The following is a rundown of the day’s news drawn from other media sources with topics curated just for Money and Markets readers: personal security and freedom, Obamacare, and the Olympic Games.
Personal security and freedom
NSA’s Secret Role in Assassination Program
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes — an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
Gun-Control Activist Swears He Forgot He Was Carrying Gun While Visiting School
A Buffalo, N.Y., community activist who is well-known locally for pushing for a highly restrictive 2013 gun-control law has been arrested for carrying a gun illegally at a public elementary school.
Lights Out for NSA?
The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland, will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way. The proposal is the latest in a series of state bills aiming to cut off the NSA one jurisdiction at a time for ignoring the Fourth Amendment with its dragnet collection of phone and Internet records.
TSA Agent Humiliates Cancer Victim
A cancer victim who suffers from incontinence was humiliated during an incident last week when a TSA agent loudly announced “he’s wearing a diaper” to waiting travelers, before laughing and subjecting the man to a strip search.
Revelations by AOL Boss Raise Fears Over Privacy
Tim Armstrong, the chief executive of AOL, apologized last weekend for publicly revealing sensitive health-care details about two emloyees. Patient and work force experts say the gaffe could have a lasting impact on how comfortable Americans feel about bosses’ data-mining their personal lives.
Obamacare
Obama Rewrites Obamacare
“Obamacare” increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law’s employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever.
Boehner Statement on Latest Manipulation of Obamacare
If the administration doesn’t believe employers can manage the burden of the law, how can struggling families be expected to? This continued manipulation by the president breeds confusion and erodes Americans’ confidence in him and his health-care law.
Obama: I Can Do Whatever I Want
“That’s the good thing as a President, I can do whatever I want,” said Obama. The comment came around the time the White House announced it would be delaying the Obamacare mandate for some businesses unilaterally.
‘This Is Stuff You Do in a Banana Republic’
It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision. It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains.
Olympic Games report
TV Ratings: ‘The Walking Dead’ Outperforms Winter Olympics
TV’s reigning ratings champ kicked off its midseason run on Sunday night facing an unfamiliar foe: the Olympics. For the first time in its four-season run, AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ went head-to-head against the games and it lost no steam facing the stiff competition.
Sochi Games Draw Sparse Crowds as Organizers Fill Seats With Volunteers
With half-empty stands surrounding some of the events at the Sochi Olympics, organizers are turning to giving away free tickets as indications are showing that foreign fans have stayed home over a variety of concerns, ranging from terrorist threats to the big bucks needed to reach the Black Sea resort town hosting the Games.
Temperatures in Sochi Warm Enough to Be Summer Olympics
On Monday, these sub-tropical Olympics really started to heat up with temperatures soaring to 16 degrees C (61 degrees F). That led to skiers in the mountains above Sochi putting snow in their racing suits to cool down, and left ski jumpers landing in puddles.
Not Again! Bobsledders Tweet They’re Stuck — This Time in Elevatoro
Team USA bobsledders Johnny Quinn and Nick Cunningham tweeted that they were stuck in a broken elevator. On Sunday, British bobsledder Rebekah Wilson tweeted that she had a near-miss with an open elevator shaft in Sochi. It sure is dangerous in Sochi for a bobsledder, and their event hasn’t even started.
Best wishes,
The Money and Markets Team
