LATEST News You won’t find on CNN or FOX News

MSNBC host Chris Matthews isn’t beloved by the left. But a comment Tuesday night may have put him a step closer to liberals’ good graces.

He called former Vice President Dick Cheney a “troll.”

“Well does he ever stop?” Matthews opined. “He’s crawled troll-like out from under his bridge to say that President Obama is projecting weakness to our enemies.”

“He is really tough,” Matthews added later. “I compare him to the troll that comes out from under the bridge and bites the ankle…”

Matthews, if you remember, tried to interdict Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who recently likened Vice President Cheney to a “vampire” on his program and said Cheney had blood “dripping from his teeth.”

Apparently the veteran newsanchor doesn’t think Grayson is too far off. On Tuesday’s program, he called Cheney a troll — twice.

Matthews also called Cheney a “troll under the bridge” in May.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews isn’t beloved by the left. But a comment Tuesday night may have put him a step closer to liberals’ good graces.

He called former Vice President Dick Cheney a “troll.”

“Well does he ever stop?” Matthews opined. “He’s crawled troll-like out from under his bridge to say that President Obama is projecting weakness to our enemies.”

“He is really tough,” Matthews added later. “I compare him to the troll that comes out from under the bridge and bites the ankle…”

Matthews, if you remember, tried to interdict Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who recently likened Vice President Cheney to a “vampire” on his program and said Cheney had blood “dripping from his teeth.”

Apparently the veteran newsanchor doesn’t think Grayson is too far off. On Tuesday’s program, he called Cheney a troll — twice.

Matthews also called Cheney a “troll under the bridge” in May.

A little-noticed letter from Yahoo! to the US Marshals Service offers troubling insight into the surveillance policies of one of the Internet’s largest email providers.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of Yahoo’s! policies allowing the Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users and the amount they charge US taxpayers per wiretap — the search engine leviathan declared in a 12-page letter that they couldn’t provide information on their approach because their pricing scheme would “shock” customers. The news was first reported by Kim Zetter at Wired.

“It is reasonable to assume from these comments that the [pricing] information, if disclosed, would be used to “shame” Yahoo! and other companies — and to “shock” their customers,” a lawyer for the company writes. “Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies.”

Yahoo! also argues that because their price sheet for wiretaps was “voluntarily submitted” to the US Marshals Service, it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act law.

Verizon, meanwhile, says (letter PDF) they can’t provide details on how much they charge for wiretaps because it would be “confusing.”

“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”

Consumers might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer),” the telecom giant adds.

Verizon also revealed it “receives tens of thousands of requests for customer records, or other customer information from law enforcement.”

The Freedom of Information request was filed by muckraker Christopher Soghoian.

“Assuming a conservative estimate of 20,000 requests per year, Verizon alone receives more requests from law enforcement per year than can be explained by any published surveillance statistics,” Soghoian responds. “That doesn’t mean the published stats are necessarily incorrect — merely that most types of surveillance are not reported.

“In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government,” he adds later. “I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of.”

Cox Communications, meanwhile, says they charge “$2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval,” Zetter notes. “It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.”

“Comcast’s pricing list,” she adds, “which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.”

A little-noticed letter from Yahoo! to the US Marshals Service offers troubling insight into the surveillance policies of one of the Internet’s largest email providers.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking details of Yahoo’s! policies allowing the Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users and the amount they charge US taxpayers per wiretap — the search engine leviathan declared in a 12-page letter that they couldn’t provide information on their approach because their pricing scheme would “shock” customers. The news was first reported by Kim Zetter at Wired.

“It is reasonable to assume from these comments that the [pricing] information, if disclosed, would be used to “shame” Yahoo! and other companies — and to “shock” their customers,” a lawyer for the company writes. “Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies.”

Yahoo! also argues that because their price sheet for wiretaps was “voluntarily submitted” to the US Marshals Service, it is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act law.

Verizon, meanwhile, says (letter PDF) they can’t provide details on how much they charge for wiretaps because it would be “confusing.”

“Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”

Consumers might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer),” the telecom giant adds.

Verizon also revealed it “receives tens of thousands of requests for customer records, or other customer information from law enforcement.”

The Freedom of Information request was filed by muckraker Christopher Soghoian.

“Assuming a conservative estimate of 20,000 requests per year, Verizon alone receives more requests from law enforcement per year than can be explained by any published surveillance statistics,” Soghoian responds. “That doesn’t mean the published stats are necessarily incorrect — merely that most types of surveillance are not reported.

“In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government,” he adds later. “I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of.”

Cox Communications, meanwhile, says they charge “$2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval,” Zetter notes. “It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.”

“Comcast’s pricing list,” she adds, “which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.”

In an editorial published Saturday that will run in the magazine’s Dec. 7 edition, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham argues that former Vice President Dick Cheney would be a good candidate for the presidency in 2012 — and that a run would be “good for the country.”

“I think we should be taking the possibility of a Dick Cheney bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 more seriously, for a run would be good for the Republicans and good for the country,” Meacham pens. “(The sound you just heard in the background was liberal readers spitting out their lattes.)”

“Why? Because Cheney is a man of conviction, has a record on which he can be judged, and whatever the result, there could be no ambiguity about the will of the people,” Meacham continues. “The best way to settle arguments is by having what we used to call full and frank exchanges about the issues, and then voting. A contest between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama would offer us a bracing referendum on competing visions.

“One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction,” he adds. “A Cheney victory would mean that America preferred a vigorous unilateralism to President Obama’s unapologetic multilateralism, and vice versa.”

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald, who is a Cheney critic and a vehement opponent to the Bush Administration strategy of employing torture, replied to the piece on Twitter: “In the dictionary under “Desperately Trolling for Traffic” there should be a link to Jon Meacham’s column urging Cheney to run for President.”

PlumLine’s Greg Sargent was more succinct, calling the column “Drudgebait,” in reference to conservative maven Matt Drudge.

There was, however, no link to Meacham’s column on The Drudge Report Monday.

Cheney, however, has already thrown cold water on the idea. At a recent campaign event for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Republican running to replace Gov. Rick Perry, Cheney responded to calls for him to run for president with three simple words: “Not a chance.”

At least one political group, led by a prominent former Log Cabin Republican, thinks it should happen.

Despite the former vice-president’s low approval ratings among the American public, the organizers of Draft Cheney 2012 believe he’s the right man to take on President Barack Obama in the next election — and, they say, he may be the only person left in the Republican Party who has what it takes to run the country.

“The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party’s standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP,” CNN quoted Christopher Barron, the principal organizer of the Draft Cheney movement. “There is only one person in our party with the experience, political courage and unwavering commitment to the values that made our party strong – and that person is Dick Cheney.”

The group has launched a Web site and a Facebook group (87 members so far), and plans to rally supporters to their cause at Tea Party events and in early primary states like New Hampshire and Iowa, CNN reports.

Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard recently argued for a Cheney run, saying: “Of course, everyone’s first choice for president in 2012 is Dick Cheney.”

Everyone, that is, except Cheney himself.