Dear Senator Feinstein: On Thursday, when you responded to news about massive ongoing surveillance of phone records of people in the United States, you slipped past the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you seem to be in the habit of treating the Bill of Rights as merely …
Continue reading “An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein, Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee”
Suicide bombers staged two major attacks today. Although most of the recent bombings took place in Baghdad, today’s significant attacks took place outside the capital. At least 33 people were killed and 71 more were wounded across Iraq. Twelve of those killed and 37 of those wounded were Iranian pilgrims traveling to visit holy shrines in Iraq.
The bombshell dropped by Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian has exploded any pretenses to being the linchpin of American liberalism Barack Obama may have retained until this point. In a story that broke yesterday [Wednesday, June 5], Greenwald revealed that the US government has been spying not just on targeted alleged “terrorists,” but on each …
Continue reading “Police-State ‘Progressivism’”
A Cairo court has convicted 43 men and women of using foreign funds to foment unrest inside Egypt in connection with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Sixteen of those convicted were Americans. All but one, Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, had already departed. Becker fled this week rather than serve two years …
Continue reading “Outside Agitators”
In Baghdad, five people were killed and 30 more were wounded in a bombing at a Nahrawan livestock market. Three people were killed and at least 13 more were wounded in a separate bombing in Bayaa. A roadside bomb in Dowanim wounded six people. Three federal policemen were wounded in a blast in Khamsa. In …
Continue reading “Baghdad Bombings Resume; 20 Killed, 68 Wounded Across Iraq”
Of all the charges against Bradley Manning, the most pernicious—and revealing—is “aiding the enemy.” A blogger at The New Yorker, Amy Davidson, raised a pair of big questions that now loom over the courtroom at Fort Meade and the entire country: “Would it aid the enemy, for example, to expose war crimes committed by American …
Continue reading “Bradley Manning Is Guilty of ‘Aiding the Enemy’ – If the Enemy Is Democracy”
It is inevitable that every time there is an incident that can be attributed to terrorism, no matter what the circumstances, the cry will go up to unleash the police and intelligence services lest there be a recurrence of the event. The Boston Marathon bombing has consequently produced calls for “total Internet surveillance” by the …
Continue reading “National Security by the Numbers”
What if government officials have written laws that apply only to us and not to them? What if we gave them the power to protect our freedoms and our safety and they used that power to trick and trap some of us? What if government officials broke the laws we hired them to enforce? What …
Continue reading “What if Laws Applied to Everyone?”
At least 23 people were killed and 14 more were wounded.
Articles in the American media usually portray China as a potential adversary, and recent press coverage is no exception. Stories have appeared about China’s military hacking into the computer systems of the American government and business and Chinese oil companies’ reaping of unfair gains in Iraq on the backs of dead American soldiers. Yet the …
Continue reading “Threat From China Is Being Hyped” 
