Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She contributes regularly to The Week. Previously, she worked for the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), covering defense and open government issues. Her work has also appeared on TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. In her free time, she plays electric violin in an Indie rock band.

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Meet First Aid Kit, Swedish Sibling Sensation

"We're the only girls in our touring party," observes Klara Söderberg. "Where are they?"

—By Dana Liebelson

| Mon Dec. 10, 2012 4:03 AM PST

Is it any wonder that Johanna and Klara Söderberg of the band First Aid Kit are in high demand? The attractive young sisters from Sweden sport '70s-inspired wardrobes that would make Stevie Nicks drool and write forlorn folk ballads that recall true, vibrant Americana. I was prepared to interview them at Austin City Limits, but their schedule changed and they had to cancel. As fate would have it, I ran into Johanna at the hotel gym, but then figured she probably didn't want to be interrogated while running. So I caught up with the pair later, by phone, as were preparing (of course) for their next tour.

First Aid Kit's itinerary may be chaotic, but the sisters' music has a timeless quality. You could easily imagine them singing it, in their same long-flowing skirts, around a campfire on the Oregon trail during the 19th century—well, the Swedish equivalent—or strumming guitars inside a big silver bus, living out a real-life Jack Kerouac novel.

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Jim DeMint Is Resigning: Here Are His 7 Craziest Moments

—By Dana Liebelson

| Thu Dec. 6, 2012 10:04 AM PST

The Wall Street Journal broke the news Thursday morning that 61-year-old Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is leaving the Senate to run the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. DeMint could be giving up his Senate post as early as January, leaving South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley to appoint someone to fill out his term (cough, Stephen Colbert, cough).

In a Senate packed with off-the-wall conservative lawmakers, DeMint managed to stand out, always promising to top the craziness with…more crazy. As we bid DeMint a fond farewell, let's relive his greatest moments:

1. DeMint says gay people and unmarried women having sex shouldn't teach your children.

According to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, DeMint said this at a South Carolina rally: "If someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend—she shouldn't be in the classroom."

2. DeMint says God doesn't like big government.

On a radio show in 2011, DeMint said: "I've said it often and I believe it—the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. As people become more dependent on government, less dependent on God."

3. Jim DeMint doesn't want women talking about abortion on the internet.

In 2011, DeMint put an amendment into a totally unrelated spending bill that attempted to ban discussion of abortion via satellite, video-conferencing, and the internet (in other words, fully preventing women from speaking with their doctors remotely).

4. DeMint says America turning into Iran after President Obama's election (or maybe Germany?).

"Probably the most heart-wrenching experiences I've had over the last several days is when naturalized American citizens who have immigrated here from Germany, Iran, and other countries, they come up to me and they say why are we doing what so many have fled from?" DeMint told a conservative radio host in 2009 "Why don’t Americans see what we're doing?"

5. DeMint puts a hold on National Women's History Museum.

In 2010, a proposed bill would have allowed a private group to buy property on Independence Avenue to build a women's history museum (without costing taxpayers any money). DeMint was one of the bill's chief opponents, and put a hold on it.

6. DeMint confuses Chicago teacher strike with violence in the Middle East.

"On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets. And then I realized that was a story about the Chicago teachers strike," DeMint said at the 2012 Values Voters summit in September. "But we've got to think of good things.”

7. DeMint falsely accuses President Obama of taxing Christmas.

On Fox News in 2011, DeMint said the government was "going to charge taxes on Christmas trees so they can start another government agency to promote Christmas trees. We don't need to do that at the federal level. We can't even afford to do what we're already doing. And to add another tax to something and say we're going to create a promotion agency, it just makes you want to pull your hair out."

This statement was in response to a division of the Department of Agriculture proposing that tree importers and producers pay 15 cents per tree, to fund a promotional campaign for Christmas. (The tax was tabled.)

Susan Rice: A Victim of GOP Hypocrisy?

Senate Republicans had two very different reactions to administration officials named Rice who were accused of misleading the public.

—By Adam Serwer and Dana Liebelson

| Thu Dec. 6, 2012 4:13 AM PST

Update, 12/13/12: NBC News is reporting the Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration for Secretary of State, citing the possibility of a "lengthy, disruptive and costly" nomination fight. Was she the victim of Republican hypocrisy? Here’s what we wrote earlier in December:

UN Ambassador Susan Rice has been a lightning rod for congressional Republicans, who have clamored to portray her television appearances in the wake of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as evidence that the Obama administration deliberately misled Americans about the nature of the incident. Rice has been floated as a top candidate to replace Hillary Clinton, who is planning to leave the State Department, and Senate Republicans have threatened to block Rice's hypothetical nomination as secretary of state because of the Benghazi attack.

The outrage expressed by Republican lawmakers—spurred by the ambassador reciting intelligence-community-generated talking points that turned out to be partially inaccurate—is very different from their response to another administration official named Rice who was accused of misleading the American public on a matter of national security. That, of course, is Condoleezza Rice. When George W. Bush nominated Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, some of the same Senate Republicans who are currently attacking Susan Rice supported Condi wholeheartedly, despite her role in helping to make the case for war in Iraq based on bogus intelligence. Back then, Republicans were much more willing to chalk up Condoleezza Rice's parroting of flawed intel to well-intentioned mistakes as opposed to outright deception, even when the evidence said otherwise. Here's how some of Susan Rice's most vocal critics responded to the Bush administration's disastrous handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence and the nomination of Condoleezza Rice.

Sources: Mediaite, ThinkProgress, CBS News, BuzzFeed, NewsOK, Inhofe.senate.gov, The Hill, PBS News, ThinkProgress, Collins.senate.gov

Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Dec. 5, 2012 10:23 AM PST

First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. But thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track and deter criminals who illegally hunt endangered animal species around the world.

WWF spokesman Lee Poston is not calling these vehicles drones, because he doesn't want people to confuse them with the military kind. According to Poston, they are "sophisticated radio-controlled devices like hobbyists use" that can be "controlled from your iPad or other device." But the WWF website does call them "conservation drones."

Prior to receiving the Google grant, the WWF had already deployed trackers in Nepal's national parks. These drones are light enough to be launched by hand and can be programmed to fly about 18 miles at a maximum elevation of 650 feet, for almost an hour. The cameras on the drones allow rangers on the ground to spot would-be poachers, especially in hard-to-reach places.

The Google funding will enable WWF to expand its drone program in Asia and Africa to protect rhinos, which are hunted for their horns; elephants, which are pursued for their tusks, and tigers, which are killed for everything from their eyes to their reproductive organs. The grant will also be used to advance wildlife tagging technology, specialized sensors, and ranger monitoring software.

The anti-poachers are exploring other high-tech measures as well. "We are looking into how to track animal parts using things like DNA," says Poston. "So if a ranger find a rhino horn on the ground, we can figure out what happened."

The grant is part of Google's flagship Global Impact Award program, which this year, is providing a total of $23 million in funding to nonprofits addressing various challenges through technology and innovation. Some of the other organizations that received awards on Tuesday included the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media (which recently put out a study on why women have fewer speaking parts than men) and charity: water, which increases water access in developing countries through technology.

This grant "is going to have a huge impact," says Ian Morrison, another WWF spokesman. "The poachers and the crime syndicates that fund them are getting more and more sophisticated, and it's time for us to step up our game too, and level the playing field."

Note: This image is not an actual Google-funded drone.

Is the UN About to Take Over the Internet?

Some members of Congress worry that a new tech treaty would create an online "wasteland of unfilled hopes, dreams, and opportunities."

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Dec. 5, 2012 8:09 AM PST

A couple of weeks ago, some conservatives were panicking that President Obama was going to use an executive order on cybersecurity to single-handedly take control of the internet. (Surprise: He wasn't.) Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have banded together to stop the United Nations from pulling a similar stunt at this week's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. But if you think this is just more fearmongering, think again: Some of their concerns appear legitimate.

Mobilization against the conference began after countries such as Russia and China submitted secret proposals (some have since been leaked) that would give the United Nations more regulatory power over the internet. A group of Arab countries is also advocating for universal identification of internet users. While the actual aim of the conference is to deal with issues like mobile roaming fees, cybersecurity, and expanding the internet into developing nations, with more than 900 regulatory proposals already submitted, there's no saying what other ideas are out there.

Another issue potentially at stake is internet fees. According to the Associated Press, there are "European-backed suggestions to change the pay structure of the web to force content providers—such as Google, Facebook Inc. and others—to kick in an extra fee to reach users across borders." While proponents of this idea say it will help developing countries pay for internet access, critics told the newswire that the proposal would mean that foreign countries could tax large content providers, like universities and search engines, who want to send content overseas.

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