Tonight Rachel Maddow led her show with the story of David Miranda's detention at Heathrow yesterday, and gave a wonderful introduction to Laura Poitras. She starts with Poitras, her documentary work on US national security issues, her own very frequent detentions at airports, her winning a MacArthur genius grant, and her moving to Germany so the US government could not seize her source material.
A clip from her most recent documentary is shown, interviewing a former NSA employee who plainly explains what the NSA is doing and how they can lay out a timeline on the life of anybody in this country. Deeply scary stuff, unless you're OK with that. The NSA alumnus points out the danger that we could fall into a totalitarian state like East Germany. His hair, little that he had, did not appear to be on fire as he discussed this.
She goes on to discuss the relationship between Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, and gives her equal credit with Greenwald in taking the documents supplied by Edward Snowden and making news out of them, week after week. Then she goes on to outline the circumstances of David Miranda's detention at Heathrow yesterday, and the law under which British authorities held him. She finishes with an editorial such as we haven't seen since the great days of Keith Olbermann's Special Comments. See below for my own transcription.
