Harry Truman spoke in the U.S. Senate on June 23, 1941: "If we see that Germany is winning," he said, "we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible."

Did Truman value Japanese lives above Russian and German? There is nothing anywhere to suggest that he did. Yet we debate, every August 6th or so, whether Truman was willing to unnecessarily sacrifice Japanese lives in order to scare Russians with his nuclear bombs. He was willing; he was not willing; he was willing. Left out of this debate is the obvious possibility that killing as many Japanese as possible was among Truman's goals.

One media pundit described the event as an earthquake caused by so many jaws hitting the floor at once. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just bought the Washington Post for a cool $250 million. A family owned and operated newspaper for nearly eight decades was just gobbled up for a little more than 1% of Bezos's massive personal fortune.

The Washington Post was the gold standard for investigative journalism in America when it came to national security. It broke the Watergate scandal. It defied Nixon again when it published the Pentagon Papers along with the New York Times. It was an early partner with the Guardian in publishing some of Edward Snowden's revelations, although it seems to have gotten cold feet as of late. Perhaps we are seeing why.

Had Bezos been shopping for just any big marque newspaper he could have picked up the Boston Globe for a paltry $70 million just last month. He is one of the few that could easily outbid the Koch brothers for the LA Times and/or the Chicago Tribune. Big name newspapers are a steal for tech moguls. The Washington Post was what he wanted and the Washington Post is what he got.

My, my. The coverup starts in the Metro section lead which begins, “[Franklin] County election officials say they think a clerical error is to blame for 19 Columbus police officers having their voting addresses listed as the Downtown police headquarters.”

Now, if a lower-class black male had used his work address as a voting address, and tried to vote in the inner-city Driving Park area, the headline would have read: “Massive voter fraud uncovered in urban inner-city precinct: ACORN is suspected.”

It is a fifth-degree felony to intentionally register to vote at your work address instead of your residence. The police might enforce the laws, but it doesn’t mean they obey them.

As the Dispatch pointed out, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who supervises the vote in Ohio, “…isn’t particularly concerned about police officers registering their work address.”

Like all schoolchildren in America, Congress is now on summer recess. Predictably, while unsupervised, they have taken to playground shoving and taunting in earnest. A troika of ardent NSA defenders took to the airwaves Sunday to claim that they were fully informed. Meanwhile a member of the small but growing wing of Congress with the reading comprehension skills to digest the Constitution took to social media to dispute them.

Thursday afternoon at 2:31 an email was sent to Congressional staffers through the House email system called “E-Dear Colleagues.” The system electronically mimics the old style of sending paper memos between lawmakers in what was called a “Dear Colleagues” letter. According to a staffer who was interviewed about the email, this system is high traffic and as a result is used by “less than half of Congressional staffers.” He went on to describe the email list as opt-in only by topic and “kind of spammy.” Most effective communication and appointments made between lawmakers happen through their staff schedulers.

Having agreed to Putin's conditions of not making additional revelations, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden packed his bag and moved to an undisclosed location somewhere in Russia after having been granted temporary asylum. The revelations continued anyway as the Guardian released another top secret document detailing another NSA spying program called XKEYSCORE. The heavily redacted XKEYSCORE document details how the NSA searches internet users actual communications contents as opposed to metadata.