Patriot Act

Domestic Spying Controversy Comes To New Jersey

Thursday, Congressman Ted Lieu posed an interesting question on Twitter: "What happens if the Patriot Act expires?" He wasn't trying to panic anyone; he was trying to reassure everyone: "Americans start getting our Fourth Amendment rights back."  Utah Tea Party radical Mike Lee is leading the fight in the Senate to reform that horribly flawed legislation so hated by Americans of all political flavors.

Inside the CIA’s Use of Terror During the Vietnam War

The CIA’s Phoenix program changed how America fights its wars and how the public views this new type of political and psychological warfare, in which civilian casualties are an explicit objective.
The CIA created Phoenix in Saigon in 1967 to identify the civilian leaders and supporters of the National Liberation Front; and to detain, torture, and kill them using every means possible, from B-52 raids and “Cordon and Search” operations, to computerized blacklists, secret torture centers, and death squads.
 

The Patriot Act-- Back For Another Go-Round

The intrinsically embarrassing nature of the Patriot Act came front and center again with the appearance on the national scene of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. This is a mature democracy? And for Obama... how did he shift from a senator so eloquently critical of unconstitutional surveillance practices to a chief proponent of expanding them?

Ignore the Drumbeat of Doom, the NSA’s Call Records Program Didn’t Stop a Single Terrorist Attack

By Rachel Nusbaum | ACLU | March 4, 2015 Do you hear that? It’s starting. The predictable drumbeat of dire warnings about what will happen if portions of the Patriot Act – the post-9/11 law being used to conduct controversial NSA dragnet surveillance – are allowed to expire on June 1 has already begun. James […]

Are We Going To Put A Stop To The Surveillance State? No One Is Going To Do It For Us

This evening, Blue America sent all members a letter about the continued, unconstitutional bulk surveillance of American citizens by an out of control Security-Industrial Complex. This isn't going to go away by itself and it doesn't seem to matter much if Democrats or Republicans are in power. This is something ordinary citizens have to put a stop to; politicians aren't going to-- not unless they're forced to. (Although...

Through the Looking Glass Darkly

One day while Alice is winding up a ball of wool that Kitty persists in undoing, she gets it into her head that there must be a world behind the looking glass (mirror) where everything is backward. Suddenly, she finds herself up on the mantelpiece staring into the looking glass. Then she walks through to the reality on the other side to find a world that is set up like a chessboard and chess pieces are animated human-like creatures. The reflected reality is the opposite of real reality. Time goes backwards.