“That a privacy-centric email service would shut down instead of disclose information about one of its users, as appears to be the case with Lavabit, speaks incredibly highly of the company, and reminds us that even in the face of a seemingly all powerful surveillance state, each of us can bravely refuse to submit. The…

“Even beyond the larger systemic problem of insulating NSA surveillance from judicial review, criminal defendants whose arrest or case is built upon FISA evidence are now deprived of their right to examine and challenge the evidence used against them. “Taken together, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee a criminal defendant a meaningful opportunity to present…

“Let’s take a look, briefly, at the companies Obama proposes should form the backbone of the housing market. Morgan Stanley is currently embroiled in a lawsuit alleging lending discrimination in Detroit. UBS just paid $885 million to settle allegations it lied about the risks of mortgage-backed securities. Wells Fargo recently settled one lawsuit over discriminatory…

“Worker advocates claim that the low-pay temp jobs at the [Amazon] Chattanooga warehouse contribute to a disturbing trend of middle-class erosion. As Dave Jamieson of the Huffington Post reported earlier this week, Amazon employs a temporary staffing agency at the warehouse, Integrity Staffing Solutions, that advertises seasonal jobs at the warehouse with a starting pay…

“Unfortunately in Yemen it’s often unclear who carried out particular air strikes — CIA drones, U.S. military drones or aircraft, the Yemen air force’s own rather elderly planes and even Saudi jets all reportedly carry out bombing. It’s rare for the U.S. to acknowledge it carried out specific strikes. Local officials and eyewitnesses have claimed…

“As the commercial model of journalism is in free fall collapse, those remaining news media franchises have become playthings for billionaires, generally of value for political purposes, as old-fashioned monopoly newspapers still carry considerable influence. The United States went through this type of journalism at the turn of the last century and it produced a…

“The latest revelations of NSA domestic spying include new information about the government’s ability to intercept social network communications, email metadata and content, and other online content–all without a judicial warrant. “Beyond the particular details about XKeyscore … lies a more disturbing implication: neither the press, nor the public, nor even Congress have any idea…

“U.S. leaders can only name 77 ‘senior al-Qaeda and Taliban officials’ that they have killed by their drone strikes, out of total kills of 3-5,000 civilians and low-level militants that they cannot even name. This amounts to a military pinprick, which must be weighed against the long-term strategic catastrophe of turning nuclear-armed Pakistan against the…

“Who is the most popular health insurer in America? Not Anthem Blue Cross. It’s Medicare. And what insurer is the most efficient? Medicare again, operating at only 1.4 percent overhead, while the private insurers strain to meet the Affordable Care Act maximum overhead of 20 percent. “While the Affordable Care Act struggles to be born,…

“Tuesday’s verdict from a military judge does not diminish the huge moral stature of whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Next month, I will be proud to deliver a petition to the Nobel Committee in Oslo with a simple message from more than 100,000 signers: ‘I urge you to award the Peace Prize to Bradley Manning.’ “Thanks to…