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In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, Sen. Lindsey Graham told Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer that “We need to revisit our laws" and potentially give the FBI more power to track terrorism suspects, because lord knows we haven't shredded quite enough of our civil rights already.

No amount of deaths are ever enough for Graham to want to infringe on the Constitutional rights of gun owning Americans, but as soon as the word terrorism is involved, all bets are out the window.

Graham warns intel agencies ‘going back to pre-9/11 stove-piping’:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said “information sharing failed” ahead of the Boston Marathon bombings and warned that stove-piping between intelligence agencies remained a problem.

“This is a failure to share information and missing obvious warning signs,” said Graham Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We are going back to pre-9/11 stove-piping,” he warned.

Graham called for a “post-mortem” to examine the intelligence failures and see if such missteps could be prevented in the future, citing reports that the FBI failed to interview suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev after a trip to Russia, where authorities believe he was partly radicalized and the failure of the agency to notify agents in Boston to watch him more closely.

“How could you miss that the guy you were informed about by a foreign intelligence service, you got a radical in your midst, we can’t track him to Russia, we lose him going to Russia and coming back,” asked Graham. “And when he goes on the internet for the whole world to see, to interact with a radical Islamic websites how do we miss that?

“We’re going to have to up our game,” said the South Carolina senator. [...]

Graham’s comments are the latest from GOP lawmakers frustrated that intelligence system reforms made after the September 11, 2001 attacks have failed to work. Lawmakers fear that the same intelligence sharing issues before that incident are again playing a role in the Boston attack.

Graham last week suggested that the FBI may need more powers to track terror suspects.

“We need to revisit our laws,” he said.

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Jason Easley over at Politicususa pegged this one exactly right when it comes to what to expect next from Republicans, given what we heard from a number of them on the Sunday bobblehead shows this weekend complaining about how the FBI handled the investigation of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

As Easley noted, "If you thought the Republican behavior after Benghazi was bad, their desperate fishing expedition on Boston could be even worse." Sadly, we probably haven't seen the worst of Sen. Lindsey Graham getting a chronic case of the vapors during a Congressional hearing just yet.

Republicans Launch Their Campaign to Blame Obama for Boston By Attacking the FBI:

Republicans took to the Sunday morning shows to attack the FBI, and to lay the groundwork for blaming President Obama for the Boston bombings. [...]

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where Graham and King are going with this. Soon they will call for hearings on how the FBI handled the intelligence they had before the events in Boston. Their purpose is twofold. They are looking for something to use to revive the Bush era war on terror policies, and they are searching for some way to blame President Obama for the attacks.

There is a difference between saying that the FBI needs to review how they handled any information they may have had before the attacks, and using politically loaded language like "the FBI dropped the ball." King and Graham are trying to set up a narrative that will tie any “failures” that they find to President Obama. That is where this is heading.

I'm sure it won't take too long to find out if he's right or not, and in the meantime, I wouldn't bet against the prediction.

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It seems we've got at least one Republican who is not on board with Sen. Lindsey Graham and crew and their talking points on whether the FBI did their job in investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the Boston Marathon bombing and on whether his brother ought to be treated as an enemy combatant.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed Friday in a shootout with police, travelled to Russia in 2012, he may have done so under an alias.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month stay in Russia last year “becomes extremely important” as a key to the investigation of the Boston bombings, Rogers told NBC’s David Gregory. His visit to Russia “would lead one to believe that that’s probably where he got that final radicalization to push him to commit acts of violence and where he may have received training” in terrorist techniques. Rogers, a former FBI agent, said the FBI had questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev after being given information from a foreign intelligence service “that they were concerned about his possible radicalization.” [...]

The FBI, Rogers said, “did their due diligence and did a very thorough job” of investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but when the FBI asked for more help from that foreign intelligence service, it got no further cooperation. [...]

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If we can trust CNN's reporting this time around on the Boston Marathon bombing, this is very disgusting and disturbing to put it mildly: CNN: Unreleased footage shows suspects watched explosions :

CNN reports this evening that federal investigators have much more footage of the two men wanted in relation to the Boston Marathon bombing — and that some of that footage is shocking.

A federal law enforcement source “with knowledge of the investigation” told the network that the suspects stayed and watched as the two bombs exploded, then simply walked away from the horrific scene.

“When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually,” said the source — who CNN reported has seen the footage.

Here's more from the CNN article: FBI: Help us ID Boston bomb suspects:

'They acted differently than everyone else'

Other footage, still unreleased, shows that the two suspects stayed at the scene to watch the carnage unfold, a federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN's Susan Candiotti.

"When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually," said the official, who has seen the unreleased video. "They acted differently than everyone else."

While video of at least one suspect planting the bomb exists, the FBI had chosen not to release it, according to the official. One reason, according to the official, is that were the media to repeatedly show the suspects leaving the bomb, it might cause some people to overreact if they came into contact with them.

DesLauriers said intelligence had been developed on the first suspect "within the last day or so." The official who spoke with CNN said images of the second suspect were isolated Wednesday.

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From this Monday evening's Late Show with David Letterman, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan) Top Ten excuses for his skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee last year during a "fact finding" mission to Israel.

Someone should tell the Congressman that if he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, maybe he should avoid taking trips with other Reps being investigated by the FBI already.

Democracy Now did a follow up this Friday on their previous segment I posted here -- James Bamford: NSA is Building the World's Largest Spy Center. This story of course is being ignored again by our corporate media and is terrifying quite frankly as to the amount of data they're collecting and the abuses and potential abuses that are inevitable when you allow anyone access to this much personal information about their fellow citizens.

Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance:

In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower. Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.

Binney served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as technical director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national television about NSA surveillance. This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 2, 3, and 4.

You can read the full transcript which is way too long to post here at the link above along with links to and descriptions of the three other segments that followed this one, from Friday's show on the same topic.

From Democracy Now -- Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud:

Broadcasting on the road from Kansas City, Missouri, we’re joined by William Black, a white-collar criminologist, former financial regulator, and author of "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." Black teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and recently took part in Occupy Kansas City. "If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing," Black says.

"Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison... That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites... I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus."

Full transcript at the link above.

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CREW's Melanie Sloan who called for an investigation into Christine O'Donnell for campaign finance fraud earlier this year responds to O'Donnell's accusation that the federal criminal probe looking into just that is nothing but a left wing liberal conspiracy by people who are out to get her.

O'Donnell: Fed Probe Ginned Up By Biden, Soros And Disgruntled Staffers (VIDEO):

Former Republican senate candidate Christine O'Donnell took to the airwaves of at least five morning shows today to fight back against the "thug politic tactic" being used against her by way of the federal criminal probe into allegations of improper use of her campaign funds.

But you really only needed to watch one of her appearances to get the gist of what she said: that Vice President Joe Biden's allies were using the FBI to conduct a campaign against her, the ethics group which brought the complaint is funded by George Soros and the former campaign staffers who have charged she misused campaign cash are disgruntled.

O'Donnell never really got around to the substance of the complaints against her, which the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told TPM could center on exactly how much money O'Donnell is found to have misspent (more on what exactly O'Donnell is accused of here).

As Ryan at TPM noted, of course she didn't have any evidence that Biden was behind the probe, but when has a little thing like facts ever gotten in the way with this woman? As Melanie Sloan pointed out, she already admitted to misusing her campaign funds. It's just a question of the dollar amount.

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As Anderson Cooper explained on his show this week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) was recently spreading his completely unfounded conspiracy theory that women are coming to the United States to have "terror babies".

REP. LOUIE GOHMERT: I talked to a retired FBI agent who said that one of the things they were looking at were terrorist cells overseas who had figured out how to game our system.

And it appeared they would have young women who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby. They wouldn't even have to pay anything for the baby. And then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists.

And then, one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they could be sent in to help destroy our way of life, because they figured out how stupid we are being in this country.

Then he went on Fox Business Network and changed his story.

GOHMERT: It first came to my attention. Some of us were traveling to the Middle East last August, a year ago. And a lady on the plane was telling one of our group that they were about to have their second granddaughter. Her husband was with Hamas. Her grand -- I'm sorry -- her son-in-law was with Hamas -- and that they were going to do with the second as they did with the first grandchild. Daughter is going to come to America right before it's born on a tourist visa, have the baby.

They just like the option of having American citizens in the family.

Hamas, we recognize as terrorists. They're coming over -- oh, and she added, as a real kicker: And you know what the best part of it is? We don't have to pay anything for the baby to be born.

Apparently Rep. Gohmert didn't want to come AC360 and defend his story, so we got treated to this wingnut Texas State Representative Debbie Riddle instead. If Michele Bachmann ever gets ousted from the House of Representatives it looks like we've got a replacement waiting in the wings in the Texas State House. Does she remind anyone else of a cross between Mary Matalin and Marsha Blackburn?

Rep. Riddle insisted that the conspiracy theory put out there by Rep. Gohmert is a real threat and claimed as Gohmert did that her sources were "ex-FBI agents". When questioned for any proof of her claims, Rep. Riddle didn't take to kindly to Cooper's tepid questioning.

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After being asked by Jake Tapper why President Obama is bringing up the issue of immigration reform now even though it doesn't appear there's any chance that something is going to get passed in the Senate, Al Hunt takes John McCain to task for his fear mongering interview earlier in the show where he lied about the crime rate in Arizona.

HUNT: I must say, John McCain, in his interview with you, Jake, that was extraordinary to say that crime is up there. He's talking about Mexico. Crime is down in Arizona. Every single academic study that's been done shows that immigrants commit fewer crimes.

RAMOS: That's right.

HUNT: We have a system where there are now three-and-a-half-fold more illegal immigrants than there were 20 years ago. It's a system that's broke. And for John McCain to say that there's been a dramatic change just simply is not the case.

It's too bad Al Hunt is the one bringing this up instead of Jake Tapper calling out McCain while he had him on the air.