When the government, through its executive and compliant Congress, wants to cut surveillance and privacy corners out of laziness and control greed, and otherwise crush the soul of the Constitution and the 4th Amendment, demagoguery and fake exigencies are the order of the day. And so they are again. Oh, and of course they want to get out of town on their vacation. And that is what has happened today.

Goodwin Liu will finally get a vote Thursday on cloture for his nomination to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It will be a tough road, but Liu is worth the fight.

Emergency Presidential statement set for tonight, very unusual for a late Sunday night.

A Nato air strike in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, has killed the son and three grandsons of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, a government spokesman has said

A year after Macondo the Mouth of Hell roared in the Gulf of Mexico, forever altering the ecology and lives of those who depend on the Gulf for their existence, it is business as usual for BP and a complicit Department of Justice.

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.

In all the government shutdown, nuclear meltdown and Libya war of choice news dominating the media landscape the last couple of weeks, a completely juicy little tidbit was pried out of the Obama Administration by a right wing news outfit – and almost nobody picked up on it. CNSNews, the cyber division of the Brent [...]

There is a report today that the Obama White House is ready to offer the FBI Director’s job to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly; if it does, it would be a profoundly negative comment on the Administration’s craven handling of the civilian trials in Article III courts issue.

. . . Seriously, this asshole with a dead ferret on his head thinks he is going to run for President? Of the United States? Um, no. And why supposedly credible news organizations are giving this crapola one fleeting second of credibility not only beggars comprehension, but proves what pathetic swamp sludge the traditional media [...]