Morning Reads: FBI Fingers a Second Snowden?

Good morning — and Happy International Animation Day!

On this date in 2005, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was indicted for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. It was all about “Scooter” Libby trying to discredit criticisms her husband, Joseph Wilson, had levied at the Bush administration — Wilson accused the White House of manufacturing data about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

One week to go –> Over at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver finds the GOP enjoying a “consistent but not decisive” advantage for a US Senate majority. He gives them a 63.3 percent likelihood of taking control. AND: At The Atlantic, Molly Ball looks at what a Republican-controlled Senate might be like. AND: Politico’s Timothy Noah reports that the one issue on which Democrats appear to be soundly beating their opponents is raising the minimum wage. A week from today, state-level minimum wage hikes will be on the ballot in four Republican-leaning states.

The other Snowden –> Michael Isikoff reports for Yahoo News that “the FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called ‘second leaker’ who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.”

Conundrum –> The highly developed countries are primarily responsible for polluting the planet, but global warming will force developing states to take a different direction. At Grist, David Roberts considers the question: “How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet?”

“They now fear more good news” –> Trita Parsi outlines for Reuters how hawks in Congress are likely to try to scuttle Obama’s deal to de-escalate tensions with Iran.

Why hasn’t Boehner sued? –> Remember when House Majority Leader John Boehner unveiled his plans to sue the Obama administration for delaying parts of the Affordable Care Act? One reason he hasn’t is that the Congressional Research Service quietly issued a report concluding there’s no legal basis for such an action. Simon Lazarus and Elisabeth Stein have the details at WaMo.

Not so fast –> Last week, a number of conservative media outlets seized on a study which suggested that non-citizens were voting in significant numbers, but Michael Tesler reports for WaPo’s Monkey Cage blog that the study has some serious methodological problems.

Very good question –> Liz Alderman and Stephen Greenhouse report for the NYT that fast-food workers in Denmark make a living wage of $20 per hour, and ask, “If Danish chains can pay $20 an hour, why can’t those in the United States pay the $15 an hour that many fast-food workers have been clamoring for?”

Bumbling –> TPM’s Dylan Scott writes that “if anything is clear from the reporting of the nurse who was quarantined in a New Jersey hospital over Ebola fears, it’s that the actual quarantine itself was handled miserably.”

Brrrrr –> Scientists working at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy set a new record by cooling a block of copper to -459 degrees Fahrenheit, an achievement that may help “answer longstanding questions about the composition of matter in the universe,” according to HuffPo’s Jacqueline Howard.

Did we mention it was International Animation Day? –> Enjoy “Oktapodi,” a cute French animated short that was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009…