Party allegiances apparently mean little in the U.S. when it comes to the debate over domestic government surveillance. A study released this morning by the Pew Research Center, a major U.S. polling agency, revealed that 57 percent of Democrats approve of government spying, along with 44 percent of Republicans. “There is a real division within …
Continue reading “Poll Shows Voter Bi-Partisan Split Mirrors House Vote on NSA”
The prayer day provided a respite from the current surge in violence. Overall, at least eight people were killed and three more were wounded. One of the casualties was a Sudanese man.
It’s now painfully clear that the president has put out a contract on the Fourth Amendment. And at the Capitol, the hierarchies of both parties are stuffing it into the trunks of their limousines, so each provision can be neatly fitted with cement shoes and delivered to the bottom of the Potomac. Some other Americans …
Continue reading “Obama’s Willing Executioners of the Fourth Amendment”
At least 55 people were killed and 89 more were wounded in today’s attacks. Coffee shops were a focus of the violence.
In the aftermath of the Amash Rebellion, there are two new parties in Congress: the authoritarians and the Americans. The vote on Rep. Justin Amash’s LIBERT-E Act, which would have gutted the National Security Agency’s phone records dragnet, drew a clear line of demarcation that will only widen in the coming months as civil libertarians …
Continue reading “The Battle for the Amash Amendment: Victory in Defeat”
Developments in Syria and Egypt have been a godsend for Israel. The bloodshed and political turmoil have meant that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can continue with business as usual, with no one paying much attention to what is going on as he dismembers Palestine. Amidst all the fun and games, Israel launched a new air …
Continue reading “The Lobby Never Sleeps”
At least 66 people were killed and 84 more were wounded in the latest attacks. Today’s violence was marked by a deadly return to using fake checkpoints to kill both civilians and security members. The tactic was used heavily during the height of sectarian violence.
In the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic snooping scandal, at least two major issues exist: 1) warrantless government "traffic" analysis of patterns of potentially all Americans’ phone calls, from which new technology allows authorities to assemble a fairy good picture of innocent peoples’ lives; and 2) the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court that has …
Continue reading “Reforms of Domestic Government Surveillance”
“Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, …
Continue reading “Kafka’s America: Secret Courts, Secret Laws, and Total Surveillance”
Mosque attacks, possibly coordinated, pushed the casualty figures up to 40 killed and 118 wounded.
