which the Times insists on calling the “FISA court” after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, has established a body of case law that significantly expands the federal government’s domestic surveillance powers, and it’s all secret. You’re not allowed to know what the FISC determines the NSA and FBI can legally do, because that would help terrorists. In June, when the Senate asked NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander whether FISC would ever make some of its rulings public, Alexander said:

I don’t want to jeopardize the security of Americans by making a mistake in saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to do all that.’

So “no,” then? Here’s a link to Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” just in case Gen. Alexander is reading this. We know someone in his office is.

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Are we glad we caught David Petraeus?

By Dan Brooks in lying 2 Comments

Fox News’s handy flowchart explaining the David Petraeus affair.

Last Saturday, as you know, CIA director and four-star general David Petraeus resigned after an FBI investigation tangentially revealed that he had an affair—a real clusterfudge, it turns out, hereafter to be known as the Petraeus Affair Affair. The inciting incident in his exposure was a complaint from Jill Kelly, who told the FBI that she had received harassing emails from an anonymous source. That source turned out to be Paula Broadwell, Petraeus’s awesome and/or crazy biographer, who resented Kelly’s closeness to Petraeus because she, Broadwell, was doing sex on him. My fellow Americans: you must not do sex on your biographer. It’s like buying stock in your accountant. If Johnson could go 30 years without humping Boswell, you can do it, too.

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Friday links! Same planet, different worlds edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

Once again, Joy Behar cuts right to the essence of the story.

So yeah—Oral Roberts has a gay grandson, and his name is Randy. An ordinary person might find humor in the names Randy and Oral, just as he might predict that at least one lineal descendent of television’s most virulent homophobe would be gay. But Oral Roberts is not a normal person, and the whole thing blew his mind. One forgets that although we are all on the same planet, we live in emphatically different worlds. It’s Friday, and one person’s foundational assumption is another’s stunning discovery. This week’s link roundup is about the difference between how we live—and, by extension, how we assume others live—and how they actually do. I think you will find it touching and disturbing in turn.

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