Keith Vaz, chair of Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee (artist’s conception)
The good news is that the United States was not involved in any way with the UK’s decision to detain David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, under Schedule 7 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000. Sure, we knew about it in advance, but we didn’t request or encourage it—nor do we condemn it, and we won’t say whether we benefited from it. According to pleasingly-named White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the British detention of the boyfriend of the journalist who reported the Edward Snowden leaks is just a fact the US government calmly absorbed, like a jellyfish encountering a Gummi Bear. Our executive branch’s placidity in the face of what is maybe the most naked abuse of anti-terrorism law in the modern era is a model we all can follow, and so is its use of understatement. Quote from important British person after the jump.