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The United States filed a court brief (pdf) opposing the release of details concerning the surveillance requests they hand big tech companies in the U.S.

As we reported back in August, Microsoft and Google were trying to reach an agreement with the government about what they could reveal about national security requests for customer data. When tech companies receive those requests, they also come with a gag order, making it illegal for them to tell their customer or anyone else about the request from the government.

Those talks crumbled and the companies moved forward with a lawsuit filed in the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, demanding the ability to publish information clearly showing the number of demands for user content like the text of an email.

"Unless this type of information is made public, any discussion of government practices and service provider obligations will remain incomplete," Brad Smith, a Microsoft vice president and general counsel, said in a blog post.

In a Sept. 30 filing with the court responding to the lawsuit, the Justice Department argued that releasing too much information about its requests would risk revealing its "sources and methods of intelligence collection, including the Government's ability (or inability) to conduct surveillance on particular electronic communication service providers or platforms."

"Releasing information that could induce adversaries to shift communication platforms in order to avoid surveillance would cause serious harm to the national security interests of the United States," the government said.

The tech companies have argued that by issuing gag orders, the government is denying them of their First Amendment rights. But the government dismissed that, saying the information they want to disclose is classified, therefore not covered by the First.

All Things D reports on the tech firms' response:

"Google said in a statement today, 'We're disappointed that the Department of Justice opposed our petition for greater transparency around FISA requests for user information. We also believe more openness in the process is necessary since no one can fully see what the government has presented to the court.'

"And Microsoft: 'We will continue to press for additional transparency, which is critical to understanding the facts and having an informed debate about the right balance between personal privacy and national security.'"

Let's start by agreeing to this premise: Kale is very good for you.

And yes, we here at The Salt have been known to indulge in – nay, crave — kale chips and kale salads on a not infrequent basis.

Still, when we found out that Wednesday is National Kale Day – featuring a kale dance party (we kid you not) — we couldn't help but think: Come on, people, the kale love has officially Gone. Too. Far.

Turns out, the ringleader of this spanking new holiday is Drew Ramsey, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who wears his passion for the dark, leafy green on his sleeve – or perhaps more aptly, on his book jacket: He's the author, most recently, of the cheekily named 50 Shades of Kale, a book of recipes.

Ramsey specializes in the link between nutrition and mental health, and says kale first drew his attention because of its excellent concentration of nutrients, including vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K and omega-3 fatty acids. And he became convinced that advising patients to eat kale was one of the most important pieces of advice he could give them.

"Food is a big part of my practice, and I realized that the standard messaging – telling people to avoid fat and cholesterol — was unhelpful because it doesn't help people fill their plate," Ramsey tells The Salt. "Instead we need to be telling people what foods we want them to eat – nutrient-dense foods like kale, mussels and farm-fresh eggs."

As Ramsey sees it, kale is also an ideal antidote to a public health crisis. And his kale evangelism has been growing ever more fervent in preparation for National Kale Day. Ramsey's "festival of kale" includes several scheduled Google+ Hangouts and a kale health summit. Then there's the aforementioned kale dance party, complete with kale cocktails, at Seasonal Whispers in Soho in New York City (you can dance along at home via the magic of Google+ Hangout).

"Our goal is to get more converts," he says, "especially kids in school, and kale newbies who have heard about it but haven't actually tried it."

All of which is laudable — except there's a small problem with superfood evangelism. As we've reported many times, it can be dangerous to fixate on individual foods as curative sustenance, because your diet's influence on your health is an incredibly complex equation.

The dangers of elevating this cabbage cousin to canonization status were brilliantly illuminated recently by paleo-blogger Melissa McEwen. In a satirical post on her blog HuntGatherLove, she enumerated the "dangers" of eating kale – including its "horrific effects on livestock" and that it's laden with pesticides.

The post, by the way, was meant to show how easy it is to demonize a food by selective citation of scientific studies, but it also does a good job of noting the dangers of focusing your diet almost exclusively on one ingredient – "which I think anyone will agree is a bad idea," McEwen writes.

Besides, the health of humanity seems like an awfully big burden to place on the fragile shoulders of little ole kale. As we make kale the health halo food du jour, we risk turning it into the Gwyneth Paltrow of the vegetable world – the smug goody two-shoes everyone loves to hate on. (Hat tip to Modern Farmer for pointing out this celebrity/cultivar comparison.)

And as a recent New York Times article reminded us, kale is not universal. In France, where kale is often seen as a reminder of the dietary deprivations of World War II, an American woman named Kristen Beddard is waging a crusade to put this trendy green on menus far and wide. (Not surprisingly, Beddard happens to be on the board of National Kale Day.) A noble quest, perhaps, but is it also a necessary one to save the French?

As French food writer Sana Lemoine noted to the Times, "They don't need magical vegetables or superfoods. They already have a tradition of eating balanced meals. In a strange way, kale is superfluous."

Still, such snickering will not deter kale crusader Ramsey. To all the naysayers, Ramsey has this to say: "Eat more kale to improve your attitude."

It's Day Two of the Federal Government Shutdown, 2013 edition with no end in sight.

So there's a heavy focus on shutdown-related items or themes today in this morning's political mix of items and themes that caught my eye:

Many in Washington now expect the government shutdown to last longer than a few days. That makes it increasingly likely that policymakers will link an agreement on a spending bill that reopens federal agencies to a resolution in the debt-ceiling dispute as well, Politico's Manu Raju, Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown report.

Congressional Republicans may, on the whole, be less sensitive to any widespread public backlash against the federal government shutdown than they were in the last one 17 years ago because more of them represent districts that are safer for Republicans than was true in 1995-1996, writes the National Journal's Ron Brownstein.

The group of hardline conservatives who are largely dictating the House Republican Conference's shutdown strategy believe they are winning, according to a New York Times piece by Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker. But they now face growing unrest from fellow Republican lawmakers who actually want to be part of a governing party that governs.

While most Americans might think that Washington D.C. is the metro area most dominated by federal workers as a percentage of its workforce, the winner in that category is actually Colorado Springs at 18.8 percent of its working population receiving paychecks from the U.S. government. An interactive Washington Post graphic provides details.

The Affordable Care Act's health-care exchanges had a noticeably glitchy unveiling Tuesday. But the heavy use of the websites by consumers suggested a pent-up demand for health insurance that supported the contention of Obamacare's backers that the law filled what had been a great unmet need, reported Jay Hancock, Phil Galewitz and Ankita Rao of Kaiser Health News.

President Obama has had a visit to Asia to begin Saturday on his schedule for months. But the government shutdown is raising pressure on the White House to reschedule partly because of the greatly reduced number of federal employees available to handle such an overseas trip's logistics, report David Nakamura and Julia Eilperin of the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama phone the Malaysian prime minister to tell him that a visit to his country was postponed.

The nation's future military officers are being severely affected by the federal government shutdown which has forced severe disruptions at U.S. military academies that go far beyond the cancellation of some athletic events. The Air Force Academy's 4,400 cadets now have no library, and no media and tutoring centers, reports Politico's Libby A. Nelson.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel attached some real faces to a recent poll result which indicated that support for the Affordable Care Act rises or falls depending on whether people are asked if they favor the ACA or Obamacare. One takeaway? We should all keep our critical thinking caps when it comes to polls in general and those on the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare in particular.

We said it Tuesday: "no end in sight."

The story's the same on Wednesday.

Pardon us for being repetitive, but there's no end in sight to the partial shutdown of the federal government.

There isn't even a glint of solution somewhere off on the horizon, NPR's Mara Liasson says.

On Morning Edition, she told host Steve Iskeep that as of Wednesday morning there was "no escape hatch."

Republicans, Mara said, "aren't yet ready to compromise" on their position. They say they'll only agree to fully fund government operations if the new health care law ("Obamacare") is either defunded, delayed or otherwise denuded.