News Items

  • Calls to Suspend Syrian Refugee and Other Recent Anti-Muslim Statements by Government Officials

    Compiled by the Institute for Public Accuracy with Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar. Kundnani said: “While it’s very easy to denounce Trump’s recent repugnant, bullying statements — and much of the political class has — it’s important to keep several things in mind: First, as the compilation of statements by elected officials makes clear, he made these statements after many officials from across the country made scores of statements playing on unfounded fears against Syrian refugees and other Muslims.”

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  • Classified Politics: A System and a Clinton in Disrepute

    It is most unlikely, however, that Hillary Clinton will fall victim to accusations that rely on improper over-­classification. The State Department and White House, including President Obama himself, sought to protect her and to minimize the effects of her behavior. The case is extremely high­-profile, Democrats in Congress would attack any borderline classification, and a host of well-­paid lawyers would rise to her defense. Improperly classified items or those deemed Sensitive but Unclassified may be redacted from publicly released documents, but it is hard to imagine that Mrs. Clinton would be falsely accused of felonies.

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    Please enjoy the full video of Holly Sterling’s news conference, which was her first such appearance since her husband’s trial and imprisonment. The news conference also featured Thomas Drake, Delphine Halgand, Ray McGovern, and Jesselyn Radack.

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  • Open Letter to President Obama from Holly Sterling

    Does the government have no shame in destroying one man’s life and wasting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to punish a man who had the audacity to do two things: Stand up for his constitutional rights and utilize proper channels provided to him to express concern for the citizens of our country? I am deeply saddened by our lives’ events that Jeffrey and I have suffered and endured. You publicly committed to a transparent government led by your administration, yet it has been shrouded in mistruth and secrecy.

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  • Unprecedented News Conference: Wife of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower to Speak Out

    Jeffrey Sterling was convicted under the Espionage Act as a source for New York Times reporter James Risen’s book State of War. He began serving his three-and-a-half year prison sentence in June. His wife’s news conference will be the first time the spouse of a CIA whistleblower has made such an appearance.

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  • Cultural Shift Needed on Police Militarization

    Police militarization is a 25 year long trend that has only grown in momentum over time. The restrictions on militaristic gear directed by the White House while important symbolically, will certainly not substantively impact this trend in and of itself. Police militarization at this point is as much a cultural problem as it is a material one, and reversing the cultural trend toward police militarization will require more far reaching efforts.

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  • Watch the Short Documentary “The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling”

    “‘The federal courtroom in northern Virginia where Holly and Jeffrey Sterling returned for the sentencing on May 11 was the scene of a disturbing, though scantly reported, simulation of justice in late January. At the outset, covering the trial, I noted that ‘prospective jurors made routine references to ‘three-letter agencies’ and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances.’ Steeped in a local atmosphere of deference to mega-employers like the CIA and Pentagon along with numerous big contracting firms nearby, ‘the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution.’”

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  • On Jeffrey Sterling: From the Filmmaker of “Invisible Man”

    “The most shocking element of this story it that Jeffrey Sterling seems to be punished because he ‘pulled on Superman’s cape’ first with a racial discrimination suit they were able to squash and then by reporting what he considered a dangerous CIA operation to the proper government channels for hearing such a concern.”

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  • News Conference: Whistleblowers Weigh In on Policy

    William Binney (NSA), Thomas Drake (NSA), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Raymond McGovern (CIA), Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Kirk Wiebe (NSA) spoke at this news conference, sponsored by ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • Netanyahu Victory Opens Door for One-State Solution

    Just before the election, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian State, which means that he repudiated the two-state solution to the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This has been the pronounced objective of American foreign policy since the Madrid Conference and the Middle East Peace Negotiations in 1991 held under the auspices of the United States government and with the full support of the international community.

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  • What If Provisional Ballots Exceed the Margin of Victory?

    SCOTT NOVAKOWSKI Novakowski is a senior policy analyst with Demos and the author of the recent report “Provisional Ballots: Where to Watch in 2008.” He said today: “When implemented correctly, provisional ballots can enfranchise voters. However, when states adopt unnecessarily stringent standards for counting them and poll workers are not adequately trained in their administration,…

  • Initiatives

    CHRIS STROHM A reporter for CongressDaily [subscription required] who has been writing about initiatives on the ballot in Tuesday’s election, Strohm said today: “There are initiatives on a wide variety of issues including Michigan Proposal 2, which would repeal a ban and allow government funding of stem-cell research, and Montana Initiative 555, which would give…

  • Security and Auditability of Electronic Voting Machines

    PENNY VENETIS Venetis is plantiff’s counsel in a four-year lawsuit spearheaded by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law. According to expert reports conducted as a part of the lawsuit, “approximately 10,000 voting machines used in 18 out of the 21 counties in New Jersey can be manipulated to throw an election.” The…

  • What About Constitutional Powers? Two Views

    MARJORIE COHN Cohn is the president of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. She recently wrote the piece “A Palin Theocracy.” Cohn said today: “The next president will almost certainly appoint one to three…

  • Voting Machines

    DAN WALLACH Wallach is an associate professor at Rice University and also the associate director of the National Science Foundation’s ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections), a $7.5 million research effort across six different institutions to improve U.S. election systems. He said today: “Present-day electronic voting systems have a variety…

  • Attack on Syria

    BBC reports: “Syria has protested angrily to both the U.S. and Iraq after what it said was a U.S. helicopter raid inside its territory that killed eight civilians. Syria summoned U.S. and Iraqi envoys to condemn the ‘aggressive act.’ Iraq said the area targeted was used by militants to launch cross-border attacks in Iraq.” JOSHUA…

  • Greenspan Expert

    The lead piece in the Washington Post today is “Greenspan Says he was Wrong on Regulation.” (The piece is critiqued by economist Dean Baker, who continuously warned of the ramifications of the housing bubble since early in this decade.) ROBERT AUERBACH Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Auerbach wrote the…

  • * Lawsuit in Response to Long Lines * Black Turnout

    JOHN BONIFAZ A coalition of Pennsylvania voters and civil rights groups, led by the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia seeking to ensure that voters receive emergency paper ballots on Election Day when 50 percent or more voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the…

  • Is Obama a Socialist?

    JOHN R. MacARTHUR MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the new book “You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America.” MacArthur said today: “Obama’s number one bundler is Goldman Sachs. He is advised on economics by Robert Rubin, the extremely wealthy director and senior counselor of Citigroup, the former…

  • Long Lines on Election Day: A Form of Voter Suppression?

    LAWRENCE NORDEN Norden is the director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting recently issued a 50-state report card that grades each state on its preparedness for election system breakdowns. Norden said today: “There’s no question that in the last few years, election…

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