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Following President Obama's big speech this Thursday on national security and counterterrorism, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took the opportunity to go after the Obama administration and the DOJ for their willingness to go after whistleblowers, journalists, potheads, hackers and even people who just lied on their mortgage applications, while refusing to prosecute a single Wall Street banker.

While I agree with Stewart on majority of his criticisms here, I'd use the term "journalist" lightly when it comes to anyone from Fox and as Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite pointed out, James Rosen was not just simply reporting that North Korea wanted to do more nuclear tests to draw the government scrutiny he did, as Stewart asserted here.

I'd also like to hear more about that AP story and what was going on there before rushing to judgement as well, although I think the bigger argument ought to be over all of our privacy rights and just how much of that has been thrown out the window.

In an age following the hysteria right after 9-11 and the Patriot Act and with the NSA pretty well out of control along with most corporations who aren't kept in check with protecting our private information, I'm glad to see there is at long at last some attention being drawn to the subject.

It's pitiful that it took some members of our corporate media finally being subjected to what sadly is potentially perfectly legal overreach for them to care at all about what's been happening to a whole bunch of our citizens for years on end now, and well before Barack Obama was elected president. Maybe they could do something constructive like calling for members of Congress and President Obama to roll back some of the horrid legislation that was passed during the Bush administration. But then, who am I kidding... right? They'd rather just use this as an excuse to pile on with the scandal-mongering we've seen over the last half a year or so.

But back to The Daily Show segment above, when it comes to criticism about these Wall Street bankers run amok and the fact that not a one of them has ever gone to jail, while they're aggressively going after things like medical marijuana dispensaries, or someone who lied about their income on their mortgage papers, or whistleblowers who are actually trying to uncover government malfeasance, and not the Benghazi/IRS Tourette syndrome scandal-mongering we've been subjected to -- by all means, have at them Jon Stewart.

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Bill Maher's New Rules segment from this Friday evening and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him rip John McCain for his endless appearances on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows.

MAHER: New Rule. John McCain has to try spending a Sunday Morning with his family. Look, Senator, I'm with you. Anything to avoid church, but come one. It's Sunday morning. There's got to be an easier way to tell Lindsey Graham you don't want to cuddle.

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Bill Maher had a warning for North Korea's Kim Jong-un, who seems all too willing to push his luck with the United States given the fact that our country has been addicted to war for far too long. Maher also told his audience that it's time that we "start defining peace as strength" instead:

In the last part of his weekly “New Rules” segment, Maher lambasted “Kim Jong Pugsley of North Korea” for his threats of war with the U.S. and the West.

“Have you seen a North Korean rocket test?” he asked. “They don’t even look like real rockets. They look more like that thing the Russian kosmonauts were in when they crashed on to ‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

No, he said, the real threat here is the war-mongering Americans who are looking for “any excuse to ramp up the war machine again.” [...]

“Just like we’re the gun country,” he said. “Come on, we’re the war people. We don’t need a lot of encouragement. Have you ever met John McCain? Offering to go to war with the U.S. is like offering to go out to drinks with Lindsay Lohan. We’re already in the car.”

“Just in my lifetime, we’ve invaded Vietnam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again,” he said. “That’s when you know you’re war-mongers, when some countries are coming up twice.”

“At some point, don’t you have to look in the mirror,” he asked, “and say ‘Maybe it’s me?’”

“America needs to start defining peace as strength,” he said. “Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot.”

“And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”

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Despite their insistence that they really don't want the United States to go to war with North Korea after all of the bluster we've heard from Kim Jong Un and his warnings that his country is authorized to wage nuclear strikes against the United States, Fox's Sean Hannity and his guest, Rudy "Noun, A Verb and 9-11" Giuliani did their best to push the notion that the United States should do just that.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not in the mood for a bunch of bluster from a couple of chickenhawks on Faux News, thumping their chest and complaining that President Obama hasn't been aggressive enough with his foreign policy to suit them.

I'm also not sure why someone who put the Office of Emergency Management in the basement of the World Trade Center and who lies constantly about his so-called "expertise" on terrorism is qualified to weigh in on anything, much less whether we should start a nuclear war.

Hannity is still bound and determined to rewrite history and pretend that George W. Bush's brand of foreign policy and preemptive invasions "kept us safe." He's been ranting and raving about this all week (Giuliani actually wasn't the worst of the recent guests complaining about how "weak" President Obama is on foreign policy. The day before, he had on Iran-Contra criminal, Oliver North.)

Faux "News" is becoming a bad parody of itself, day after day.

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that President Barack Obama "is the most radical president we've ever seen," but Republicans who failed to stick to conservative principles are also to blame for the nation's problems.

In an interview that aired Wednesday on Pat Robertson's 700 Club, CBN's David Brody told Cruz that the media had dubbed him "the Republican Barack Obama" and a "GOP rock star."

"I try to pay very little attention to the media," Cruz insisted. "It is, as you know, a fickle creature."

Instead, Brody said Cruz was focused on creating a "new Republican Party."

"I think President Obama is the most radical president we've ever seen, but I think an awful lot of Republicans failed to stand for principle and contributed to getting us into this mess," the senator explained.

During an appearance at a weapons manufacturer in Texas on Tuesday, Cruz accused both Democrats and Republicans of trying to "silence" him for using McCarthyism to smear Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel with suggestions that the former Nebraska senator had taken $200,000 from North Korea.

"Washington has a long tradition of trying to hurl insults to silence those who they don't like what they're saying," Cruz told the crowd.

"A lot of media attention has been focused on the attacks leveled on me and I would encourage all of you if you want to write stories on that great, knock yourself out, but I would ask for every ten stories you write, attacking me, perhaps write one story on the substance of Chuck Hagel's record."

Salon's Joan Walsh on Wednesday observed that Cruz was just the latest tea party lawmaker to use former Sen. Joe McCarthy's tactics while playing the victim.

"Playing the persecuted, he challenged reporters to at least investigate Hagel a little bit while they’re attacking him," Walsh wrote. "That’s good advice. Because if they do, they’ll find no substance to Cruz’s charges in Hagel’s 'record,' but a lot of substance to charges that he’s a 21stcentury Joe McCarthy in Cruz’s."

(h/t: The Huffington Post)

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Welcome to the Secretary of State job, John Kerry: North Korea appears to conduct 3rd nuclear test, officials and experts say:

Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea appeared to have conducted its third underground nuclear bomb test Tuesday, officials and experts said, as U.S. seismologists reported activity centered near the site of the secretive regime's two previous atomic blasts.

Although North Korea had warned the world of its plans to carry out a new test in a vitriolic statement last month, the move is still likely to rattle the security situation in Northeast Asia as analysts try to determine the power and complexity of the device the North is thought to have detonated.

If confirmed, it would be the first nuclear test under the North's young leader, Kim Jong Un, who appears to be sticking closely to his father's policy of building up the isolated state's military deterrent to keep its foes at bay, shrugging off the resulting international condemnation and sanctions.

It also provided a provocative reminder of a seemingly intractable foreign policy challenge for President Barack Obama ahead of his State of the Union address later Tuesday.

The area around the reported epicenter of the magnitude 4.9 disturbance in northeastern North Korea has little or no history of earthquakes or natural seismic hazards, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps. The disturbance Tuesday took place at a depth of about 1 kilometer, the USGS said.

Officials suspect a nuclear test

Government officials and security analysts had little doubt about the cause of the quake.

"We believe North Korea conducted its third nuclear test," said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry. He added that the magnitude of the "artificial tremor" suggested the size of the blast was in the order of 6 to 7 kilotons, more powerful than the North's two prior nuclear tests. Read on...

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In Rick Santorum's world, the culture of life apparently doesn't extend to the scientific community.

The Republican presidential candidate told supporters in Greenville, South Carolina that it was a "wonderful thing" when scientists in Iran lose their lives.

"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," he explained. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly."

The former Pennsylvania senator, who in January declared that life was a civil right, is also prepared to celebrate the death of scientists in other counties.

"I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe."

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta probably won't find the candidate's remarks very helpful while he is in South Korea this week seeking to end North Korea's nuclear program.

"Here is hoping that Rick Santorum's comments don't get Leon Panetta kidnapped," Business Insiders' Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote.

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Let's just hope Bill Richardson does some good with the diplomatic negotiations on this front because the alternatives as Gordon Chang explained here to CNN's Don Lemon sound pretty dire to put it mildly.

Defense ministry: South Korea starts live-fire drill:

South Korea's planned live-fire military exercises started Monday afternoon, the country's defense ministry said, as fighter jets took to the sky in preparation for possible retaliation by North Korea.

North Korea has said the drill could ignite a war and that it would respond. But the country also agreed to a series of actions after former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson urged the North not to respond aggressively.

Soon after the drill began, South Korea launched fighter jets over its airspace in case the North launched an attack, the defense ministry said. It was not immediately clear how many fighter jets were in the air.

The ministry said drills typically last about two hours. The military exercises are taking place in waters just south of Yeonpyeong Island, where a North Korean shelling on November 23 killed two South Korean marines and two civilians.

The North has accused the South of provoking the attack because shells from a South Korean military drill landed in the North's waters.

On Sunday, South Korea ordered thousands to find shelter in preparation for the drill while the United Nations' Security Council wrangled for nearly eight hours over growing tensions in the Korean peninsula before ending its emergency meeting without a unified statement.

About 8,000 residents were ordered to take cover in Yeonpyeong, Baengnyeong, Daecheong, Socheong and Udo in the hours leading up to the drill.

CNN: North Korea agrees to return of UN nuclear inspectors:

North Korea has agreed with US troubleshooter Bill Richardson to permit the return of UN nuclear inspectors as part of a package of measures to ease tensions on the peninsula, CNN reported Monday.

CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer, who is travelling with Richardson in Pyongyang, said the North Koreans had agreed to let inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency go back to its Yongbyon nuclear facility.

They had also agreed to allow fuel rods for the enrichment of uranium to be shipped to an outside country, and to the creation of a military commission and hotline between the two Koreas and the United States, Blitzer said.

A veteran negotiator with the reclusive communist state, New Mexico Governor Richardson was due to brief reporters in Beijing later Monday after concluding his five-day visit to Pyongyang.

The former US ambassador to the UN was said by Blitzer to be "disappointed" at the UN Security Council's failure late Sunday to agree a statement on the Korean situation.

Richardson believed that such a statement would have given the South Koreans "political cover" to cancel a planned live-fire military exercise on a flashpoint border island bombarded by North Korea last month, Blitzer said.

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Some things never change and if it's Sunday, you can count on it being another week of Bloody Bill Kristol war mongering on Fox News. This week rather than calling for air strikes on North Korea, he wants us to try to help overthrow their government instead.

KRISTOL: President Obama himself didn't seem to have his heart in it when he said once again we're rallying the international community to put pressure. You know what? That's fine but we should try to destabilize the regime during this transition. It's not easy for this regime to make the transition from Kim Jong Il to his 27 year old son. We should be doing everything we can to bring down this terrible regime, end that nuclear weapons problem and reunite the two Koreas.

After Juan Williams points out that the Obama administration has shown a great deal of restraint by not war mongering and starting something they can't finish, Kristol says he's not advocating for war, just for sending the country into complete chaos.

KRISTOL: In North Korea, what would do the most good is trying to find fissures in the military; people who are upset about this 27 year old son taking over and bring down this regime. I'm not calling for war. I am calling for everything we can do...

WALLACE: let me ask you... what makes you think if we brought down that regime, the next regime would be any better?

KRISTOL: It couldn't be worse. It couldn't be worse and it would be... there would be reunification on the Korean Peninsula and maybe the Chinese would want to keep a sort of token North Korea up by their border for their own sake but about 2/3 of North Korea could become part of the unified Korea and that would be a lot better than the current situation.

LIASSON: The South Koreans want to do that in a manageable way, not all of the sudden and huge chaos.

KRISTOL: Well we should help them do it. The chaos of refugees fleeing across the border to freedom is a chaos we should welcome compared to the current situation.

It seems no amount of war or "chaos" is ever too much for the likes of Kristol or his buddy Liz Cheney. As the post at Think Progress pointed out, "arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

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During today's Glenn Beck radio show Sarah had to be corrected by the host on the current hostilities between the two Koreas.

CO-HOST: How would you handle a situation like the one that just developed in North Korea? [...]

PALIN: But obviously, we’ve got to stand with our North Korean allies. We’re bound to by treaty –

CO-HOST: South Korean.

PALIN: Eh, Yeah. And we’re also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.

A slip of the tongue? Maybe, maybe not. But in John Heilemann & Mark Halperin's Game Change there was this telling point which suggests otherwise.

She knew nothing. She had to be taken through World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and Palin was not aware there was a difference between North and South Korea. She continued to insist that Iraq was behind 9/11; and when her son was being sent off to Iraq, she couldn’t describe who we were fighting.