This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist Phillip Walker.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

We might get a reprieve from the authoritarian surveillance state thanks to internecine fighting amongst republicans. Go to it fellas!

GOP infighting threatens NSA bill

Republicans are in a state of disarray on surveillance reform, with Congress barreling toward a May 31 deadline to extend or curtail some of the NSA’s key powers.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr want to reauthorize the bulk collection of phone records — the most controversial program revealed by Edward Snowden’s leaks. Presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rand Paul want to effectively end it, as do many House Republicans. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who will be a key player in any legislation, hasn’t decided what to do.

The split highlights the persistent divisions between libertarian-leaning Republicans who see NSA spying as a threat to Americans’ privacy and GOP national security hawks who don’t want to tamper with the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Even with the ticking clock — which many lawmakers hoped would force a decision after a similar effort failed last year — GOP members are far apart on the issue. ...

It’s the second congressional effort to reform surveillance practices since Snowden’s leaks revealed the vast nature of the NSA’s operations. But if lawmakers don’t do anything this time, key parts of the PATRIOT Act will expire, including the provision the government has used to justify bulk data collection. Tech companies rattled by the disclosures about NSA surveillance via their Internet services have been pushing for changes and want more flexibility to disclose the government orders they receive. ...

One option for reform could come from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The former Judiciary chairman introduced a bill last year that won a few Republican votes but ultimately failed in the upper chamber. Leahy is likely to reintroduce a similar measure this year, and reform advocates hope GOP members — faced with the prospect of sunsetting NSA authorities — will be forced to accept some changes.

Obama incinerates some more innocent civilians with his fleet of flying death robots:

American and Italian Hostages Killed in US Drone Strike, White House Reveals

A U.S. drone strike in January killed two hostages, an Italian and an American, being held by al Qaeda in Pakistan, the White House revealed on Thursday. ...

According to the statement, the failed counterterrorism operation targeted an al Qaeda-associated compound in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where authorities said they had "no reason to believe either hostage was present." ...

In a televised address on Thursday morning, President Barack Obama said he "takes full responsibility" for the deaths.

For years, the White House has rebuffed criticisms of its counterterrorism operations and refused to divulge information about civilians killed in U.S. drone attacks. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2004 and 2015, as many as 960 civilians may have been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, including up to 207 children.

Alka Pradhan, an attorney with the international human rights group Reprieve who represents other civilian victims of drone attacks, noted in a statement that Dr. Weinstein and Mr. Lo Porto "are far from the first innocents to die by our drones, and in no other case has the US apologized for its mistake."

US Claims Russian Military Buildup Along Ukraine Border

Offers Neither Evidence Nor Details on Deployments

With their prototypical lack of evidence and a conspicuous lack of any details, the US State Department is once again accusing Russia of a military buildup along the Ukrainian border. ...

The allegations also included claims that Russia had put some of the air defense systems inside Ukrainian territory, though they did not offer details on this, and it’s unclear from the allegations if this deployment was purported to have occurred in rebel Donetsk or in Crimea, the later of which Russia annexed last year but which the US regularly refers to as “Ukrainian territory” for the sake of such allegations.

Why Didn't Bush/Cheney Prevent 9/11? - John Kiriakou

Hillary the Hawk

Announcing her latest campaign for the presidency, Hillary Clinton declared she was entering the race to be the champion for “everyday Americans.” As a lawmaker and diplomat, however, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of “everyday” people abroad, from Iraq to Yemen. As commander-in-chief, there’s no reason to believe she’d be any less a hawk than she was as the senator who backed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, or the Secretary of State who encouraged Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If her nomination is as sure a thing as people say, then antiwar organizing needs to start right away.

Hillary has already won the support of those who continually agitate for war. “I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy,” Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, told The New York Times last summer. “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue,” he said, “it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.”

We’re going to call it what it is: More of the same sort of murderous policies that destroyed Iraq, destabilized Libya, killed women and children with cluster bombs and drones in Yemen, and legitimized the undermining of democracy in Honduras. There’s little chance the Republicans will nominate someone better, but given Clinton’s record as a senator and Secretary of State – the latter giving us a very good idea of how she would approach foreign affairs once in office – it will be hard for them to find anyone much worse. ...

When Barack Obama became president, the antiwar movement became his first casualty – followed by a group of Pakistanis droned to death three days after his inauguration. We should never lose hope that we can bring about positive change, but actually changing the world for the better requires being aware that whoever sits in the White House come January 2017 is not going to be our friend.

Horse Race Comedy Extra:

Hillary Clinton Calls For 'Toppling' The 1 Percent

Hillary Clinton believes that strengthening the middle class and alleviating income inequality will require "toppling" the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, according to a New York Times profile published on Tuesday.

The Times article quoted a host of Clinton confidants characterizing Clinton's economic policy record as a populist agenda akin to that of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). That includes a view that the ongoing accumulation of massive wealth at the top of the spectrum is holding back the broader economy.

In a meeting with economists this year, Mrs. Clinton intensely studied a chart that showed income inequality in the United States. The graph charted how real wages, adjusted for inflation, had increased exponentially for the wealthiest Americans, making the bar so steep it hardly fit on the chart.

Mrs. Clinton pointed at the top category and said the economy required a “toppling” of the wealthiest 1 percent, according to several people who were briefed on Mrs. Clinton’s policy discussions but could not discuss private conversations for attribution.

The Clinton campaign told HuffPost they could not confirm the precise language of the quote, but did not distance themselves from its populist essence.

Sen. Warren to Those Promising TPP Would Be So Great: 'Prove It.'

Senator explains that real reason TPP remains so secret, even as Congress begins voting on measures to ram it through, is because 'if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.'

Prove it. Let the American voters, the press, and the global public see and read the fine print of this so-called "free trade" deal.

That's the basic message contained in a new statement released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) after President Obama said earlier this week that she and other opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were "wrong" when it came to their objections to the pending 12-nation agreement.

"The Administration says I'm wrong – that there’s nothing to worry about," Warren wrote in a blog post addressed to constituents and the general public on Wednesday. "They say the deal is nearly done, and they are making a lot of promises about how the deal will affect workers, the environment, and human rights. Promises – but people like you can't see the actual deal."

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