Scahill/Greenwald Team Up for Scathing Exposé on NSA's Role in "U.S....
Two members of a scant, ever-sifting handful of actual, once-lauded, investigative journalists still working their honored craft in the 21st Century, - despite operating with a distinct shortage of...
View ArticleThe Evil Ever-Expanding 'NO FLY LIST' - Where the FBI Goes to Snag Community...
FBI agents have tried to use the No-Fly List as a draconian tool to coerce Americans into spying on their communities. To say the national 'No Fly List' has been dysfunctional from it's inception after...
View ArticleQwest CEO Who Resisted NSA Spying Finally Released From Prison After Four...
Just one major telecommunications company refused to participate in a legally dubious NSA surveillance program in 2001. A few years later, its CEO was indicted by federal prosecutors. He was convicted,...
View ArticleFormer NSA Director and Current Intel Committee Chairman Joke About Putting...
If anyone needed a clear example of the height of crass arrogance to which our bureaucratic leadership in Washington aspires these days; look no further than the hubris on full display at the 2013...
View ArticleColorado Town (pop. 500) Set to Vote on the Issuance of Drone Hunting...
Finally, a worthwhile [fun] use of high-powered rifles that doesn't involve human victims.Actually, I really don't know whether to laugh at this news... or feel a strange sense of relief.The town of...
View Article“Twelve-Triple-Three” - 30 Year Old Executive Order That enabled Today's NSA...
“The Attorney General hereby is delegated the power to approve the use for intelligence purposes, within the United States or against a United States person abroad, of any technique for which a warrant...
View ArticlePope Francis Reportedly Leaving Vatican at Night to Minister to Homeless of...
Frankly, I lost faith (so-to-speak) in all types of organized religion long ago. I have given up on expecting good deeds and magnanimous gestures toward the poor coming from the Vatican. But after...
View ArticleFormer British Intelligence Agent Launching Foundation to Support...
Hopefully, from now on, those brave enough to buck the system and become government whistleblowers in the 21st Century won't have to choose places like Russia or China to find tentative refuge. Or, if...
View ArticleMinnesota Librarians Put Themselves on the Front Lines in the Struggle to...
What is it about librarians that makes them such fierce advocates for freedom?Back in 2008, I wrote a diary highlighting a group of Connecticut librarians who, when issued a dubious national security...
View ArticleCongress Opens New Front in War With U.S. Intelligence Community.
In an all-too rare display of bipartisanship in Washington D.C., a nearly-equally divided group of both congressional Democrats and Republicans are currently co-sponsoring legislation seeking more...
View ArticleTexas Town Pays Whack-Job Ted Nugent $16,000 to NOT Appear at Local Event
He's even too Crazy for TexasLooks like Nugent's brand of vulgarity is starting to pay off for him.The town of Longview, Texas paid Nugent $16,000 to not appear at the town's Fourth of July Festival....
View Article'Empathetic' David Gregory Causes Boston Marathon Bombing Victim to Leave MTP...
Actually, I probably should have just left off the "em" in the title.Anyway, with that said, I usually don't write short diaries but the article it's based on is short -- and everyone around here...
View ArticleCongress Members Want to Expand GITMO by Building New Secret Prison on Grounds
There's been a lot that I've been critical of President Obama lately. I won't go into all the issues here that I disagree with him on. Frankly, that would take a whole other diary... perhaps for...
View ArticleThe REAL Reason the CIA Destroyed 92 Videos of Detainees Being Tortured
And you can bet it's the same reason the Senate report on Torture hasn't yet been released. The CIA far exceeded their own definition of 'waterboarding' with at least two or more high-profile...
View ArticleSwitzerland May Grant Snowden Political Asylum in Exchange for Testimony...
Finally, a sane, bold country emerges from the paranoiac ethos, seemingly unafraid of the blowback sure to come from the the U.S. government, and a few of their EU neighbors, in the coming days and...
View ArticleNSA Threatened to Impose Fines on Yahoo of $250,000 Per Day For Non...
It seems one American tech company isn't like the rest as far as resistance to the NSA's demand for mass data retrieval, ultimately losing a protracted court battle, and faced steep fines for not...
View ArticleUsual Suspects: GOP Senate Scaremongers Claim Passage of 'USA Freedom Act'...
The GOP never misses an opportunity to scaremonger, and this time they're centering their authoritarian bona fides on the Senate version of the USA Freedom Act. The legislation is rather tame, in my...
View ArticlePresidential Policy Directive 62: Wherein the Clinton Adm. Gave us the...
Thanks, Bill... no really. If nothing else, I guess it's a step up from 'Fatherland.'But not much of one.A newly declassified White House policy directive regarding counterterrorism policies pre-Bush...
View ArticleGlobal Government Data Demands Up 150 Percent in Five Years, According to Google
Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that the U.S. government's demand for electronic data directly correlates with the rapid advances taking place in technology? The better the capability to collect...
View ArticleFederal Court Requires 'In Camera' Review of STATE SECRETS Documents in...
The U.S. government, namely the Obama administration, is quite upset with a federal judge for requiring an in camera review of State Secrets documents in the case of Guleet Mohamed v. Eric Holder...
View ArticleJames Clapper Slays His Captive Corporate Audience With His Orwellian,...
. There are 1000s of comedians out of work and he's trying to be funny.As he spoke in front of the trade group, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assumed an unapologetic tone, announcing...
View ArticleCorporate/Government Conflict of Interest Undercuts Any Claim of Credibility...
And they wonder why we don't trust them.It seems the head of the NSA's Signal Intelligence Directorate could be caught up in a serious conflict of interest with a major defense contractor. DRS Signal...
View ArticleIsrael's Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu Claims September 11th, 2001 Attacks...
Back in 2008, Netanyahu said Israel is 'benefiting from attack' as it 'swung American public opinion.'The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an...
View ArticleFerguson, Missouri Residents Rebuild Michael Brown's Memorial Hours After it...
I'm sure both the Ferguson and St. Louis County police departments will quickly get to the bottom of this. Or, maybe not.FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Residents have rebuilt a memorial just hours after it...
View ArticleNew Marijuana Practices in California: Private Security Firm Raiding Pot...
I guess you could call them The New Pinkertons. Myself, I call them mercenary prohibitionists; the domestic equivalent of Blackwater. And they have no place anywhere in America.They wear camouflaged...
View ArticleAttention, American Students: Tired of Prohibitive Debt? Germany Has Now...
Why does America hate the future? Issue by issue, from our unsustainable, for-profit healthcare system to our outrageous higher-education costs -- to our head-in-the-sand inaction on climate change --...
View Article“If Everything is Terrorism, Then Nothing is Terrorism”
The title's timely, paradoxical expression is brought to you courtesy of former FBI Special Agent, David Greene as part of a mostly unsung (IMHO) exposé written last month By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan...
View ArticleNew Mexico Teacher Sends Backpacks Full of Food Home with His First-Grade...
An elementary school teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico, named Marvin Callahan saw an injustice and decided to do something about it. He noticed a number of his students were coming to class hungry on...
View ArticleFBI Whistleblower: "Fraud was Brewing in the DNA of Rick Scott's Company From...
The full quote..."Fraud was brewing in the DNA of Rick Scott's company from the very beginning, and he was the father of it," John Schilling said at a news conference organized by the rival...
View ArticleOpen Carry Advocate Gets Robbed at Gunpoint - Robber Takes Gun
The only thing keeping this story from being a total gun-fail situation is the fact that man who was robbed is still alive. But the irony still makes it a failure nevertheless.A Gresham, Oregon open...
View ArticleNSA Recruiting Teenagers as Young as Thirteen for Enrollment in Six Prototype...
If there's anything that sounds like indoctrination in the 21st Century, in my humble opinion... this is it.Kids across America no longer have to wait until college to plan on being a part of the...
View ArticleFederal Appeals Court Weighs Constitutionality of FBI’s Super-Secret National...
In what has been characterized as a sharp rebuke to the federal government, last year, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of Northern California found that that the gag order provision of national...
View ArticleWill the U.S. Government Heed the Invaluable Lessons Articulated in the...
Transparency is coming, whether the government likes it or not. The only question is whether they decide to bring it to the public before whistleblowers do it for them.That’s the underlying message of...
View ArticleIt's About Time: Former ACLU Lawyer Will Lead U.S. Department of Justice's...
This appointment, in my estimation, not only would expand diversity in the U.S. Department of Justice but also virtually guarantee a continuation of a fair, comprehensive investigation into myriad...
View ArticleConnecticut - '14 Gov. Race: Gop Candidate Tom Foley Paid 0% Fed. Tax-Rate...
"Tom Foley owns a multimillion dollar mansion, two British fighter jets, and a five-million-dollar yacht yet takes advantage of tax loopholes middle class families can only dream about, allowing him to...
View ArticleTexas Opposes Stronger National EPA Standards 'Cuz People Spend “90 percent...
At various times in the past few years I was absolutely convinced that my state of Florida had the most evil state government in the entire country. This however, is not one of those times.The state...
View ArticleChris Christie Says GOP Needs to Gain More Governorships in Order to Control...
Chalk another one up to Christie's greatest hits collection. It's a great followup to his remark earlier in the week -- “I’m tired of hearing about the minimum wage, I really am.”Governor Christie...
View ArticlePrototype Handgun May Just Help Reduce Systemic Police Brutality in the...
(Note: I realize this was written aptly about earlier today by kossack Walter Einenkel here. I just thought I'd add to the conversation on this very important subject.)That said...Combined with the...
View ArticleSecret 'Arrangements' Between U.S. and U.K. Allow GCHQ to View and Store Data...
James Ball over at the Guardian U.K. is reporting that British intelligence services can now access bulk raw materials collected by the NSA and other foreign surveillance agencies without a warrant....
View ArticleSecond Circuit Court of Appeals Allows New York City to Legally END 'Stop and...
This ruling is six years in the making, stemming from a 2008 case (Floyd v New York) challenging the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program enforced by then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.The Second...
View ArticleGOP Candidates Forced to Undergo 'Training' by Fox News Media Consultant &...
Gaffe training... seriously?Apparently, CNN commentator S.E. Cupp and Fox media consultant Jon Kraushar took turns training most of the Republican senate candidates how not to commit gaffes during...
View ArticleJudgment Day -- U.S. Officials to Appear Wednesday Before the U.N. Committee...
Well, this will be interesting... Perhaps James Clapper will come along to testify? He could just fidget around in his seat and wipe the sweat from his head as he's testifying lying through his...
View ArticleState of Utah Debating Whether to Cut Off Water at NSA's Bluffdale Data...
The last time I heard about this it was in still in the idea stage. Legislation didn't yet exist. However, this update indicates legislators in Utah are serious about leaving the NSA out in the desert...
View ArticleBernie's Intimate Connection to Comic Book Superheroes
Turns out, those of us who've long thought of Senator Bernie Sanders as a political superhero, stoically battling the forces of villainous oligarchs hellbent on holding our economy (and therefore our...
View ArticleThat Old White Guy From Vermont
As an unabashed, diehard Bernie Sanders supporter, I'd be lying if I said last weekend's Netroots Nation fiasco didn't send a panicky chill through my body that I'll not soon forget. As soon as I...
View ArticleFrom the DoJ: Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) Can Withhold WMD Information From...
... if the president determines that doing so could harm the national security of this country.So much for the explicit federal statute that forces the executive branch to keep Congress “fully and...
View ArticleClinton Staffer Will Plead 5th Amendment at Congressional Hearing on Email...
Presented without comment...Think Progress...Bryan Pagliano, Clinton’s Former Tech Staffer, Will Plead The Fifth In Email InvestigationHere's the WaPo link...Staffer who worked on Clinton’s private...
View ArticleBernie Sanders Ties Trump and Carson in GOP Poll in Vermont. FWIW, He Also...
To me the latter poll is the surprising poll result. We'd expect him to lead Clinton in his home state. But the results also show he ties the two front-runners in the GOP race as well.CASTLETON, Vt. -...
View ArticleBernie Lost the Debate: the Pundits Told us so
Until the scientific national polls come out in a day or two, We the People are more or less resigned to relying on the analysis of the debate that pundits on cable news joyfully provide us.Or are...
View Article"He's the only candidate who talks about, let alone understands, the "true...
Senator Bernie Sanders' career in Congress has been living testimony to the fact that opposing wars but supporting our soldiers are not mutually exclusive goals.When Bernie Sanders entered the U.S....
View Article