Washington DC Mayor Gray and several other DC City Council members have been arrested protesting in the streets over the shabby treatment of the District and its women in the “budget compromise” passed last Friday night. If only other leaders in Washington DC had the guts to stand up for their citizens.

Today, David Cloud portrays the vignette of the cold, detached remote killing in the Afghanistan countryside. Tomorrow it will be open ground in the vicinity of Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana or Key West. Hammers like this, once set in motion and cravenly unrestrained by the men in American political leadership and White House, always find more nails. Stay tuned, drone life and remote enforcement is coming to a city and town near you.

For all the caterwauling from the right, and stupifyingly from the Obama Administration and Blue Dog left as well, the real reason the United States has the sizable deficit issues it does is due in large part to the fact corporations like GE make billions in profit and pay no taxes.

The Obama Administration has sought to improperly alter Constitutional Miranda rights by administrative decree.

The US determination to prosecute Julian Assange is not just a destructive and myopic scheme to effect prior restraint in a digital world, it is laughable from the point of legal foundation.

By wildly overreaching her injunctive authority, Judge Virginia Phillips has given the Obama White House/Executive Branch legitimate and compelling grounds to appeal that are separate from the critical merits issue of the constitutionality and propriety of DADT, which is a discriminatory and loathsome policy and should be terminated immediately.

Todd Purdum has a pretty extensive and in depth article on John McCain just up at Vanity Fair and it paints a very brutal picture of McCain the tired old gluehorse. It is a picture I know well.

The late, but great, news this fine Friday afternoon is the decision of Western District of Washington (WDWA) Judge Ronald Leighton in the case of Air Force Major Margaret Witt finding DADT unconstitutional and reinstating Witt to her military position.

30% of US Attorney spots are either still under Bush appointees or under “acting status” and well over 100 Federal judicial seats are empty with far less that half even having a pending nominee. Republicans have put the appointment of conservative judges at the top of their agenda; Democrats and Obama need to get with the program.

Like they did to Dawn Johnsen, the Obama White House has hung absolutely outstanding progressive nominees Goodwin Liu and Edward Chen out to dry, and are well on their way to doing the same with Elizabeth Warren. It is a pathetic track record on progressive nominees.