Constitution

By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch.com The Fourth Branch The Rise to Power of the National Security State By Tom Engelhardt As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just […]

Bill of Rights

Do you Think your Smartphone Location Data is Private? The Police Don’t

contributors

By Hanni Fakhoury via EFF The Fourth Amendment protects us from “unreasonable” government searches of our persons, houses, papers and effects. How courts should determine what is and isn’t reasonable in our increasingly digital world is the subject of a new amicus brief we filed today in San Francisco federal court. At issue is historical […]

Barack Obama

Obama steps up to call Bush-era CIA Torture “Torture,” Despite Legal Implications

contributors

CNN points out that President Obama’s forthright condemnation of Bush administration-era CIA torture could cause legal problems for Agency employees, and that the Congressional report he was talking about avoided that diction. Obama doesn’t very often any more speak his mind, but in this case he clearly felt strongly enough about the betrayal of constitutional […]

Barack Obama

What is Congress Suing Obama about? Drones? Surveillance? Unauthorized War? Guess!

contributors

RT Redacted Tonight: “House Speaker John Boehner is suing President Obama. Is it for drone bombing or NSA surveillance? Of course not!” RT America: “You Won’t Believe The Latest Constitutional Crisis”

Barack Obama

Impeachment is a Cash Cow (Colbert Report)

contributors

Colbert Report: “Rising Calls for Obama’s Impeachment” The Colbert ReportGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Colbert Report on Facebook ——

Bill of Rights

America’s Dumbest Politician On Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (The Young Turks)

contributors

By Cenk Uygur “Just one day after international watchdogs said Iran was complying with demands to scale back its nuclear program, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) called for the country to be bombed because of the conflict in Gaza. “Mr. Speaker, in Israel right now, there is a battle for peace,” he said Tuesday on the […]

Barack Obama

Real-Life House of Cards: DOJ says President is Judge Jury & Executioner

contributors

By Peter Van Buren via Tomdispatch.com You can’t get more serious about protecting the people from their government than the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, specifically in its most critical clause: “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In 2011, the White House ordered the drone-killing of American citizen […]

Bill of Rights

Helpless Giant: How Imperial US Elites Tied America Down All by Themselves

Tom Engelhardt

By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch For America’s national security state, this is the age of impunity. Nothing it does — torture, kidnapping, assassination, illegal surveillance, you name it — will ever be brought to court. For none of its beyond-the-boundaries acts will anyone be held accountable. The only crimes that can now be committed in […]

Bill of Rights

NSA Spying: Now It’s Personal

contributors

By Eva Galperin and Nadia Kayyali via EFF Imagine that you watched a police officer in your neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a look inside their vehicle or backpack. Now imagine that nine of those people are never even accused of a crime. They just happened to be in […]