House Panel Votes to Extend Warrantless Spy Powers

The House Judiciary Committee has voted to reauthorize sweeping warrantless spying powers that are due to expire at year’s end. The FISA Amendments Act would allow the government to continue the Bush-era practice of monitoring U.S. residents’ phone calls and emails without a warrant, so long as one of the parties in the communication is outside the United States. The Senate Intelligence Committee passed a similar measure last month.

NSA: Revealing Number of Domestic Spy Targets Would Violate Privacy

The National Security Agency has refused to disclose how many Americans have been monitored under the surveillance program on the grounds that doing so would violate their privacy. The NSA made the assertion in a response to a request from Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. In a letter, the NSA’s inspector general told the senators that to answer how many Americans have been spied on "would itself violate the privacy of U.S. persons."

Lawmakers Hold First Hearing on Solitary Confinement

In the first-ever hearing of its kind, a Senate panel Tuesday heard testimony on the psychological and human rights implications of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois opened the hearing by noting the United States holds far more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic country, with tens of thousands of inmates in some form of restricted housing. Former death row inmate Anthony Graves testified about the lasting effects of isolation, which he said drove some of his fellow inmates to insanity and suicide. The use of solitary confinement has drawn increased attention in recent months, with human rights advocates saying it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

[source: Democracy Now!]

The congress of the state and federal government are the most powerful unions in the world. They vote their own wages, they vote their own pensions, they vote their own benefits, and they vote their own health insurance, ALL are the best, all are the most expensive, all are public employees, and all are at the government and taxpayer expense. Reducing their perks would go a long way at reducing the deficit and balancing the budget.

About time you got around to the scandal of the coverup of the Justice Department's Gun Running Program Fast and Furious and the contempt of Congress in Attorney General Eric Holder's former lies on the issues (claimed no guns from this were found at the site of the executivion of the US Border Agent), although the death and wounding of numberous Mexican citizens seemed to be a small price to pay for this incredibily ill conceived and botched gun running program). But what was worse was his stone walling on the documentation which will show the coverup efforts that were ongoing in the Justice Department after they were caught in the big lie last year, and now we have the Presidend of the United States trying to protect at least White House advisors or stafff members involvement from coming to light by spurious claims of Executive Privalege.

I though this was going to be the Transparent Administration? Did you hear that promise in 2008?

Add to that the President's not appointing an Independent Special Prosecutor to investigate the leaking of vital security information in an apparent attempt to further his reelection campaign, but leaving it up to the same Eric Holder who supervises the two lower level US Attorneys chosen for the thankless and fruitless job of attempting to investigate these issues sure to meet stonewalling, and we have a picture of a White House suddenly racked in scandals approaching the reelection. Got to deal with it MSNBC...we don't want to be electing an rogue autocrat here that puts himself and his needs over the country's, do we?