memeorandum: NBC News/WSJ poll: Affirmative action support at historic low (Domenico Montanaro/First Read)

1:10 PM ET, June 11, 2013

Top Items:

The Solitary Leaker — From what we know so far, Edward Snowden appears to be the ultimate unmediated man. Though obviously terrifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college.

Discussion: American Prospect, Yahoo! News, Washington Post, Gawker, Vox Popoli, p m carpenter's commentary, Hit & Run, Samizdata, No More Mister Nice Blog, Balloon Juice, Maggie's Farm, Pressing Issues and msnbc.com

ABCNEWS:

Transcript: Exclusive Interview With House Speaker John Boehner on NSA Leak, Immigration Reform And More — House Speaker John Boehner sat down with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on “Good Moring America” to discuss the NSA leak, immigration reform, the IRS scandal and much more.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Yahoo! News, The Plum Line, The Maddow Blog, National Review, ABCNEWS, The Caucus, The Raw Story, Speaker.gov and CNN

Miriam Elder / Guardian:

Edward Snowden: Russia offers to consider asylum request — Vladimir Putin's spokesman says any appeal for asylum from whistleblower who fled US will be looked at ‘according to facts’ — Russia has offered to consider an asylum request from the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, in the Kremlin's latest move to woo critics of the west.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Business Insider, American Power, Taylor Marsh, Althouse, Conservatives4Palin, CNN, The Raw Story, English, The Gateway Pundit, The Hinterland Gazette, The PJ Tatler, BobCesca.com, The Huffington Post and RT

Abby D. Phillip / ABCNEWS:
House Speaker John Boehner: NSA Leaker a ‘Traitor’

Discussion: New York Times, ABCNEWS, Politico, Yahoo! News, CNN, The Hinterland Gazette, U.S. News, Daily Mail, The Daily Caller and Business Insider

Daily Mail:
Revealed: The acrobat girlfriend of NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden... who he abandoned when he fled the U.S.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, New York Times, Gawker, Mediaite, National Review, Taking Note, Infowars, The Gateway Pundit, The Other McCain and The Daily Caller, more at Mediagazer »

Jeremy Herb / The Hill:
NSA leak is treason, says Feinstein

Discussion: Hit & Run, Politico, The Spectacle Blog, The Huffington Post, Hot Air and americanthinker.com

New York Times:
Snowden, Facing Charges, Leaves Hong Kong Hotel

Discussion: BBC, The Daily Caller, Guardian, China Real Time Report, The BLT and Blazing Cat Fur, more at Mediagazer »

New York Times:
How Edward J. Snowden Orchestrated a Blockbuster Story

Discussion: Politico, Washington Post, National Review, Salon and Business Insider, more at Mediagazer »

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

U.S. disrupts al-Qaeda's online magazine — U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group's followers, according to officials. — The operation succeeded, at least temporarily …

Discussion: The Jawa Report, The PJ Tatler and Hullabaloo

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Leaks fallout: How bad could it be? — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claims the recent wave of leaks has done “huge, grave damage” to our intelligence gathering capabilities. — Nonsense, says Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who served as the primary conduit for the leaks …

Discussion: americanthinker.com

Roger Simon / Politico:

The slacker who came in from the cold — Think you're a loser just because you dropped out of high school and never finished the military training you began? — Think you're a dud just because you work as a security guard even though you dreamed of becoming a global savior? — Well, don't beat yourself up.

Discussion: Hit & Run, Mediaite, The Hill, CNN and Reuters

Charles S. Clark / Government Executive:

Banqueters and the Spying News Bombshell — Director for National Intelligence James Clapper Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP File Photo — No one planned it that way, but the twin blockbuster stories exposing national security agencies' collection of domestic telephone logs and foreigners' Web traffic …

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Post Politics, Taylor Marsh and Weasel Zippers

Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Edward Snowden's NSA leaks are backlash of too much secrecy

Discussion: New York Times and Daily Kos

NBC Universal:
CLAPPER: LEAKS ARE “GUT-WRENCHING”

Discussion: emptywheel, Hullabaloo, Weasel Zippers and Crooks and Liars

Numbers / Pew Research Center for the People …:

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic — Public Says Investigate Terrorism, Even IF It Intrudes on Privacy — OVERVIEW — A majority of Americans - 56% - say the National Security Agency's (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans …

Rand Paul / Wall Street Journal:

Big Brother Really Is Watching Us — Monitoring hundreds of millions of phone records is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. — When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded …

Discussion: msnbc.com, Connecting.the.Dots, VodkaPundit and American Power

Ian Swanson / The Hill:

Sen. Feinstein calls Snowden's NSA leaks an ‘act of treason’ — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday said the 29-year-old man who leaked information about two national security programs is guilty of treason. — Feinstein said former National Security Agency Edward Snowden she doesn't see him as a hero or a whistle blower.

Discussion: US News, The Week, Politico, National Review, CANNONFIRE, Shakesville, The Huffington Post, emptywheel, Mediaite, Campaign for America's Future, Hot Air and The Raw Story

Jon Cohen / Washington Post:
Most Americans back NSA tracking phone records, prioritize probes over privacy

Discussion: The Week, Los Angeles Times, The Maddow Blog, The Fix, Althouse, Capital New York, Hot Air, p m carpenter's commentary, Hullabaloo, Guardian, The Volokh Conspiracy, Post Politics, KALW and The Reaction

Evan McMorris-Santoro / BuzzFeed:

Pro-Immigration Republicans Do Not Welcome Obama's Return To The Debate — After letting it play out in Congress, Obama goes big on immigration at what Republicans say is the worst possible time. — U.S. President Barack Obama is introduced by Tolu Olubunmi to speak in support …

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's …, Post Politics and Yahoo! News

Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
Tough immigration choice for GOP

Discussion: Politico and Booman Tribune

Byron York / Washington Examiner:
Marco Rubio: In immigration reform, legalization comes first — ‘It is not conditional’

Discussion: Washington Monthly, CNN, americanthinker.com, Weasel Zippers, msnbc.com, Power Line, Hot Air, Conservatives4Palin, The Gateway Pundit, Front page feed and The Plum Line

Dan Friedman / NY Daily News:
U.S. Senate to debate sweeping immigration bill favored by Obama

Discussion: Roll Call

New York Times:

Obama to End Effort to Restrict Morning-After Pill — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to stop trying to block over-the-counter availability of the best-known morning-after contraceptive pill for all women and girls, a move fraught with political repercussions for President Obama.

Guardian:
Plan B: Obama allows morning-after pill for under-17s

Discussion: The PJ Tatler, Red Alert Politics, Scared Monkeys, Balloon Juice, The Gateway Pundit, National Review and The Hill

New York Post:

Hillary's sorry state of affairs — Probes into her department's sex scandals were quashed, memo says — WASHINGTON — A State Department whistleblower has accused high-ranking staff of a massive coverup — including keeping a lid on findings that members of then-Secretary Hillary Clinton's security detail …

Discussion: The Hill, americanthinker.com, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers and National Review

Justin Gillis / New York Times:

What to Make of a Warming Plateau — As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming. — The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Weasel Zippers, National Review, NewsBusters, The PJ Tatler, Conservatives4Palin and American Power

Spencer Ackerman / Guardian:

US senators bid to force government to reveal secret surveillance rulings — Bill would compel government to disclose opinions of secret Fisa court whose judgments underpin US surveillance programs — A bipartisan group of eight senators will introduce a bill on Tuesday that would force …

Discussion: Firedoglake, Daily Kos and Wall Street Journal

Rainey Reitman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
86 Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying

Discussion: TechCrunch and Boing Boing

Domenico Montanaro / First Read:

NBC News/WSJ poll: Affirmative action support at historic low — As the Supreme Court prepares to once again weigh in on the issue of affirmative action, a record-low number of Americans support such programs, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Discussion: Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, The Hinterland Gazette, Weasel Zippers, Washington Free Beacon and New York Times

Tal Kopan / Reuters:

Bill Daley forms exploratory committee — Former White House chief of staff Bill Daley is the latest Obama White House alum to set his sights on higher office in Illinois, announcing on Tuesday he's forming an exploratory campaign to run for Illinois governor.

Discussion: Washington Wire, CNN and The Caucus

Justin Sink / The Hill:
Obama to rally support for immigration reform as Senate weighs bill

Discussion: Politico, CNN and Weasel Zippers

Philip Rucker / Washington Post:

Hillary Clinton's arrival on Twitter leaves followers wondering what's next — Her Twitter followers signed up fast, almost 1,000 of them a minute, to see what she had to say. And Hillary Rodham Clinton, debuting on the social-media site Monday with a biography identifying her as a …

Discussion: The Fix, NewsBusters, Telegraph, The New Civil Rights Movement, Red Alert Politics, The Week and Guardian

Hunter Schwarz / BuzzFeed:
6 Changes Hillary Clinton Made To Her Twitter Bio

Discussion: CNN and msnbc.com

Ron Nixon / New York Times:

Senate Passes Farm Bill; House Vote Is Less Sure — WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a sweeping new farm bill on Monday that will cost nearly $955 billion over the next 10 years, the first step in a renewed attempt at passing legislation that will set the country's food and agriculture programs and policy.