Freedom isn’t free. The National Security Agency along with the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies of the U.S. government has been swapping information with private companies. In exchange for private companies giving the intelligence agencies information on their users, the private companies receive access to classified intelligence. The Corporate State indeed. Thousands of technology, [...]

The CEO of the Associated Press said the government’s unprecedented actions to seize phone records of reporters from the news organization was both unconstitutional and has had a chilling effect on sources. The president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press on Sunday called the government’s secret seizure of two months of reporters’ phone [...]

A joint statement by Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, and Representative Peter King calls for a man accused of participating in the Boston Marathon Bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to be charged and handled as an enemy combatant and outside the constitution despite Tsarnaev being a U.S. citizen. “It is clear the events we have [...]

Update 2:00 pm EST: The Obama Administration has issued a response on drones. The U.S. government cannot target an American citizen who is not engaged in combat on American soil, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday during his daily press briefing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had on Thursday asked the administration if the [...]

Just ahead of today’s CIA director confirmation hearing President Obama has ordered the release of memos that were written by his administration to justify the killing of American citizens without due process. The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees classified documents discussing the legal justification [...]

If there’s going to be reform to the Senate’s rules, it’s going to have to come from the Senate itself. That’s the implication of a ruling in federal court today throwing out a Constitutional challenge to the filibuster. Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the plaintiffs in the case, who claimed that the Senate used an [...]

While Senators work out a potential compromise on the filibuster, one which would in all likelihood keep the option of a supermajority requirement for legislation and confirmations intact while constraining it somewhat, a group of House Democrats have gone to federal court to challenge the filibuster as an unconstitutional procedure: A federal judge began hearing [...]

Don’t expect yesterday’s Dane County court ruling overturning sections of Wisconsin’s anti-union law to remain operative for long. The ruling by Judge Juan Colas voids the law for city, county and school workers on the grounds that it violated the workers’ constitutional right to free speech, free assembly and equal representation. It singles out public [...]

The latest in a string of rulings limiting the GOP’s war on voting has come down. A federal court has unanimously stopped Texas from instituting a voter ID law. While this would seem contradictory to the Supreme Court’s upholding of voter ID for Indiana in 2009, this case is different because it follows the Justice [...]

Ed DeMarco is really feeling his oats, no doubt thanks to projections of profits at Fannie and Freddie paradoxically spurred by a housing shortage. (Those profits are at least partially derived from Fannie and Freddie evading local government transfer taxes, by the way, not DeMarco’s “responsible stewardship.”) He rejected principal reductions as a means to [...]

Why don’t I just throw up some reactions from political leaders and stakeholders here. First of all, on the Republican side. They are ready to vote in Congress to repeal the entire law as soon as the week of July 9: House Republicans will respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding President Barack Obama’s health [...]